WASHINGTON (AP) — 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 Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol insurrection, according to two people familiar with the matter.
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 because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the case. 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.
Details of prosecutors’ allegations against Hutchinson were not immediately clear, but Republican lawmakers had accused her of lying under oath in her explosive testimony in 2022 about Trump’s behavior on Jan. 6, when a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol to halt the congressional certification of his election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
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.
An attorney for Hutchinson didn't immediately return a phone message seeking comment Tuesday.
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.
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.”
Hutchinson’s description of the altercation inside the presidential SUV was regarded as particularly explosive, even as she acknowledged during her testimony that she was relaying what she had heard from a White House security official and did not have firsthand knowledge of the episode because she was not there.
Her account was quickly disputed.
In March 2024, House Republicans released a previously undisclosed transcript of the Select Committee’s interview with a Secret Service officer who drove the presidential SUV. That transcript of the presidential limo driver contradicted some of Hutchinson’s testimony but corroborated other aspects of her account, including Trump’s attempt to join the mob scene at the Capitol.
The driver said he did not see the altercation that Hutchinson described.
But the driver said Trump “never grabbed the steering wheel.”
“I didn’t see him, you know, lunge to try to get into the front seat at all,” the driver said.
Hutchinson has alleged that members of Trump’s inner circle dangled job opportunities and financial assistance while she was cooperating with the committee. She also testified that her own lawyer — a former ethics counsel in the Trump White House — told her “the less you remember, the better.”
“It feels ridiculous, because in my heart I knew where my loyalties lied, and my loyalties lied with the truth,” she told the committee. “And I never wanted to diverge from that.”
The U.S. House of Representatives impeached Trump in 2021 on allegations that he incited the mob that attacked the Capitol, but he was later acquitted by the Senate. The Justice Department under Biden charged Trump with felony offenses, accusing him of illegally working to overturn his 2020 election loss in the run-up to the Capitol attack, but then-special counsel Jack Smith abandoned the case after Trump’s 2024 presidential victory. Longstanding Justice Department policy says sitting presidents cannot face criminal prosecution.
Hutchinson, a native of Pennington, New Jersey, previously worked in the White House Office of Legislative Affairs and interned for Republicans, including Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at https://apnews.com/hub/capitol-siege.
