The Courage of Jan. 6 Witness Cassidy Hutchinson
By Peggy Noonan, June 30, 2022
Only a woman would have done what Cassidy Hutchinson did because only a woman, in a place of such power and prestige, would have registered everything and taken such close notes instead of spending that time swanning around being important.
Here she was, all by herself, 26 years old, in front of the whole country.
I found her testimony to the Jan. 6 committee entirely credible. If she lied I see no motive. Any who know otherwise, who can rebut what she said, should come forward and, like her, testify under oath.
She was steadily promoted in Donald Trump’s White House, rising from intern to primary assistant to chief of staff Mark Meadows. She was by all accounts professional and discreet, a conservative, a Trumpian committed to the higher political mission. The powerful men around her appear to have been undefended in her presence and spoke freely—she’s only a kid, a girl, what can she do? She helps the steward clean ketchup off the wall after the president has a tantrum and throws his plates and silverware. In the scheme of things she’s nobody.
And yet such people can upend empires.
By being there this week, she showed a lot more guts than the men of that White House. Mr. Meadows, counsel Pat Cipollone and others—her testimony made them sound like a bunch of jabbering hysterics. You tell the president not to do that! No, you tell him! They worried about legal exposure. Ms. Hutchinson paraphrased Mr. Cipollone: “We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable!”
You get the impression she, on the other hand, was worrying about what was right.
Now alone, with the administration over but its men still hiding, she came forward, and what she said changed everything. Her testimony made criminal charges against the former president more likely. In National Review, former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote that her testimony was devastating in that it portrayed Donald Trump as “singularly culpable” for the events of 1/6. As to the disputed limousine fight between the president and his Secret Service agents, Mr. McCarthy says, sensibly: Let them speak under oath. Ms. Hutchinson didn’t say that the skirmish occurred but that she had been told it had—by an agent who was there, minutes after it allegedly happened. There’s nothing wrong in this venue with hearsay. “The point of an investigation is to search for reliable, admissible evidence,” Mr. McCarthy writes. “For that, hearsay is not only allowed but encouraged.”
David French in the Dispatch also saw Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony as strengthening the case for prosecution. Mr. Trump approved of the riot, intended to walk to the Capitol with the mob, thought Vice President Mike Pence deserved harm. Most serious, in Mr. French’s view, is what Ms. Hutchinson testified she heard Mr. Trump say of the crowd: “You know, I don’t effing care that they have weapons. They’re not there to hurt me. Take the effing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here.”
Magnetometers—mags—are used to detect weapons. Some members of the crowd carried them.
Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony must be corroborated by others who might have heard Mr. Trump say this. But if it stands, an indictment “would be a relatively simple story,” Mr. French writes.
“First, Trump summoned the mob to Washington.” Second, he “knew the mob was armed and dangerous.” Third, he exhorted them to “fight like hell” and march on the Capitol. Ms. Hutchinson said he attempted to lead it himself. Fourth, he further inflamed the mob after the attack began by tweeting: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what was necessary.”
With this fact pattern, his earlier admonition to the crowd to move forward “peacefully and patriotically” looks, to Mr. French’s eyes, “more like pro forma ass-covering than a genuine plea. It was a drop of pacifism in an ocean of incitement.”
The purpose of gathering all possible information on this ugly historical event is to see that those who did it are exposed and punished so it never happens again. If Mr. Trump had succeeded, he would have produced a new era, in which democracy and its processes would no longer work in America, in which the outcome of every national election would be a question. We can’t allow that because we can’t survive that way, we’d be finished.
What is important now is getting more people testifying publicly under oath. More people are going to want to talk. The committee should be given the resources to pick up its pace and lengthen its schedule.
After Ms. Hutchinson, the testimony of Messrs. Meadows and Cipollone is more crucial than ever. Mr. Meadows was in the thick of everything on 1/6 and before, as the conspiracy unfolded. Ms. Hutchinson said he asked for a presidential pardon. Did he? For what? (Mr. Meadows has denied it.)
Mr. Cipollone, also at the heart of events, is an interesting case. Almost every book and article about the end of the Trump administration portrays him as a bit of a hero, so it’s generally assumed he was more than a bit of a source. Why so shy now?
He knows whether Ms. Hutchinson told the truth. He knows more than that.
Mr. Cipollone is said to have concerns regarding questions of executive privilege. Rep. Liz Cheney implied in hearings that it was simpler than that: “Our committee is certain that Donald Trump does not want Mr. Cipollone to testify here.”
It is possible he’s keen to keep his business and political ties to Trumpworld and has concluded he can maintain them by never saying in public what one might say in private, on background. Let the girl be brave; he will be careful.
But he owes the public that paid his salary the truth, and until he does his Washington nickname, “Patsy Baloney,” will stick.
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