Jan. 6 committee releases report from Capitol riot investigation

Trump was ‘excited’ the night before Jan. 6 rally, former aide testified

Sarah Matthews, the former deputy White House press secretary who resigned because of Trump’s “indefensible” actions on Jan. 6, testified the-then president was “so excited” the night before the rally.

“He was in a very good mood, and I say that because he had not been in a good mood for weeks leading up to that,” Matthews told the House Jan. 6 committee in a transcript of testimony released Thursday. She said she and other staffers had been called to meet him in the Oval Office, where he had the door open listening to the noise coming from the crowd that was gathering in the Ellipse.

“He was so excited,” she said. “He was talking about the crowd that was assembled and how, you know, excited he was for the following day” before he asked the staffers “for ideas for how, if I recall, he said that we could make the RINOs do the right thing, is the way he phrased it.”

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RINO is an acronym for “Republicans in name only.”

“No one spoke up initially about because I think everyone was trying to process what he meant by that,” Matthews said. Finally one of the staffers told Trump they thought he should focus on his speech.

Matthews also testified that White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany — who she said had tried to avoid Trump after the election — told her the president initially pushed back against his daughter Ivanka’s idea to add a call for protesters to “stay peaceful” in a tweet after the violence started on the 6th before he relented. “He was initially resistant to mentioning peace of any sort,” Matthews said.

‘What are you doing? Like, this is indefensible.’

Former White House press official Sarah Matthews recalled having a crisis of conscience on Jan. 6, when she found herself — in an off-the-record discussion with a journalist — trying to defend Trump’s declaration that the Jan. 6 rioters were “very special.”

Trump told Jan. 6 demonstrators at the Capitol in a Twitter video that he loved them but that they should go home.

“I can recall texting some reporters back, especially after the video,” she said in a transcript of her testimony. “And I remember a specific reporter asking me about that line and trying to defend it off the record. And I was just — I remember thinking to myself: ‘What are you doing? Like, this is indefensible.'”

Matthews decided to resign shortly thereafter and called the video a final straw.

“I think when that video was tweeted out, that was kind of the breaking point for me, because it felt, in my role as a spokesperson, indefensible,” she said.

Cassidy Hutchinson knew she was going to be ‘nuked’ for turning on Trump. She did it anyway.

Cassidy Hutchinson sped out of Washington in the wee hours of the morning while Googling “Watergate” on her phone, frantically looking for some kind of guidance about how to be a whistleblower.

Until that moment, Cassidy, the former Donald Trump White House aide who would go on to be the star witness before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, had remained “loyal” and “in the family,” as Trumpworld insiders kept reminding her, according to transcripts of her testimony released Thursday.

She didn’t even know who was paying her own lawyer, but he made it clear that her job was to “protect the president.” And he kept dangling job opportunities and promising she would be “taken care of” if she did her part, she ultimately told the committee.

But the night before she fled for her parents’ house in New Jersey, Hutchinson said, she “had a mental breakdown” as the moral crisis she had been grappling with came to a head, pushing her to make a decision that would change the course of the investigation into the 2021 attack on the Capitol. Never-before-seen transcripts of her interviews with investigators released Thursday offer a fresh portrait of a young, desperate woman torn between her conscience and some of the most powerful men in America.

Read the full story here.

Hutchinson’s former lawyer pushes back against her allegations

Former deputy White House counsel Stefan Passantino defended himself against allegations by Cassidy Hutchinson in testimony released Thursday by the House Jan. 6 committee.

In a statement, Passantino insisted he had been ethical in his former representation of Hutchinson, who drew national attention when she delivered bombshell testimony at a public hearing for the Jan. 6 panel in June.

“As with all my clients during my 30 years of practice, I represented Ms. Hutchinson honorably, ethically, and fully consistent with her sole interests as she communicated them to me,” Passantino said. “I believed Ms. Hutchinson was being truthful and cooperative with the committee throughout the several interview sessions in which I represented her. It is not uncommon for clients to change lawyers because their interests or strategies change. It is also not uncommon for a third-party, including a political committee, to cover a client’s fees at the client’s request. External communications made on Ms. Hutchinson’s behalf while I was her counsel were made with her express authorization. ”

Hutchinson said Passantino instructed her to limit the information she shared with the Jan. 6 committee after she recounted the story to him about an incident in Trump’s vehicle during the riot that reflected unfavorably on the former president. She also said Passantino dangled job prospects to keep her “in the family.” 

In his statement, Passantino said that the panel failed to reach out to him to “get the facts” and that he would take a leave of absence from the law firm Michael Best & Friedrich LLP while he continues as a partner at the political law firm Elections LLC, which, according to his LinkedIn page, he founded in 2019.

Panel releases 5 more transcripts of witness testimony

The House Jan. 6 committee released five more transcripts of its closed-door interviews with witnesses.

They include interviews with Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; former Trump supporter and Jan. 6 defendant Stephen Ayres (in two parts); former Defense Secretary Mark Esper; former Justice Department official Ken Klukowski; and former Trump White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews.

The committee, which had vowed to make transcripts of material gathered throughout its investigation publicly available, on Wednesday evening released 34 transcripts of witness testimony, which can now be found on its website.

The most recent transcript release comes after the committee earlier in the day made records from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s bombshell testimony public.

Trump’s tax returns also likely to be released this week

The House Ways and Means Committee voted Tuesday to make six years of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns public — potentially ending years of speculation about what they might reveal about his business dealings and personal wealth.

The panel voted along party lines to make the returns available. The information was expected to be available as soon as Thursday — the day the House Jan. 6 committee is set to issue its final report on the riot. But committee chair Richard Neal, D-Mass., said late Thursday that staffers were still redacting sensitive personal information from the returns and that they most likely wouldn’t be ready for the “next couple of days.”

Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., said Tuesday the redactions would take some time.

“The actual returns themselves will also be transmitted to the full House and become public, but I was told it will take a few days to a week in order to redact some info that needs to be redacted,” Boyle said.

Read the full story here.

Senate passes $1.7 trillion government funding bill that would overhaul U.S. election law

The Senate voted Thursday to pass a $1.7 trillion government funding bill, sending it to the House to avoid a holiday shutdown.

The vote was 68-29 on sweeping legislation that would keep the government funded through next fall and overhaul election laws to prevent another Jan. 6.

The legislation includes a rewrite of an 1887 federal election law to close loopholes that then-President Donald Trump and his team sought to exploit on Jan. 6, 2021, to make it harder for presidential candidates to steal elections. It would also grant extra funds to the Justice Department for Jan. 6 prosecutions.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the election measures in the bill would “preserve our democracy for generations to come.”

Read the full story here.

Summary highlights: Trump was ‘central cause’ of Jan. 6, committee says

The House Jan. 6 select committee released an executive summary of its full report Monday, focused mainly on former President Donald Trump.

The reams of evidence the committee gathered and presented over months of investigation “has led to an overriding and straight-forward conclusion: the central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed.”

“None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.”

But the summary also highlighted the committee’s belief that numerous figures close to Trump were being less than candid in their testimony, through either evasions or claims that they couldn’t remember the answers to questions. In some cases, the committee said, the purported memory lapses were not credible and appeared to be attempts to conceal information.

Read the full story here.

Hutchinson, Cheney discuss whether story about Trump in SUV constituted ‘water cooler chatter’

In an exchange with Cheney during her testimony, Hutchinson said that she’d been reluctant to describe a notorious incident of Trump’s behavior in an SUV on Jan. 6 as “water cooler chatter” because there were, in fact, no water coolers in the West Wing — and that if she’d described it as such, critics might allege she was being untruthful.

“I feel like if I say ‘water cooler chatter,’ there’s going to be somebody that will come out and criticize me and say that there was, there were no water coolers in the West Wing, so I don’t know what I’m talking about,” Hutchinson said.

“But, generally speaking, yes, that is what I would categorize it,” Hutchinson said.

Hutchinson had testified about the incident over the summer, when she described having heard that Trump had tried to grab the steering wheel of his presidential vehicle and lunged toward his security detail when he was informed he would not be taken to the Capitol after his Jan. 6 rally.

‘It could be worse … the president could have tried to strangle you on Jan. 6,’ ex-Trump deputy chief of staff said, according to Hutchinson

Hutchinson said she recalled Tony Ornato, former deputy White House chief of staff under Trump, making “sarcastic offhand remarks” during a call in which they discussed whether they could have done more to stop the events of Jan. 6.

Right before he hung up, Ornato said “something to the effect of well, ‘All right, well, chin up, kid. Let’s talk soon. It could be worse, the president could have tried to kill’ — he didn’t say kill — ‘the president could have tried to strangle you on Jan. 6,’” Hutchinson said.

Hutchinson said she laughed in response: “That’s true. At least he didn’t try and do that.”

Hutchinson previously testified during a public hearing that Ornato told her Trump became angry when his Secret Service detail refused to take him to the Capitol as his supporters descended on the building.

Hutchinson recalled Meadows acknowledging that Biden would be sworn in as president

Hutchinson, in her testimony, recalled how Meadows had made it clear to Secret Service agents at a White House holiday reception that there was going to be a transition of power and that he had wished them well in the Biden administration.

“I’ve really enjoyed working with you all, and I’m sure that you’re going to do great in the incoming Biden administration,” Hutchinson recalled Meadows, who’d played a central role in advancing Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election, telling the agents.

“In my mind that was an indication that Mr. Meadows knew that he was not going to be — that Mr. Trump was not going to be the president after January 20th,” she continued.

Hutchinson on parting ways with Trump-tied lawyer: ‘I was not going to let this moment completely destroy my reputation’

Hutchinson described her thought process when she decided to let go of Stefan Passantino as her legal counsel.

She acknowledged that she took the former Trump White House lawyer’s “bad legal advice” before coming to the realization that “my character and my integrity mean more to me than anything.”

Hutchinson said she felt Passantino had steered her in “the wrong direction” and she needed to “course correct” herself.

“Because my lawyer, I knew wasn’t going to help me — it was clear for a long time that he was not representing my interests in how he knew I wanted to facilitate my relationship with the committee,” she said. “But I was not going to let this moment completely destroy my reputation, my character, and my integrity for a cause that I was starkly opposed to.”

Hutchinson recalls being inspired to testify by Nixon aide Butterfield, who revealed secret White House tapes

At another point in her testimony, Hutchinson recalled how she was moved by the experience of Alex Butterfield — an assistant to Nixon who revealed the White House’s internal taping system in 1973 during the Watergate investigation but was not otherwise involved in the misconduct — to eventually come forward with what she knew of Trump.

Hutchinson recalled how during a drive to New Jersey she began wondering whether any aide in the Richard Nixon administration had held a position similar to her own during the Watergate scandal. She explained how, during an internet deep dive, she came across Butterfield’s name and ordered two copies of a book the former aide had written with journalist Bob Woodward.

“It was after I read all of this, where he had talked about, like, how he fought the moral struggle, where he felt like he still had to be loyal to the Nixon White House, but he talked about a lot of the same things that I felt like I was experiencing,” she testified. “It wasn’t an identical situation, but it’s — it’s the emphasis he placed on the moral questions that he was asking himself resonated with me.”

“He ended up testifying to the Watergate committee,” she continued. “He was somebody that I found and that I was looking at as somebody who did know things and who was loyal and who had a position that required an incredible amount of trust and confidence, but he ended up doing the right thing.”

Pelosi thanks Jan. 6 committee in final press conference as speaker

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., gave her last press conference as the House Democratic leader on Thursday. In remarks, she thanked the Jan. 6 Committee for its work ahead of the final report’s release.

“The 117th Congress began with a violent assault on our democracy, and now we hear its conclusions,” she said. “We have a vital roadmap ensuring justice will be done and keep, and that this won’t happen again.”

Hutchinson detailed difficulties with paying for attorney not funded by Trump allies

Hutchinson described obstacles she faced in trying to find the funding needed to secure new legal counsel that was not funded by allies of Trump.

She recalled speaking with her aunt and uncle, whom she “had not spoken with in years because they are QAnon fans,” about the matter. They looked to refinance their house “to free up money so I could not have to go back to Trump world,” she said.

Hutchinson said that she also turned to her biological father, whom she doesn’t have a relationship with. She said she drove to his house in New Jersey one night to beg him, which ultimately became “probably one thing I regret in all of this” after he refused.

“I remember saying to him, ‘You have no idea what they’re going to do to me if I have to get an attorney with Trump world,’ because he’s a very big Trump supporter, as is his own right, and I don’t — it’s not me being critical. It’s just a fact,” Hutchinson said.

“And he just didn’t get it. And I didn’t expect him to. But I just left there feeling defeated,” she continued.

‘The less you remember the better’: Hutchinson says lawyers urged her not to share key details with committee

Former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the Jan. 6 committee in a September interview that her former lawyer urged her not to share key details about Jan. 6th with the committee.

Hutchinson, who delivered bombshell testimony to the Jan. 6 committee this summer, had previously been represented by Stefan Passantino, who had also worked as a lawyer in the Trump White House. In her June testimony, Hutchinson said she was told by another former Trump aide that the then-president tried to grab the steering wheel of his presidential vehicle after he was told he couldn’t join supporters at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

She said that when she recounted the story to Passantino, he told her, “No, no, no, no, no. We don’t want to go there. We don’t want to talk about that.” She asked what she could share, and he advised, “Keep your answers short, sweet, and simple, seven words or less. The less the committee thinks you know, the better, the quicker it’s going to go. It’s going to be painless, and then you’re going to be taken care of.”

She also recalled discussing with Passantino plans to have Trump join the march to the Capitol. She said told her, “The less you remember the better.”

Hutchinson also told the committee she felt pressured by other various Trump allies about her testimony.

‘They will ruin my life, mom’: Cassidy Hutchinson expressed concerns when Trump allies got involved in her legal defense

In her deposition, Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, recalled telling her mother that she was becoming increasingly concerned after Stefan Passantino, who has strong ties to the former president, began serving as her legal counsel.

“She knew I was looking for attorneys, and she asked me, like, ‘Aren’t you really happy? Like, this is great. I’m so happy that, like, they connected you with someone,'” Hutchinson said.

Hutchinson said she remembers responding with “snarly laughing” that she actually thought that was a negative for her.

Hutchinson said she explained that she was “completely indebted to these people” and that “they will ruin my life, Mom, if I do anything that they don’t want me to do.”

Hutchinson ultimately parted ways with Passantino, and appointed Jody Hunt as her new lawyer. Hunt is a longtime ally of Jeff Sessions, who was Trump’s first attorney general and drew his ire when he recused himself from the Russia probe.

Committee releases Cassidy Hutchinson transcripts

The committee released more transcripts on Thursday, making public the closed-door interviews with White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.

Committee releases transcripts of testimony from witnesses who largely plead the 5th

The House Jan. 6 Committee released 34 transcripts of witness testimony Wednesday evening, most of whom invoked their Fifth Amendment rights to avoid answering questions throughout their testimony.

Some highlights of key witness transcripts:

• Roger Stone, former Trump campaign aide: Stone pleaded the Fifth throughout his deposition, including questions about his age, place of residence and if he had a role in planning the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
• Charlie Kirk, far-right media figure who founded the pro-Trump Turning Point USA: Kirk pleaded the Fifth to every question (including his age) other than what state he lives in (Arizona.)
• Nick Fuentes, white nationalist political commentator: Fuentes answered several biographical questions such as his place of residence and whether he worked for the government, but was advised by his lawyer to start pleading the Fifth when asked if he was currently employed.
• Alex Jones, InfoWars host: Jones’ testimony began with him saying that he’s so stressed out that he can’t spell his middle name. He pleaded the Fifth to nearly every question. He also briefly accused Jan. 6 committee member Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., of forging documents, saying he wants to “tell you guys everything, but I don’t trust Congressman Schiff.”
• Michael Flynn, former Trump national security adviser: Flynn answered some biographical questions before pleading the Fifth throughout his testimony. He declined to say whether he had a role in Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results. 

Read the full text of the Jan. 6 committee’s report summary

The Jan. 6 committee on Monday released a 154-page summary of its findings, the culmination of nearly 18 months of work.

Read the summary here.