Ex-Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson confirms she is under DOJ investigation
WASHINGTON, DC: Cassidy Hutchinson, the former White House aide who drew national attention with her testimony to the January 6 committee, now faces a new layer of legal scrutiny.
She recently revealed she’s under investigation by the Department of Justice, a detail that emerged through a federal court filing in an unrelated defamation lawsuit President Trump filed against the BBC. This development pushes Hutchinson back into the headlines and complicates her already high-profile public presence.
What does the court filing reveal?
The revelation came in a September 24 court order that detailed Hutchinson's opposition to a subpoena from the BBC, which sought to question her under oath as part of President Donald Trump's defamation lawsuit against the broadcaster.
The order noted that Hutchinson said that the DOJ is investigating her and that she will invoke her Fifth Amendment right if she is compelled to testify in this case.
The filing doesn’t reveal what exactly the DOJ is investigating.
Back in April, The New York Times reported that the department began looking into Cassidy Hutchinson after a Trump ally in Congress accused her of lying under oath.
Hutchinson, who worked for Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, gave thorough testimony to the House January 6 committee. She said Trump didn’t care that some of his supporters near the Capitol were armed; she recalled him saying, "They were not here to hurt me."
She also described a moment when Trump, angry, supposedly tried to grab the steering wheel of his limousine because the Secret Service refused to drive him to the Capitol, though his driver later disputed that story.
Judge blocks BBC's subpoena, citing the investigation
US District Judge Jeffrey Kuntz quashed the BBC's subpoena seeking Hutchinson's deposition in the September 24 order, referring to her as "presently the subject of a criminal investigation" by the DOJ.
The judge cited the DOJ investigation as one of Hutchinson's "reasons to avoid the deposition," in addition to the fact that she had already given more than 30 hours of sworn testimony to Congress.
Her attorneys had also opposed the subpoena on the basis that the broadcaster was attempting to go beyond the narrow issues at the heart of Trump's defamation lawsuit, an argument previously made by Trump's attorneys in the case.
Kuntz agreed, saying that the BBC should not "turn the discovery in this lawsuit into a fishing expedition."
He said Hutchinson's existing testimony was available and "seems largely irrelevant to the narrow issue in this lawsuit," which concerns the BBC documentary's editing of two statements Trump made more than 55 minutes apart.
The investigation into Hutchinson comes as the DOJ focuses on several people viewed as Trump adversaries. Former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James have both found themselves under federal investigation by the current administration.
