Prosecutors in the Justice Department’s civil rights division are seeking to indict Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Trump White House aide who gave explosive testimony to the committee investigating the U.S. attack on the Capitol, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The potential charges involve lying to Congress, the person said.
Hutchinson, a former top aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, told the panel, among other things, that the deputy chief of staff for operations told him that Trump did not want to return to the White House on Jan. 6 and at one point got behind the wheel of his SUV to try to join his supporters at the Capitol. Republicans have long contested this version.
The Justice Department’s efforts to charge Hutchinson were first reported by Punchbowl News on Thursday.
“The department neither confirms nor denies the existence of investigations, or the lack thereof,” a department spokesperson said in a statement.
In April, The New York Times reported that prosecutors from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which handles investigations of civil rights crimes, had been tapped to investigate Hutchinson. This was considered a very unusual move at the time since the investigation was usually led by the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Hutchinson also said she was under investigation by the Justice Department in an unrelated case.
The case is the latest example of how Trump has used the Justice Department to pursue his enemies. Last year, the Justice Department indicted former FBI Director James Comey for lying to Congress and Letitia James for mortgage fraud. Both indictments were dismissed after a judge ruled that the prosecutor overseeing them was illegally appointed. The department has since filed a new indictment against Comey for posting a photo of seashells arranged in a formation reading “8647.”
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Trump’s Justice Department also filed charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit organization, and journalist Don Lemon.
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