Jan. 6 panel releases Cassidy Hutchinson transcripts: Here are the key takeaways
Ryan King
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Cassidy Hutchinson revealed that former President Donald Trump privately acknowledged his 2020 election loss and recounted how Trump allies took advantage of her financial status to sway her testimony to Jan. 6 committee, according to a fresh batch of transcripts from the panel.
The Jan. 6 committee panel dropped two transcripts Thursday from closed-door September interviews done with Hutchinson, a former White House aide, in the wake of her appearance at a public hearing over the summer. Much of the transcripts rehashed her public testimony and explained the final straw in her decision to go before the panel publicly.
JAN. 6 COMMITTEE RELEASES TRANSCRIPTS OF CASSIDY HUTCHINSON’S TESTIMONY
Here are some of the top takeaways from the transcript dump.
Trump acknowledged his loss
During the last ninth public hearing in October, the panel revealed that Hutchinson and Alyssa Farah, a former White House aide, testified that former President Donald Trump privately acknowledged his 2020 election loss. Hutchinson specifically recalled Trump telling her former boss, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, “I don’t want people to know we lost, Mark. This is embarrassing. Figure it out.”
But Meadows wasn’t the only one to hear that sentiment from Trump. In the September testimony, she recalled former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe recounting Trump privately conceding his election loss.
“Ratcliffe has a way of diplomatically approaching things,” she recalled. “He’s like, ‘I’ve had a few conversations with the President where he acknowledged he’s lost — he hasn’t acknowledged that he wants to concede, but he acknowledges that he lost the election — but then he’ll immediately backpedal.'”
“Less you remember, the better”
Prior to appearing before the Jan. 6 committee in February for a private deposition, Hutchinson reportedly lamented to her mother that, “I’m f***ed” and tapped Trump-aligned lawyer Stefan Passantino out of concern she couldn’t afford alternative lawyers. Passantino previously served as a White House ethics lawyer in the Trump administration.
Hutchinson had reached out to Trump world for help and was ultimately referred to Passantino. Passantino declined to disclose where the funding for his pro bono work originated. He appeared to have deep ties to the Trump world and even offered to help her find a job.
“They know you’re loyal. They want to take care of you… they have good opportunities for you,” she recalled Passantino saying in March. “We want you to stay in Trumpworld with jobs. We’re gonna find something really good for you.”
Soon it became clear that Passantino had a key strategy for dealing with the Jan. 6 committee — stonewalling. At one point, following the late 2021 committee subpoena against her, Hutchinson recalled asking to print out a calendar so she could ensure she had the proper dates to give the committee.
“No, no, no,” she recalled Passantino saying. “Look, we want to get you in, get you out. We’re going to downplay your role. You were a secretary. You had an administrative role. Everyone’s on the same page about this. It’s extremely unfair…that the committee is putting you in this position in the first place. You really have nothing to do with any of this…the less you remember, the better.”
Hutchinson was uneasy with Passantino during much of their interactions, but her “breaking point” came when he recommended she stop speaking with the panel, claiming that “contempt is a small risk, but running to the right is better for you,” per CNN. She underscored that Passantino never explicitly told her to lie.
After consulting friends, she switched lawyers, feeling that with Passantino, it was as if she had “Trump looking over my shoulder.” She ultimately switched to Jody Hunt, the ex-chief of staff to former Attorney General Jeff Sessions around June.
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Republican member of Congress steered her to committee
Key to Hutchinson’s decision to become more forthcoming with the panel was an unidentified Republican member of Congress who was not on the Jan. 6 Committee. She claimed to have been friendly with the Republican member for years. Initially, the Republican prodded her against seeking Trump world help for dealing with the committee.
“When I spoke with this Member back in January when I reached out to them about potentially getting money from Trump world to pay for my legal bills, like if that was a bad or a good idea, this Member had told me that, ‘If you do that, just know that you’re kind of making your bed and you’re getting back in Trump world, Cassidy. That lawyer isn’t just going to be working for you,'” Hutchinson recalled.
Hutchinson later returned to the member for advice before adjusting her approach to the panel.
“Yeah, Cassidy, you need to — you’re the one that has to live with the mirror test for the rest of your life I know that you feel like that you didn’t handle things right. I know that you’re stressed about this. Are you going to be able to live with yourself if you just move on and kind of forget about this, or do you want to try to do something about it,” the member told her.
Conflict and guilt
Hutchinson suffered from an internal conflict over being in the crosshairs between the Trump world and the panel. She recalled reading up on the Watergate scandal, and focused on the role of Alex Butterfield, whom she noted had a similar role in the Nixon administration.
“After I read all of this, where he had talked about like how he fought the moral struggle, where he felt like he still had to be loyal to the Nixon White House, but he talked about a lot of the same things that I felt like I was experiencing. And, you know, it wasn’t an identical situation, but it’s – it’s the – the emphasis he placed on the moral questions that he was asking himself resonated with me,” she explained.
Trip to the National Archives
At one point after the 2020 election, Hutchinson traveled to the National Archives and Records Administration with Meadows to “discuss records retention.” Notably, her testimony featured in the two transcripts came after the bombshell Aug. 8 raid on Mar-a-Lago for classified documents. Meadows confided in her at the time that he had not apprised Trump of the trip and that the then-president would likely not be happy with him for the visit.
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“He had said, ‘No, he doesn’t. I’ll probably tell him later this afternoon. The President probably will not be that happy with me about meeting with him, though. He doesn’t want us to keep working on a post-election period yet,'” Hutchinson recalled Meadows telling her.
The release of Hutchinson’s transcripts follows a dump of 34 transcripts late Wednesday, the day the committee was initially expected to release its final report, but subsequently delayed. The committee is scrambling behind the scenes to wrap up its work as the Republican takeover of the lower chamber looms.