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Former White House adviser Cassidy Hutchinson told the January 6 committee that she felt pressure from Donald Trump’s circle not to cooperate with lawmakers investigating the riot at the US Capitol.
“I knew that somehow it would be [Trump] if I said something he would find unfair,’ Hutchinson told lawmakers, according to new documents.
‘The prospect of that really scared me. You know, I had seen this world ruin people’s lives or try to ruin people’s careers.
The select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol released more behind-closed-door witness testimony Thursday, after going public with comments from more than 30 witnesses Wednesday night.
The lawmakers expect to publish their final report, said to be 1,000 pages long, sometime on Thursday.
Cassidy Hutchinson was a top aide to former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows at the time of the January 6 Capitol riot.
But ahead of the committee’s grand finale, more than 200 pages of Hutchinson interviews were published between September 14 and 15 of this year.
Among the documents is a particularly dark interaction between Hutchinson and Tony Ornato, a former Secret Service official who briefly left the force to serve as Trump’s deputy chief of staff.
Ornato, Hutchinson testified publicly over the summer, told him about an incident after Trump’s Stop The Steal rally on Jan. 6, where he allegedly tried to assault another Secret Service agent who refused to take him to the Capitol with his supporters.
She told House investigators in her September 15 statement that he appeared to reference the incident again months later, in mid-April 2021, when Hutchinson called him to discuss his lingering guilt over the events of September 6. January.
“Okay, well, put your head up, kid,” Hutchinson recalled when the call ended. ‘It could be worse… the president could have tried to strangle you on January 6th.’
He spoke to the January 6 committee investigating that attack several times behind closed doors and at an explosive public hearing in late June.
Hutchinson said she did not speak to Ornato again after that.
The published statements were from just two of several times Hutchinson met with the committee. By this time, she had armed herself with a new legal team and told the committee that her previous attorney made her feel as though she “had Trump looking over her shoulder.”
It was that lawyer, Stefan Passantino, who allegedly encouraged her not to tell the committee about the incident involving Trump in her motorcade on January 6.
“I remember him leaning back in his chair and saying, ‘No, no, no, no, no. We don’t want to go there. We don’t want to talk about it,” Hutchinson said. .
She said he told her, ‘That’s an example of one of those stories that will only get the committee a headline. It is not important to anything that really happened that day. It’s a headline. It’s a great story for them.
Passantino, a former Trump White House ethics attorney, also reportedly told Hutchinson that “the less you remember, the better” regarding the committee’s questions about the events.
And though he told her not to lie, she said he also suggested it wasn’t a crime to have a faulty memory.
I don’t want you to commit perjury, but “I don’t remember” is not perjury. They don’t know what you can and can’t remember,” she allegedly said.
It was his testimony that led to public allegations that Donald Trump attempted to assault a Secret Service agent who refused to take him to the US Capitol.
It allegedly happened after Trump’s Stop The Steal rally on the White House Ellipse (pictured here)
Hutchinson recalled the lawyer saying, ‘Again, Cass, just trust me on this. I am your lawyer. I know what is best for you. The less you remember, the better. Do not read anything to try to jog your memory. Don’t try to put together time lines.
He also spoke about his fear and paranoia that Passantino would relay information to the former president.
‘It wasn’t just that I had Stefan sitting next to me; it was almost like he had Trump looking over his shoulder,” Hutchinson said.
Hutchinson also did not pay Passantino for his legal services, saying he was unclear where the money came from.
He later learned that Passantino was being paid by a Trump PAC called Save America.
She said he told her, “If you want to know at the end, we’ll let you know, but we’re not telling people where the funds are coming from right now.”
‘Don’t worry, we’re taking care of you. Like, you’ll never get a bill for this, so if that’s what you’re worried about,” Passantino reportedly said.
Passantino told the Associated Press that he had acted “honorably, ethically and entirely in accordance with his sole interests.”
Hutchinson’s testimony before the committee on January 6 over the summer brought some of the most explosive revelations of the ten hearings.
After previously misleading the committee about what he knew of the incident at Trump’s car on January 6, he returned for his September meetings with new lawyers and disclosed further to the public in late June.
She said it started with Ornato once telling her at the White House on January 6: ‘Did you hear what happened at the Beast?’
Hutchinson told lawmakers that Secret Service agent Robert Engel had to tell Trump they were going back to the West Wing, not the Capitol, as Trump believed they would.
“The president said something to the effect of, I’m the fucking president, take me to the Capitol now,” the former staffer said. “To which Bobby replied, sir, we have to go back to the west wing.”
Next, Trump grabbed the wheel, he testified that Hutchinson was told.
‘Mr. Engel grabbed his arm and said, sir, you must take your hand off the wheel. Let’s go back to the west wing. We’re not going to the Capitol,’ he said.
‘Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lash out at Bobby Engel. And Mr…. when Mr. Ornato told me this story, he gestured to his collarbones.