Hutchinson Tells Jan. 6 Panel of Pressure From Trump Allies and Lawyer's Advice to Remember Less

Newly released transcripts show that former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot about a broad effort by allies of Donald Trump to shape her cooperation and discourage testimony that could hurt the former president.

The closed-door interviews were made public Thursday. They include accounts of job prospects and financial help offered by people in Trump's orbit while she was working with investigators. She also said her own attorney, a former ethics counsel in the Trump White House, urged her not to be fully open with lawmakers, telling her "the less you remember, the better."

The nine-member committee released the two previously unseen transcripts as it moves to finish its inquiry and put its work before the public. The panel will dissolve when Republicans take control of the House on Jan. 3, and it was also expected to release its final report Thursday.

The documents shed light on what Hutchinson called a "moral struggle" between telling the truth and staying loyal to Trump. In a televised hearing in June, she became one of the panel's most memorable witnesses, describing Trump's order that magnetometers be removed from a rally of his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. She also recounted his angry and unsuccessful demands that the Secret Service take him to the Capitol, where a crowd was trying to disrupt Congress's certification of Joe Biden's victory.

In her first committee interview, she said, she withheld testimony about Trump that she later delivered in public. "It feels ridiculous, because in my heart I knew where my loyalties lied, and my loyalties lied with the truth," she said, adding that she had not expected to become the witness she did because she thought more people would speak out.

After receiving a subpoena, Hutchinson said, she looked for a lawyer, and former White House officials and Trump allies worked to arrange one for her. She was uneasy about being represented by someone from "Trump world," fearing she would be "indebted to these people." In February, Stefan Passantino, a former White House ethics counsel, told her he would represent her at no charge. When she asked who was paying, she said, he declined to say, though she later learned the money came from Trump allies.

Hutchinson said Passantino advised her to keep answers to "seven words or less" and steered her away from describing a report of an angry outburst by Trump in the presidential vehicle over the Secret Service's refusal to take him to the Capitol. During a break in her first interview, she said, she told him she had lied after claiming to know nothing about the episode. She said he told her that saying "I don't recall" was "an entirely acceptable response." Passantino said he represented her "honorably, ethically, and fully consistent with her sole interests" and believed she was truthful and cooperative.

She also described outreach from other Trump associates. Two Trump-aligned lawyers offered in May to front her money, tried to help her find work and offered a campaign job out West. She said Ben Williamson, an aide to former chief of staff Mark Meadows, told her the night before her second interview that Meadows knew she was loyal and would protect him and "the boss." Williamson declined to comment Thursday.

By April, Hutchinson said, she had decided to break away. She read about Watergate and identified with Alexander Butterfield, the Nixon loyalist who became a key witness against him. She went to the home of Alyssa Farah, a former White House official, and asked her to act as a back channel to the committee. She testified publicly in June with a new lawyer, and returned to the panel in September to describe the pressure campaign. The information has also been shared with the Justice Department, where special counsel Jack Smith is leading an investigation.

"I'm not sitting here trying to make myself out to be some hero," she said, adding that she believed she mishandled parts of her first interview. "I hate that I had this moral struggle, because it shouldn't have existed."