The identity of a witness who is expected to appear for the House Jan. 6 committee’s hastily scheduled public hearing Tuesday has been revealed.
Cassidy Hutchinson, who served as a senior aide to onetime White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, will testify at the public event and is expected to be accompanied by a suite of lawyers and other guests, according to Punchbowl News.
JAN. 6 COMMITTEE TO HOLD UNEXPECTED HEARING TUESDAY AFTER ANNOUNCING TWO-WEEK BREAK
Hutchinson was with Meadows during the events that surrounded the Capitol riot and had been considering publicly testifying before the Jan. 6 committee after replacing her lawyer who had ties to former President Donald Trump, CNN reported. She has already given private testimony to the committee, some footage of which was played during the hearing last Thursday.
As an aide to the White House chief of staff, she was likely in contact with a bevy of top staff in the West Wing and privy to all sorts of behind-the-scenes scheming about how to challenge the 2020 election results.
During the fifth public hearing on Thursday, the committee displayed a clip of Hutchinson’s testimony in which she testified that six members of Congress pursued a pardon from Trump, claims that the named members mostly denied or diminished. Another nugget that she can possibly attest to is Trump’s alleged “approving reaction to the U.S. Capitol riot,” per CNN.
Jan. 6 committee plays testimony revealing that Reps. Brooks (AL), Biggs (AZ), Gaetz (FL), Gohmert (TX), Greene (GA) and Perry (PA) sought pardons.@RepKinzinger (R-IL): “The only reason I know to ask for a pardon is because you think you’ve committed a crime.” pic.twitter.com/yrArap5rTd
— CSPAN (@cspan) June 23, 2022
Last week, the Jan. 6 committee announced it was delaying its previously scheduled hearings in June until July due to a trove of new evidence it had amassed. This included footage from filmmaker Alex Holder, who secured interviews with Trump and other top White House staff as well as footage of the events surrounding the riot, and a flood of tips in response to the public hearings.
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On Monday, the committee announced a last-minute hearing “to present recently obtained evidence and receive witness testimony” but was tight-lipped about specifics, prompting speculation about what evidence or witness could be profound enough to elicit such an abrupt reversal.
“BETTER BE A BIG DEAL: There was only one surprise witness during the Senate Watergate Committee hearings,” John Dean, a star witness against President Richard Nixon in the Watergate hearings, tweeted Monday. “On July 16, 1973 an unannounced witness appeared: Alex Butterfield, who testified to Nixon’s secret taping system — forever changing history!”
