The Committee on House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight released a report finding that there was “no evidence” that President-elect Donald Trump supported rioters on January 6, 2021, who had called for former Vice President Mike Pence to be hung.
In an interim report released on Tuesday, the committee released its “findings on the events surrounding” the January 6, 2021, riot at the United States Capitol Building and the “politicization” of the January 6 Select Committee.
Among the list of findings included in the report were ones that found Trump “did not attack his Secret Service detail” at any point that day, “there was no pre-planned off-the-record move to the Capitol in the days leading up to January 6,” and “there is no evidence” Trump “agreed with rioters” calling for Pence to be hanged.
The report found that the January 6 Select Committee had relied “on nothing other than” testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide for Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff.
“The Select Committee — relying on nothing other than Hutchinson’s testimony — incorrectly asserted in its Report that President Trump agreed with the rioters chanting that Vice President Pence deserved to be hanged,” the report read.
The report added that in previous “interviews with the Select Committee,” Hutchinson had “failed to mention” the allegation that Trump had supported calls that Pence “deserved to be hanged” and brought it up in a May 2022 interview:
Cassidy Hutchinson presented an evolving account of the claim that President Trump supported the idea that Vice President Pence deserved to be hanged. Initially, Hutchinson failed to mention this allegation — or anything at all related to hangings — in either her February 23, 2022, or March 7, 2022, interviews with the Select Committee. It was not until her May 17, 2022, interview that the topic came up at all, and it was at Representative Cheney’s insistence.
The report continues to note that Hutchinson’s “first narrative of the chanting incident lacks internal cohesion.” Initially, Hutchinson reportedly claimed that “she personally saw and heard Meadows” and Trump speaking about “the rioters’ chanting about hanging” Pence, and how they “personally felt about it at the time,” according to the report.
Later on, “in that same interview,” Hutchinson reportedly claimed that “she had no firsthand knowledge” of Trump’s feelings regarding the rioters’ chants, as she had “neither seen nor heard him talk about it with Meadows,” according to the report.
The report adds that “the most specific claim Hutchinson” made during the interview regarding “the alleged conversation” between Trump and Meadows is that it reportedly came “from her thirdhand eavesdropping” of a conversation between Meadows and two attorneys who were serving as “White House Counsel and as senior advisors” to Trump, according to the report:
In fact, the most specific claim Hutchinson makes in that same interview about the alleged conversation between President Trump and Meadows comes from her thirdhand eavesdropping on a conversation between Meadows and two attorneys who worked as White House Counsel and as senior advisors for President Trump, Pasqualie “Pat” Cipollone (“Cipollone”) and Eric Herschmann (“Herschmann”) respectively. Hutchinson attributes her claim that Trump agreed with the rioters’ chant to her recollection of this conversation. In her words, “Mr. Trump had hypothetically potentially said that maybe perhaps the chants were justified.”
The Select Committee took Hutchinson’s three conflicting stories of the same incident at face value for their Final Report. This level of indifference to the veracist of Hutchinson’s claims permeates the Select Committee’s Report and serves to highlight Representative Cheney and the House Democrats’ willingness to stretch an idea of an allegation into a full-blown accusation, or in most cases, a foregone conclusion.
According to the report, almost 18 months “after the events” on January 6, 2021, “and a month after testifying,” Hutchinson reportedly “suddenly recalled specific details of the alleged conversation between Meadows, Cipollone, and Herschmann.”
The report adds that “Loudermilk and the Subcommittee recovered the transcript of the Select Committee interview of a White House employee” who had been “near” Trump “for the majority of January 6, 2021, and who reliably testified to the President’s actions.” The employee’s “eyewitness testimony” reportedly “directly contradicts Hutchinson’s third-hand account.”
“This individual was within earshot of President Trump the entire time the President was in the President’s Dining Room,” the report continued. “Additionally, in its investigation, the Subcommittee spoke with numerous individuals who worked closely with Meadows in the White House, and they confirmed that Meadows would not react pathetically to calls for violence, nor repeat an incident like the one alleged by Hutchinson so carelessly in a public space.”