The Justice Department on Tuesday failed to secure a grand jury indictment against a former White House staffer who provided dramatic but disputed testimony against President Donald Trump before a House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, U.S.
Capitol insurrection, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Hutchinson’s testimony, at a surprise hearing announced just 24 hours earlier, was seen at the time as particularly powerful given her proximity to power as special assistant to Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff. Because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the case, a grand jury in Washington rejected prosecutors’ request to return an indictment against Cassidy Hutchinson, said the people, who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity. It’s the latest setback in the Justice Department’s efforts to persuade grand jurors in the nation’s capital to bring politically sensitive cases.
Hutchinson described an angry, defiant president who was trying to let armed protesters avoid security screenings at a rally that morning to protest his 2020 election defeat and who later grabbed at the steering wheel of the presidential SUV when the Secret Service refused to let him go to the Capitol.
And when the events at the Capitol spiraled toward violence, with the crowd chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” she testified that Trump declined to intervene. Trump at the time denied much of what Hutchinson said on his social media platform, Truth Social. He called her a “total phony” and “bad news.”
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Hutchinson said Trump was angry and defiant on Jan. The effort to indict Hutchinson was hardly isolated. It is part of a surge in politically sensitive actions by the Justice Department in the run-up to next week’s midterm elections targeting perceived adversaries of the president, including a new attempt to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and a search by federal agents of the home of outspoken Trump critic and Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. It’s highly unusual for grand juries to decline to return indictments, but the Justice Department under Trump has been rebuked by citizens in the nation’s capital in a number of high-profile cases.
A grand jury in Washington earlier this year declined to indict Democratic lawmakers in connection with a video they recorded urging U.S. service members to follow established military protocols and reject orders they believe to be unlawful.
