Complete tool MAGA lawyer Stefan Passantino, credibly accused in the courts of public opinion and of the DC Bar Association (but not yet criminally) of tampering with former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s damning testimony to the House January 6th Select Committee, last week sued former Mueller Investigation prosecutor Andrew Weissman for defamation, seeking $75,000 in damages for reputational harm caused by Weissman’s September 15th tweet in which Weismann wrote that Passantino had coached Hutchinson to lie. Passantino’s complaint on the first page cites Hutchinson telling investigators “I want to make this clear to you: Stefan [Passantino] never told me to lie… He told me not to lie” but not the part where she quoted Passantino as having told her “No, no, no. We don’t want to go there. We don’t want to talk about” the legendary “Steering Wheel grab” incident when Trump allegedly assaulted at least one Secret Service agent on January 6th.

So while maybe in a narrow technical sense saying that Passantino had “coached [Hutchinson] to lie” isn’t the most accurate description, the “coached” part – with the heavy implication of getting her to omit certain parts that were unambiguously embarrassing to the ketchup-flinging maniac – definitely is. A defamation claim needs to meet a burden of proof that we’re not quite sure is within reach here, especially considering the Bar complaint and that the dipshit appeared to have been pushed out of his law firm the day after the transcript of Hutchinson’s testimony to the committee dropped. It might also have helped if the former Trump White House “ethics” lawyer’s suit against Weissman had landed before a politically sympathetic judge, maybe one his former boss appointed.

It didn’t. Politico’s Kyle Cheney reports that Passantino’s case has been assigned to none other than DC Circuit Court Judge Tanya Chutkan. We’re not attorneys and don’t have any specific take on the merits, it’s just something tells us that if Passantino doesn’t already regret filing it then he will when the jurist, so deeply feared and loathed in MAGA circles, starts banging her gavel.