Cassidy Hutchinson, a White House aide to former U.S. President Donald Trump, makes a surprise appearance Tuesday before the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 uprising, a panel effort to provide new details about the Trump’s inner circle as he fought. to nullify his electoral defeat.
The 25-year-old, who was a special assistant and assistant to former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, has already provided a wealth of information to congressional investigators and has sat in several closed-door interviews. . But the committee convened the hearing this week to hear his public testimony, raising expectations of new revelations in the nearly-year investigation.
Deputy Bennie Thompson, chairman of the committee, said the panel convened the hearing in light of “detailed detailed information on what the former chairman and his aides were doing and saying at those critical hours.”
Thompson praised Hutchinson for his courage, but did not detail the new information or what he would say when he opened the hearing.
The unexpected hearing was announced with a 24-hour notice while lawmakers are out of Washington on a two-week hiatus. The committee had said last week that there would be no further hearings until July.
The committee’s investigation has been ongoing during the hearings, as the nine-member panel has continued to investigate the attack by Trump supporters.
WATCH l Highlights from the most recent hearing on agitation in the Department of Justice:
Trump pressured the Justice Department to cancel the election, the hearing said
Three former senior Justice Department officials testified about the pressure U.S. President Donald Trump put on them to cancel the 2020 election.
While it’s unclear what new evidence he could provide on Tuesday, Hutchinson’s testimony is likely to tell a first-hand story of Trump’s pressure campaign and how the former president responded after the violence began, more clearly than any other witness the committee has convened. Bye now.
In brief excerpts from witnesses revealed in court documents, Hutchinson told the committee he was in the White House meeting room where election challenges were debated and discussed, even with several Republican lawmakers. In one case, Hutchinson described seeing Meadows incinerate documents after a meeting in his office with Republican Rep. Scott Perry, Politico reported in May.
He also revealed that the White House attorney’s office warned against plans to recruit fake voters to the oscillating states, even in meetings with Meadows and Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani. The president’s attorneys warned the plan was not “legally sound,” Cassidy said.
The committee has used hearings to detail pressure from Trump and his allies to deny an election victory to Joe Biden. The panel heard testimony about the pressure on then-Vice President Mike Pence, on the states certifying Biden’s victory, and on the Justice Department.
The panel is expected to issue a report by the end of the year. Two former Trump administration figures, Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, face criminal proceedings for refusing to cooperate with the committee’s citations.
Allegations of electoral fraud persist
The seven Democrats and two Republicans on the panel have argued that the threat to the election persists. Millions of Americans still incorrectly believe Trump won, according to polls, while a Tuesday night primary in Colorado’s career as secretary of state is among many state and local elections with candidates believing that the 2020 elections were not decided fairly.
Front Burner25: 35The case of January 6 against Donald Trump
Did Donald Trump break the law in his attempt to stay in power after 2020? That’s what the Jan. 6 House committee is trying to prove, with lots of evidence and dozens of witnesses, including some of the closest allies and even Trump’s family. This week, representatives of the Republican states of Arizona and Georgia stated that Trump tried to pressure them to find votes and cancel the election. This week, on the fourth official day of public hearings, more evidence has been presented showing Trump’s long journeys, and some of his inner circle, to push the “big lie” that the 2020 election was manipulated. Today in Front Burner, Aaron Blake of the Washington Post, about the evidence, the unanswered questions and what would be needed for a criminal charge against the former president.
Dozens of cases were brought before U.S. courts and dismissed. The Trump administration’s own Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency described the election in a statement as “the safest in U.S. history.”
Bill Barr, Trump’s attorney general until December 2020, told the Jan. 6 committee in an affidavit that no fraud was discovered that would change the outcome of the race and that many of the allegations of election fraud came from of Trump and his allies were meaningless.