No indictment has been returned. Fox News was told the matter is still in the grand jury phase and that no final charging decision has been made, with more evidence possible as soon as next week. A grand jury hearing evidence is not a conviction. It is, however, a long way from the book tour.
At last, a conservative news aggregator that does not bow to the woke right.
RedState noted what anyone who watched that June 28, 2022 hearing already knew. The testimony that made Hutchinson a household name is the testimony now coming back around. She was a special assistant to the president and an aide to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. The January 6 committee needed a young Republican insider who would say the quiet part on camera. She delivered.
The story the people in the car would not back
The centerpiece was the presidential vehicle. Hutchinson did not see it. She told the committee that deputy chief of staff Anthony Ornato had described it to her. In her telling, after agents refused to drive President Trump to the Capitol, he reached for the steering wheel and lunged at the agent in charge of his detail, Bobby Engel.
The president reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel. Mr. Engel grabbed his arm, said, “Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel. We’re going back to the West Wing, we’re not going to the Capitol.” Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engel.
She also recalled Trump saying something to the effect of “I’m the f—ing president, take me up to the Capitol now.” Cable news ran it on a loop. The people who were actually in the vehicle did not.
As The Daily Caller reported, Secret Service personnel interviewed by the Department of Homeland Security inspector general said the president did not grab the wheel and did not lunge at his detail. The driver remembered an irritated president. He did not remember a physical fight. RedState has carried that denial for years. Ornato, the man Hutchinson named as her source, denied ever telling her the tale. Engel did not back it either.
A secondhand story, contradicted by the men in the SUV, became the emotional peak of a nationally televised hearing. That is not a small discrepancy. That is the clip.
Loudermilk already wrote the referral
This did not start on Tuesday. Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, who chairs the House Administration oversight subcommittee, released a 2024 report finding that several of Hutchinson’s most sensational claims were contradicted by other evidence. The Gateway Pundit noted that unreleased testimony from employees present for the Ellipse speech cut against her account, and that Loudermilk’s subcommittee later accused former Rep. Liz Cheney of secretly communicating with Hutchinson outside the presence of Hutchinson’s lawyer.
In January 2024 Loudermilk also demanded her records and asked why the steering-wheel story never came up in three earlier interviews, only on television.
The Daily Wire reported that Loudermilk and Rep. Jim Jordan referred Hutchinson to the Justice Department earlier this year. Republicans have also challenged her claim that Trump knew supporters at the Ellipse were armed and wanted the magnetometers pulled so the crowd could move on the Capitol.
The precise statements prosecutors are treating as false have not been made public. She has maintained that her testimony was truthful. Neither she nor her lawyers had answered requests for comment by Thursday afternoon. The department, as usual, does not confirm or deny investigations.
Scripture does not treat a public lie as a style choice. “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” That is Exodus chapter 20, verse 16. A congressional hearing is not a neighborhood fence, but the command does not shrink because the cameras are on.
Civil Rights Division, of all places
The assignment is strange on its face. False statements to Congress are ordinarily a matter for the U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia. This one is being run out of the Civil Rights Division under Harmeet Dhillon. Reporters flagged that as unusual back in April, when the same division was first tied to the Hutchinson inquiry. A September court filing in a fight over a BBC subpoena had already identified her as the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation. Tuesday’s grand jury session is the escalation.
The January 6 committee named Hutchinson dozens of times, waved off the agents and officials who would not corroborate her, and built a primetime narrative on hearsay. The country was told the president tried to commandeer the Beast. The driver said it did not happen. Four years later a grand jury is being asked to decide whether the star witness lied under oath.
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She is presumed innocent until a jury says otherwise. The story she told the country does not get the same courtesy. It was checked against the people in the vehicle, and it failed.
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