DOJ Seeks Indictment of Cassidy Hutchinson for Lying to Congress, Sources Say

The Justice Department is trying to indict Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, for allegedly lying to Congress. Several people familiar with the matter said so on Thursday, Oct. 8. No charges have been filed.

Punchbowl News first reported the effort. Two sources told CBS News that prosecutors have been presenting evidence to a grand jury in Washington, D.C. A person familiar with the effort told NBC News the department is seeking a charge of lying to Congress.

A DOJ spokesperson declined to confirm any of it. "The department does not confirm or deny the existence of investigations, or the lack thereof," the spokesperson said.

What prosecutors are doing

Punchbowl reported that prosecutors recently presented evidence to the grand jury and are expected to call more witnesses later this month. Hutchinson has not been subpoenaed to appear, according to that reporting.

The case is being run by the Civil Rights Division, not the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C., which would normally handle a false-statements case tied to congressional testimony. The division is led by Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump ally. CBS News's sources did not say why the division was assigned the case. The New York Times reported in April that civil rights prosecutors had been tapped for the probe.

The Daily Mail reported that then-Attorney General Pam Bondi opened the investigation weeks before she left the department. Todd Blanche is now attorney general. He told reporters earlier this year that Trump has "the right" and "the duty" to call for investigations into people who have broken the law.

Rep. Barry Loudermilk, who chairs the House Republicans' January 6 committee, sent DOJ a criminal referral in March urging it to investigate Hutchinson. He has accused her of lying in her testimony.

The testimony in question

Hutchinson testified in 2022 before the House committee that investigated the Capitol attack. She said Trump and Meadows were warned on Jan. 6 that some supporters were carrying weapons, and that Trump wanted the magnetometers removed. In her account, he said the crowd was "not here to hurt me."

She also relayed a story she said came from then-deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato. In it, Trump grew angry when his lead Secret Service agent refused to drive him to the Capitol after his Ellipse speech, and lunged toward the steering wheel and at agent Bobby Engel.

Trump's driver later gave sworn testimony that the president never tried to grab the wheel. Republicans have long disputed her account. Former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann has said he, not Hutchinson, wrote a handwritten note that then-Rep. Liz Cheney displayed at a 2022 hearing.

CBS News could not determine which parts of her testimony prosecutors are examining. No court filing identifies the statements at issue.

Her side

Hutchinson has not said anything publicly about the grand jury activity. CBS News said it reached out to her counsel. According to the Daily Mail, she acknowledged late last month that she is the target of a federal criminal investigation and said she would invoke her Fifth Amendment right if compelled to testify. The Guardian reports she also disclosed the investigation in filings in an unrelated case.

The steering-wheel episode was secondhand by her own telling. She said Ornato told her about it, and she presented it that way. The driver's sworn denial shows the account is disputed. It does not by itself establish that she lied. A false-statements charge requires prosecutors to show she knowingly said something untrue, and the DOJ has not said what it believes she got wrong.

The grand jury hurdle

Prosecutors need a D.C. grand jury to agree. The Daily Beast notes that grand juries in the District have declined to indict in other Trump administration cases, including a man accused of throwing a sandwich at a National Guardsman during the deployment of troops in D.C. It also notes that the six sitting members of Congress who posted a video about illegal orders were not charged.

The department has also had trouble in other politically charged prosecutions. The Guardian reports that last year's indictments of former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James were dismissed after a judge ruled the prosecutor overseeing them had been unlawfully appointed. DOJ has since filed a new, separate indictment against Comey.

Critics, including the Guardian and the Daily Beast in their own framing, call the Hutchinson effort the latest use of the department against Trump's critics. Neither the DOJ nor the White House has addressed that characterization in the available statements. Loudermilk's position is that the referral exists because her testimony was false.

Prosecutors are expected to bring more witnesses before the grand jury later this month. Whether they seek a vote, and on which statements, has not been disclosed.

Hutchinson is 29.