Jack Smith Undermined Testimony Of J6 Committee's Star Witness
Former special Counsel Jack Smith sat for a closed-door session on December 17 before the House Judiciary Committee and wound up undermining the January 6 Committee’s star witness.
During his eight-hour grilling by House lawmakers on his Trump probes - the 2020 election mess and the classified docs saga - he made a stunning admission about Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony, conceding that it was nothing more than hearsay.
Hutchinson, a former senior aide to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, claimed that President Trump was aware that some of the Jan. 6 attendees were armed, and that Trump dramatically lunged to grab the wheel of the presidential SUV when he was told he couldn't go to the Capitol - which has been utterly dispelled as bullshit by the rest of the passengers.
"If I were a defense attorney and Ms. Hutchinson were a witness, the first thing I would do was seek to preclude some of her testimony because it was hearsay, and I don’t have the full range of her testimony in front of me right now, but I do remember that that was a decent part of it," Smith told the committee.
The transcript, which dropped on New Year's Eve, proves that even Smith saw through the hype of the committee’s star witness.
Smith dissected her big claims head-on. He probed her story about Trump spotting armed rallygoers and shrugging it off. He zeroed in on the wild tale of Trump lunging for the presidential limo steering wheel. Hutchinson testified that after returning to the White House on January 6, 2021, she walked toward the chief of staff’s office and noticed then-Assistant Director of the United States Secret Service Office, Tony Ornato, waiting outside. He waved her into his nearby office, shut the door, and she saw Secret Service agent Bobby Engel sitting inside, looking shaken and confused.
According to Hutchinson's testimony, Ornato asked, “Did you effing hear what happened in The Beast?” Hutchinson said she had just arrived and had no idea. Ornato then described what he claimed occurred inside the presidential vehicle. According to him, President Trump believed he was heading to the Capitol after being told the move was still possible. Engel informed the president that it was not secure and that they were returning to the West Wing.
Hutchinson testified that Ornato said Trump became enraged and yelled, “I’m the effing president. Take me up to the Capitol now.” She said Ornato claimed that Trump reached for the steering wheel, Engel grabbed his arm, and Trump then lunged at Engel, with Ornato gesturing toward Engel’s clavicles as he described it.
Cassidy Hutchinson testifies that she was told that as then-President Donald Trump was being driven back to the White House after the Jan. 6 rally that he demanded to be taken to the Capitol and tried to grab the steering wheel from a Secret Service agent. https://t.co/JefVhEsY0b pic.twitter.com/uUyQcnSlLG
— The Associated Press (@AP) June 28, 2022
Smith's team, however, talked to her sources. They pulled in Secret Service officers from the scene. Hutchinson’s story simply didn’t add up.
"We interviewed, I think, the people she talked to, and we also interviewed, if my recollection is correct, officers who were there, including the officer who was in the car," Smith explained. "And that officer, if my recollection is correct, and I want to make sure I’m right about this, said that President Trump was very angry and wanted to go to the Capitol, but the version of events that he explained was not the same as what Cassidy Hutchinson said she heard from somebody secondhand."
Smith went on to explain that “a number of the things that she gave evidence on were secondhand hearsay, were things that she had heard from other people, and, as a result, that testimony may or may not be admissible, and it certainly wouldn’t be as powerful as firsthand testimony."
And then there’s the fact that Hutchinson didn’t tell her steering wheel yarn during her early committee chats. For that, she blamed her former lawyer, Stefan Passantin. Instead, that fantasy story only surfaced during her public hearing in June 2022. Other witnesses quickly poked holes in it.
This revelation guts the January 6 narrative Democrats have peddled for years. That panel staged television hearings to nail Trump. Hutchinson was the star of their show. Her hearsay fueled the outrage machine. Now the guy who chased Trump admits her testimony was hearsay, contradicted, and wouldn’t have been admissible in a court of law.
Despite this huge revelation, the New York Times, which also reported on Smith’s testimony, did not address Smith’s comments on Hutchinson’s testimony in its own report. “Jack Smith, the former special counsel, defended his decision to twice indict President Trump, accusing him of ‘exploiting’ violence on Jan. 6, 2021, to overthrow the 2020 presidential election, according to a transcribed interview released by House Republicans Wednesday,” the report began.
Hutchinson’s name appears nowhere in the New York Times report, but it includes Smith’s testimony, doubling down on his belief in Trump’s guilt.
“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power,” Smith told lawmakers.