As Trump Witch Hunts Go, the Cassidy Hutchinson One Is the Worst Yet

There’s an unsurpassed ugliness in watching the full might of the federal government bear down on a young woman whose offense was bravely telling the nation the truth about the president. Even by the standards of this administration’s long campaign of reprisal, the pursuit of Cassidy Hutchinson may be its nastiest and most repulsive move yet.In June 2022, some 13 million Americans watched the 25-year-old aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows tell the House January 6 committee what she had seen inside the Trump White House. She had broken with a Trump-connected lawyer who, by her account, steered her toward saying less than she knew. She had every reason to stay quiet: She had a career in Republican politics ahead of her and, by her account, a Trumpworld lawyer dangling jobs in exchange for loyalty. She spoke up anyway, at enormous personal cost. Her testimony was riveting and, to me and I think to the clear majority of the country, completely credible.Now the villains she stood up to have seized power, and the president wants to see her in the dock. The Washington Post reports that prosecutors presented evidence against her to a D.C. grand jury last week. The department is reportedly weighing perjury and obstruction charges, with an indictment request expected after the midterms.The investigation has shown the earmarks of a political hack job from the outset. It will never produce a conviction, as Hutchinson’s tormentors almost surely recognize. And if it ever sees the light of day, it could boomerang, with considerable damage to Trump and his administration.The clearest indication of the political impetus is that the Civil Rights Division is running the case. For this DOJ alum, that detail leaps off the page.Why? Because that division, traditionally one of the crown jewels of the department, is now a hollowed-out hackery run by Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump loyalist through and through. And it has no business near this case: The division oversees, or used to, a discrete set of offenses, and lying to Congress isn’t among them. The assignment smacks of a delivery to a handpicked loyalist who makes up in devotion what she lacks in prudence and experience.A perjury or false-statements case would normally run out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C., headed by Jeanine Pirro. But Pirro has suffered an astonishing run of grand jury defeats, from the “sandwich guy”—a man who threw a Subway sandwich at a Customs and Border Patrol agent and on whom Pirro tried to pin federal felony charges; a grand jury said no—to six Democratic lawmakers whose only offense was reminding troops not to follow illegal orders, to David Hearn, the famous Reflecting Pool non-vandal. So the case went to Dhillon, and it seems likely that the order came from Todd Blanche or someone above him.We know what that someone wants. The Atlantic’s Sarah Fitzpatrick reported last week that Blanche’s and FBI Director Kash Patel’s jobs may ride on delivering indictments of Trump’s enemies, Hutchinson among them. One former official put it plainly: “The president wants indictments. He wants people in handcuffs. He wants the headlines.”But the case is a stone-cold loser, and any experienced prosecutor knows it.The geniuses in MAGA-land have fixed on Hutchinson’s testimony that deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato told her a story—in the presence of Bobby Engel, the head of Trump’s detail—that captured Trump’s crazed determination to join the marauders at the Capitol. According to that account, Trump said “something to the effect of, ‘I’m the f---ing president, take me up to the Capitol now.’” He then reached for the steering wheel and, when Engel stopped him, lunged at Engel.The supposed contradiction is that the Secret Service driver, in an interview months later, said he never saw Trump grab the wheel. That says nothing about whether Ornato told Hutchinson the story—in front of Engel, who said nothing to contradict it. And when the committee later questioned Ornato, he reportedly said not that the conversation never happened but that he didn’t recall it. That’s the well-known dodge of a witness caught between a rock and a hard place.What about building a case on the differences between what Hutchinson told the committee early on, under the guidance of the Trump-supplied lawyer, and her later testimony? It won’t work. Federal law permits that theory—that one of two contradictory sworn statements must be false—for court and grand jury testimony, but not for congressional testimony. The department would have to pick a specific lie and prove it. And for political reasons, the statement it picks has to be her truthful public testimony to the committee, because Blanche obviously wouldn’t prosecute her for shielding Trump as she did in her earlier testimony.The country has already seen what the reprisal squad wants to put before a federal jury: a young woman under enormous pressure, inviting total ostracism in Trumpland, stepping forward to tell the truth. It’s doubtful a single juror, much less all 12, would vote to convict. Given Hutchinson’s evident innocence and D.C. grand juries’ recent record, prosecutors may well fail to secure an indictment.Third, a prosecution would rehearse the most forceful evidence against Trump’s Orwellian project of erasing January 6. A trial would drag that day back into the light, under oath.That begins with Hutchinson’s boss. Meadows was by Trump’s side most of January 6, acting as the switchboard for the panicked calls from the Hill. Nobody knows more about Trump’s conduct that day. Meadows defied the committee’s subpoena, and the Garland Justice Department declined to prosecute him for contempt. The administration has dodged that cannonball ever since. A Hutchinson trial would put Meadows at the center of the courtroom.It would also resurrect the rest of her testimony: Trump hurling his lunch at the wall after Bill Barr told the AP there was no widespread fraud, ketchup dripping down the wallpaper; Trump urging the crowd toward the Capitol knowing many were armed (“They’re not here to hurt me,” Trump said, according to Hutchinson).Hutchinson herself would likely testify, a rarity for federal defendants but a natural move for her. And if the government called Ornato and Engel to contradict her, the cross-examination would not be pretty.Finally, the hounding of Hutchinson has an outsize moral dimension that lays bare the rot at the heart of the administration. Jim Comey, John Brennan, and Letitia James were all formidable figures, seasoned combatants with platforms, résumés, and the means to fight back. Hutchinson was a 25-year-old junior aide who literally spoke truth to power.She is young, brave, and decent; they are old, craven, and corrupt. The moral chasm between the hunters and the hunted is oceanic.They’d have to be blind with bloodlust, or terrified of Trump, to pursue this case. But as we know, that describes them precisely.