Grand Jury Refuses to Indict Cassidy Hutchinson Over Jan. 6 Testimony
Federal prosecutors failed to persuade grand jurors to charge the former White House aide whose 2022 testimony before the House Jan. 6 committee angered President Trump and his allies.
A federal grand jury has declined to indict Cassidy Hutchinson, the former White House aide who testified against President Donald Trump about the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to four sources briefed on the proceedings who spoke to CBS News. The Washington Post first reported the decision. The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.
The outcome surfaced during a hearing on an unrelated matter on Tuesday. Civil Rights Division litigator Neville Hedley told U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui that the grand jury had not agreed to a proposed indictment. Hedley did not name the defendant, but multiple sources confirmed to CBS News that it was Hutchinson. The Civil Rights Division had been handling the investigation, CBS News previously reported.
It is unclear which parts of Hutchinson's testimony prosecutors were examining. According to media reports, House Republicans who are allies of Trump made the referral to the Justice Department. Grand juries rarely decline to indict, because prosecutors control what evidence they see and the standard is only probable cause, which makes a refusal an unusual rebuke.
Hutchinson was a top aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. In 2022 she testified before the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack, and her account angered Trump's allies and parts of his base. She told the committee that Trump and Meadows were warned on January 6 that some of Trump's supporters were carrying weapons to the Capitol, and that Trump responded that he did not care. She also said he tried to order officials to remove the magnetometers, the metal detectors, at the rally where he spoke that morning.
Hutchinson also repeated a story she said she heard from then-White House deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato. In that account, Trump became angry after his lead Secret Service agent refused to drive him to the Capitol following his speech on the Ellipse. At that rally, Trump encouraged supporters to march to the Capitol, where Congress was certifying the 2020 Electoral College results. He told them he would walk with them, saying, "after this, we're going to walk down, and I'll be there with you."
Hutchinson testified that Ornato told her that, in the car, Trump lunged at the steering wheel. Trump's driver later contradicted that account in sworn testimony, saying the president never tried to grab the wheel. The dispute over that secondhand story has been among the most contested parts of her testimony, though it was not the center of her account about weapons and the metal detectors.
The grand jury's decision is the latest setback in a series of January 6-related legal developments. CBS News has also reported on a judge vacating the convictions of four Proud Boys members and a Justice Department motion to dismiss a Jan. 6 class action lawsuit. The Justice Department was reported earlier this month to be seeking an indictment of Hutchinson.
The refusal leaves the department with limited options. Prosecutors could in theory present the case to a different grand jury or revise the charges, but nothing in the reporting indicates that is planned. Hutchinson has not been charged with any crime. Neither she nor her representatives were quoted in the reporting available Wednesday.
