Brendan Buck, who was an aide to former House speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), said Hutchinson “was always by [Meadows’s] side … when there were meetings you’d expect to be principal-level or very small, senior staff-level, he would always insist she was in the room.”
Buck said Hutchinson was usually a quiet presence, largely there to take notes.
“It’s just unusual to have a relatively junior aide to either be in principal-level or senior staff-level, but it was his call, so we deferred to him,” he said. “She was in every single meeting.”
Video clips from Hutchinson’s interviews have been featured by the panel during earlier hearings, but Tuesday will be the first time she will offer live testimony at a public hearing. She has testified for about two dozen hours over the course of multiple sessions. Hutchinson said Meadows — whom she has not talked to since leaving the White House — destroyed documents and was directly involved with efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The details of Tuesday’s previously unscheduled hearing were unclear; the panel said in an announcement Monday that it would “present recently obtained evidence and receive witness testimony.”
Hutchinson was by Meadows’s side leading up to and during the Capitol attack and often took notes in strategy sessions held between the White House and President Donald Trump’s allies in Congress about whether they should encourage “Stop the Steal” participants to march to the U.S. Capitol, and how to set up alternative slates of electors.
“Cassidy Hutchinson might turn out to be the next John Dean,” Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who served as counsel to House Democrats for Trump’s first impeachment trial, told The Washington Post. Dean was the former presidential counsel who accused President Richard M. Nixon of having direct involvement in the Watergate break-in scandal to Senate investigators and federal prosecutors.
The Post reported that Hutchinson confirmed to the Jan. 6 committee that at one point Meadows said Trump had indicated support for protesters who were shouting “Hang Mike Pence!”
Videotaped testimony from Hutchinson was also central to allegations of pardon-hunting by Republican House members. The allegations were aired by the committee at Thursday’s hearing.
Hutchinson testified that she was involved with conversations about requests from GOP Reps. Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Mo Brooks (Ala.), Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Louie Gohmert (Tex.) and Scott Perry (Pa.), all of whom she said had sought a promise from the White House to be cleared in advance of any crimes they might be charged with. Perry had previously denied seeking a pardon, but Hutchinson insisted Biggs also denied he sought a pardon. Gaetz tweeted last Thursday that the Jan. 6 committee is “an unconstitutional political sideshow” that is “siccing federal law enforcement on political opponents.”
According to a court filing in April, Hutchinson told congressional investigators that Meadows was warned before Jan. 6 about the threat of violence that day as supporters of Trump planned to mass at the Capitol.
Hutchinson recalled that Anthony Ornato, a senior Secret Service official who also held the role of a political adviser at the White House, “coming in and saying that we had intel reports saying that there could potentially be violence on the 6th. And Mr. Meadows said: All right. Let’s talk about it.”
Hutchinson added, “I’m not sure if he — what he did with that information internally.”
Those details were in a filing arguing that a federal court should reject Meadows’s claims of executive privilege and compel him to appear before the House Jan. 6 committee, which is continuing to build a case that Trump knowingly misled his followers about the election and pressured Vice President Mike Pence to break the law in the weeks and hours before the assault.
In what is viewed as a willingness to cooperate with the panel, Hutchinson changed attorneys just ahead of her testimony.
Her previous lawyer, Stefan Passantino, was a White House ethics lawyer early in Trump’s tenure. Hutchinson’s new lawyer, Jody Hunt, is a longtime confidant of Jeff Sessions, the former Republican senator from Alabama who served as Trump’s first attorney general and resigned in November 2018 at the president’s request.
Hutchinson interned for House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) before becoming a White House intern the summer before her senior year at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Va. But the New Jersey native has not had a full-time job since leaving the White House.
After returning to college that fall, Hutchinson said being selected to work in the executive mansion brought tears to her eyes.
“As a first-generation college student, being selected to serve as an intern alongside some of the most intelligent and driven students from across the nation — many of whom attend top universities — was an honor and a tremendous growing experience,” she told her university in October 2018.
She once told her alma mater: “I have set a personal goal to pursue a path of civic significance.”
Devlin Barrett, Josh Dawsey and Jacqueline Alemany contributed to this report.