I believe her. Mostly.

I don’t believe Cassidy Hutchinson intentionally lied on the stand, at all. I believe she testified honestly to what she knows first-hand and to what she heard second-hand.

Why would a 26-year-old just beginning her professional life swear an oath to tell the truth, with millions of eyes and ears watching and listening, live, and then lie about the most mob-bossy president we’ve ever known?

Why would she lie when she risked any political capital she may have had? Why would she lie in the face of what I'm sure were – and are – death threats aimed at her?

Why would she lie even heading to other careers where future bosses might hesitate because she lied about a former president?

Answer: are you kidding me? Of course, she wouldn’t lie.

Some of her testimony needs corroboration. The attack by the former president on a Secret Service agent needs corroboration. Already there are reports the agents involved are willing to testify that the former president did not go for the steering wheel or his lead agent’s throat. That’s information she got in a conversation with a deputy chief of staff (who was an agent himself) and with the lead agent who was in the room. Why she’d make that up, I don’t know.

Because that was but a pebble in her earthquake testimony.

She dropped boulders, like Trump knowing “his people” were carrying weapons on Jan. 6. But they weren’t there to “hurt” him so it was okay.

He knew who they might hurt though.

Another boulder was former New York City hero Rudy Giuliani who is ending his career as nothing but a lackey for a narcissistic president. Giuliani didn’t even have enough sense to keep his mouth shut when talking to Hutchinson who was walking him to his car (not sure why he needed escorting). And if she was so low-level, why would Giuliani raise the coming insurrection with her?

Donald Trump’s feeble attempts to say he hardly knew her, she has horrible handwriting, and she wanted to go to Mar-a-Lago with his team don’t cut it. We’ve heard them all before. He’s lied every time about friends or acquaintances who were loyal to him, until they weren’t.

Even his former chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, says he believes her.

Fact is, for most of us Trump has no credibility whatsoever. If he told the truth, we’d think he’s lying.

Plus, efforts to make her sound like an unimportant go-fer staff member are weak. Anyone who has been in the West Wing knows that the space, especially on the floor with the Oval Office, is very small. Many offices are small to fit more in. It is highly sought-after real estate and sends a message to others that you are, literally, steps from the Oval Office.

Unimportant people aren’t put steps from the Oval.

She was not unimportant, especially to former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows who trusted her with attending very high-level meetings with him. Again, not a job lightly assigned, especially at the level Meadows was operating. Especially with top-secret matters on the agenda.

Jan. 6 Committee hearings - Day 6. | PBS News

The fact that this young woman – she just turned 26 years old – sat in that hearing room and answered questions without her hands or voice shaking, answers she knew would upset further an already upset former president to whom loyalty is everything, was not lying.

Trump may think that’s an easy thing to pull off since he pulls it off all the time.

Most people don’t raise their hand and take an oath to tell the truth and then lie. Not with the consequences at stake.

To prove that you just had to see that video of former Trump National Security Advisor Micheal Flynn, with his attorney at his elbow, taking the Fifth even to the question of whether he thinks the violence on Jan. 6 was justified. The Fifth! If that showed anything, it showed that, at least, Flynn swearing to tell the truth was rife with consequences for him if he lied. So he avoided lying.

And as Trump said in 2015, if you take the Fifth, you’re guilty.

Which explains why he’s not testifying to straighten out the record that he claims needs straightening. But it doesn’t need straightening out.

Just ask someone you can trust.

Like Cassidy Hutchinson.

GOING FURTHER:

• Did Trump Say ‘If You’re Innocent, Why Are You Taking the 5th Amendment?’ | Snopes
• January 6 Committee hearings – Day 6 | PBS NewsHour

— AUTHOR —

▫ B. Jay Cooper, Former deputy White House press secretary to Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Also headed communications offices at the RNC, U.S. Department of Commerce, and Yale University.

Sources

• Text: This piece was originally published in The Screaming Moderate and re-published in PMP Magazine on 3 July 2022, with the author’s consent. | The author writes in a personal capacity.
• Cover: PBS Screenshot. (Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.)