In two newly-released transcripts of her interviews with the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson detailed an effort by Trump supporters to influence her testimony with money and job offers in a ham-handed persuasion campaign. In her testimony, Hutchinson also implied that her first attorney, paid by Donald Trump’s PAC, was leaking information to the media.
As the Associated Press reports, Hutchinson testified that two Trump aides, Alex Cannon and Justin Clark, offered to provide her financial assistance and help in her job search during conversations preceding her testimony. She also received a call from Ben Williamson, an aide to Hutchinson’s former boss Mark Meadows, who said to her, “Well, Mark wants me to let you know that he knows you’re loyal and he knows you’ll do the right thing tomorrow and that you’re going to protect him and the boss. You know, he knows that we’re all on the same team and we’re all a family.”
Besides being told by her Trump-paid attorney, Stefan Passantino, to lie about hearing the story about Trump attempting to grab the steering wheel of a Secret Service vehicle on January 6th, Hutchinson also testified that she suspected Passantino leaked information about her testimony to the media. Relating a story about how Trump associates were trying to get the New York Times Maggie Habermann to spike a story about her testimony, Hutchinson pointed the finger at Passantino.
“[Passantino] also let me know on that phone conversation that Maggie Haberman, quote, ‘got a story from the committee about my third interview,’ end quote, and he spent — he, Stefan, spent the whole weekend with Alex Cannon convincing Maggie Haberman not to publish the story that she got from the committee about my third interview,” Hutchinson told the interviewers before throwing her old attorney under the bus. “I would like for the record to reflect that I am extremely confident in the confidence of the committee and that the leak did not come from the committee. Now, I have been wrong before, but I don’t think I’m wrong about this one.”