Grand jury rejects Justice Department request to indict Cassidy Hutchinson

Details of prosecutors’ allegations against Hutchinson were not immediately clear

The justice department failed on Tuesday to secure a grand jury indictment against Cassidy Hutchinson, the former White House staffer whose testimony before a House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol implicated Donald Trump. The Guardian, citing two people familiar with the matter, reported that a grand jury in Washington rejected prosecutors’ request to return an indictment charging Hutchinson.

The two people spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the case. The Associated Press described the outcome as the latest setback in the justice department’s efforts to charge perceived adversaries of the Republican president. Details of prosecutors’ allegations against Hutchinson were not immediately clear, according to the report.

Hutchinson’s account came at a surprise hearing announced just 24 hours earlier in 2022, before the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack. The Guardian’s report described the account as particularly powerful given Hutchinson’s proximity to power as special assistant to Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff. A photograph by Jacquelyn Martin for the Associated Press shows Hutchinson being sworn in before that committee in Washington, D.C., on June 8, 2022.

She described Trump as an angry, defiant president who was trying to let armed protesters avoid security screenings at a rally that morning to protest his 2020 election defeat. She testified that Trump later grabbed at the steering wheel of the presidential SUV when the Secret Service refused to let him go to the Capitol, and that when the events at the Capitol spiraled toward violence, with the crowd chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” Trump declined to intervene.

Republican lawmakers had accused Hutchinson of lying under oath about Trump’s behavior on January 6, when a mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol to halt the congressional certification of his election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump at the time denied much of what Hutchinson said on his social media platform, Truth Social, calling her a “total phony” and “bad news.” The Guardian characterized Hutchinson’s testimony as dramatic but disputed.

Hutchinson has alleged that members of Trump’s inner circle dangled job opportunities and financial assistance while she was cooperating with the committee. She also testified that her own lawyer — a former ethics counsel in the Trump White House — told her: “The less you remember, the better.”

Hutchinson’s case also sits against a longer legal record involving Trump. The US House of Representatives impeached Trump in 2021 on allegations that he incited the mob that attacked the Capitol, but the Senate later acquitted him. Under Biden, the justice department charged Trump with felony offenses, accusing him of illegally working to overturn his 2020 election loss in the run-up to the Capitol attack; special counsel Jack Smith abandoned the case after Trump’s 2024 presidential victory. Longstanding justice department policy says sitting presidents cannot face criminal prosecution.

Hutchinson, a native of Pennington, New Jersey, previously worked in the White House office of legislative affairs and interned for Republicans, including the representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana and the senator Ted Cruz of Texas.