Jack Smith says key Jan 6 witness relied on hearsay, lacked firsthand evidence

Former special counsel Jack Smith undercut claims made by Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide and Jan. 6 Committee witness, as he was testifying in a recent deposition to Congress.

Smith told the House Judiciary Committee this month, according to a transcript published Wednesday, that he evaluated Hutchinson’s explosive claims as part of his investigation and prosecution of President Donald Trump related to the 2020 election. Smith said they had deficiencies because Hutchinson did not offer firsthand information.

Asked during the deposition how he would have approached cross-examining Hutchinson, Smith said he would have moved to prohibit a portion of her testimony from being used.

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“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 said.

Smith was also asked about specific claims Hutchinson had made, including that Trump was aware that some of his supporters would be armed at his rally and that Trump attempted to grab the steering wheel of his driver out of anger.

Hutchinson “was a second or even third-hand witness,” Smith said, adding that other witnesses gave “different perspectives” than her. 

“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 said. “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 noted 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.”

Hutchinson became a key witness in the Democrat-led Jan. 6 Committee’s investigation into the U.S. Capitol attack, testifying privately several times and publicly. Her testimony dominated headlines, but her claims became a point of scrutiny for Republicans, who found the committee’s work lacked credibility because its only Republican members were two vocal anti-Trump lawmakers.

Hutchinson served as a top aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the final months of Trump’s first presidency, giving her an inside look at internal discussions among White House officials in the aftermath of the 2020 election. 

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In a highly publicized hearing in June 2022, Hutchinson testified under oath about what she said were warnings inside the White House about the possibility of violence on Jan. 6 and Trump’s alleged awareness that some supporters attending his rally would be armed.

In another claim that was later disputed by other witnesses, Hutchinson also recalled conversations about how Trump attempted to grab the steering wheel from a U.S. Secret Service agent because he wanted to go to the Capitol and not the West Wing.

Hutchinson testified that she was told that the president “said something to the effect of, ‘I’m the effing president, take me up to the Capitol now,’ to which [the agent] responded, ‘Sir, we have to go back to the West Wing.’ The president reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel.”

Hutchinson had not mentioned that particular story in any of her prior interviews with the committee. She later said she withheld it at the direction of her former lawyer, Stafan Passantino.

Smith was asked about Hutchinson as part of a more than eight-hour closed-door deposition this month that centered on his investigations and prosecutions of Trump related to the 2020 election and Trump’s alleged retention of classified material.

Smith also defended his investigative practices, including subpoenaing Senate and House lawmakers’ phone data. He also defended some of his prosecutorial decisions, including seeking gag orders against Trump and bringing an unusually slimmed-down superseding indictment against Trump after the Supreme Court ruled that Trump had some presidential immunity protections.