The Justice Department has presented evidence to a federal grand jury in an effort to obtain an indictment of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson for allegedly lying to Congress, according to a report from Punchbowl News.
Punchbowl News first reported that the department’s Civil Rights Division brought the evidence before the grand jury on Tuesday. Just The News, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that prosecutors are seeking a charge related to false statements in her testimony.
The specific statements presented as untrue have not been disclosed, and the grand jury has not returned an indictment as of this report.
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The inquiry follows a March 2026 criminal referral from U.S. Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), who has led a House review of the January 6 committee, co-signed by House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan. The referral accused Hutchinson of lying when she testified that President Donald Trump knew of the potential for violence ahead of the January 6, 2021 Capitol protests.
In a September 24 court order in an unrelated case, a federal judge noted that Hutchinson had described herself as the subject of a Justice Department criminal investigation and said she would invoke her Fifth Amendment right if compelled to testify.
Hutchinson was a special assistant to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows during President Trump’s first term in office.
She became a central witness for the controversial House select committee that was tasked with investigating the events of the January 6 protests. She gave several transcribed interviews for the panel, and appeared at a televised hearing on June 28, 2022.
In that hearing she said Trump and Meadows were told that some people at the Ellipse rally were armed, and that Trump said he did not care and wanted magnetometers removed so more supporters could enter. She also gave a highly questionable account of the immediate aftermath of the Capitol protests, in which she claimed that President Trump reached over and tried to grab the steering wheel of a Secret Service vehicle in order to return to the Capitol.
Those claims have been disputed in later testimony and reviews. In November 2022 testimony to the January 6 committee, released by House Republicans in 2024, the Secret Service driver said Trump never grabbed the steering wheel and that he did not see the president lunge toward the front seat. Former deputy chief of staff Anthony Ornato also told investigators he did not recall the incident Hutchinson described.
A 2024 House Administration subcommittee report said other White House employees who heard that Trump was angry on the return trip did not corroborate the steering-wheel account. A handwriting analysis released by the same subcommittee in October 2024 concluded that the note was written by Herschmann, not Hutchinson.
In addition, former special counsel Jack Smith later told the House Judiciary Committee that he viewed much of Hutchinson’s evidence as secondhand hearsay and did not rely on it.
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[ H/T Trending Politics ]
