Private chats show Cassidy Hutchinson’s flip-flop
Nearly 18 months of private chats between friends from the Trump White House show that Jan. 6 Committee star witness Cassidy Hutchinson dramatically changed her story about what she knew and how she felt about what she witnessed as a White House staffer.
When Hutchinson testified in Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s Soviet-style show trial last month, the former White House aide to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said she “still struggle[s] to work through the emotions” of Jan. 6.
“As an American, I was disgusted. It was unpatriotic,” Hutchinson said. “We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie, and it was something that was really hard in that moment to digest.” …
Yet in a series of private communications from December 2020 through May 2021, shared exclusively with The Federalist, Hutchinson commiserated with other targets of the probe about how little information she had about any wrongdoing that day, and lamented how corrupt the politicized committee was. Far from being upset with Trump, Hutchinson repeatedly spoke in favor of him and his presidency.
“I would rather shoot myself dead into the Potomac than see marine one flying around this city without 45 again,” Hutchinson wrote in one message nearly three months after the Capitol riot.
In November 2021, Hutchinson was among the first former White House staffers to be subpoenaed by the Select Committee. In the weeks and months following, Hutchinson continued to disparage the politicized committee in private, and repeatedly joked about the same riot she now says leaves her with emotional scars today. Six days after she was issued a subpoena, Hutchinson called the Jan. 6 panel a “phony committee.” Around the same time, she told a former colleague her testimony would have nothing to offer.
“Other than a handful of irrelevant texts, I have literally no documents or anything they’re asking about,” one ex-White House staffer texted her.
“Same,” she wrote back.