The key witness from the Jan. 6 Select Committee, Cassidy Hutchinson, who gained attention for her testimony—and perhaps even leveraged it for a book deal—might soon face repercussions for her claims about former President Donald Trump, which some have labeled as exaggerated.
Hutchinson, the ex-assistant to Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, was reportedly referred by House Republicans to the Justice Department earlier this year for possible criminal charges.
‘Based on what we know, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights division is looking into Ms. Hutchinson for potential prosecution and has formed a grand jury,’ sources indicated.
This week, sources informed Punchbowl News that the DOJ is indeed investigating Hutchinson for a federal indictment.
It seems that Trump himself had some suspicions about Hutchinson, believing she might be “a total phony and ‘leaker.'” A congressional report from December 2024 accused her of committing “perjury when she lied under oath to the Select Committee” and claimed she was “secretly communicating” with the committee’s former vice chair, Liz Cheney.
In 2022, Hutchinson appeared for six transcribed interviews and a public hearing with the committee. She reportedly revealed something in one of her closed-door interviews that the committee found particularly noteworthy.
Shortly after her testimony, Hutchinson shared a dramatic account of a supposed altercation where Trump tried to take control of the presidential limousine after his speech on January 6, 2021. However, she did not witness this herself; she claimed to have heard it from Trump’s former deputy chief of staff, Tony Ornato—a statement Ornato has denied.
The J6 committee not only accepted what many perceive as “secondhand hearsay,” but they also allowed Hutchinson to testify without interviewing other potential witnesses beforehand—some of whom could have contradicted her narrative. This included the two Secret Service agents mentioned in her testimony, who were not consulted until months later, according to a report from the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight from March 2024.
A March 2024 report suggested that the statements of four White House employees, which were redacted, directly contradict Hutchinson’s claims and those cited in the final report of the Select Committee.
The congressional report, directed by Rep. Barry Loudermilk, concluded that Hutchinson’s eagerness to testify about these evidently false claims makes her an unreliable witness.
Hutchinson hasn’t been forgotten by the Trump administration. Her legal team mentioned in an August court filing that the potential for prosecution is no longer just hypothetical but a tangible threat. They noted that the Justice Department’s Civil Rights division has initiated an investigation into her for possible prosecution and convened a grand jury.
Recently, a federal grand jury was assembled to evaluate the evidence concerning Hutchinson’s congressional testimony, as per sources familiar with the DOJ’s investigation.
The White House directed inquiries to the DOJ for comment, but neither the DOJ nor Hutchinson’s representatives responded promptly to requests for clarification.
News surrounding the possible criminal indictment follows the recent dismissal of a defamation lawsuit that Hutchinson’s former attorney, Stefan Passantino, had filed against a law professor. The lawsuit accused the professor of claiming that Passantino coached Hutchinson to lie during her depositions for the J6 committee.
