Cassidy Hutchinson Was Key Part of White House Team Who Rallied Support Among House GOP During Trump’s First Impeachment

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Cassidy Hutchinson, who has been aggressively criticized by former President Donald Trump and his allies for her bombshell testimony last month before the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, was once a key part of a small team of White House staffers who successfully rallied support among House Republicans for the president during his first impeachment trial.

This detail in Hutchinson’s résumé was reported by The New York Times on Sunday, in an in-depth profile that looked back at Hutchinson’s path to that congressional hearing room on June 28 and the reasoning behind the committee’s decision to rush ahead with her public testimony.

Hutchinson, who was the aide for then-chief of staff Mark Meadows at the end of Trump’s term, received a text message the night before her fourth deposition with the committee from a Trump ally that said an unnamed “he” was “thinking about you” and knew that she was “loyal” and was “going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition.” According to the Times, committee members were “so alarmed by what they considered a clear case of witness tampering,” plus Hutchinson’s testimony about Trump’s unhinged behavior on Jan. 6, they decided it was imperative to schedule an emergency public hearing a few days later:

The speed, people close to the committee said, was for two crucial reasons: Ms. Hutchinson was under intense pressure from Trump World, and panel members believed that getting her story out in public would make her less vulnerable, attract powerful allies and be its own kind of protection. The committee also had to move fast, the people said, to avoid leaks of some of the most explosive testimony ever heard on Capitol Hill.

Hutchinson was the first in her family to go to college, and got her degree at Christopher Newport University, a small college in Newport News, Va. that a professor described as having a “fairly conservative student body.” After internships with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and House GOP Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), she got the White House internship that would lead to her position in the center of the maelstrom on Jan. 6.

She was hired by the White House legislative affairs office from her internship, attracting attention for being “incredibly smart and driven” and someone who “kind of came in and took the place by storm,” as an anonymous former colleague told the Times. This work ethic led to a key role for Hutchinson during Trump’s first impeachment in 2019, as she was “among the handful of legislative affairs staff members tasked with shoring up support among disgruntled House Republicans for the embattled president.”

Hutchinson was described as developing “exceptionally strong contacts” with lawmakers despite being a newly-hired junior staffer. She was even known to refer to members of Congress by their first names, a trait some criticized as “presumptuous” but acknowledged was a sign she was successfully forging alliances.

The efforts to defend Trump were successful, with not a single House Republican defecting to vote to impeach the president, “a triumph that reflected well on every White House staff member involved, including Ms. Hutchinson,” wrote the Times.

Hutchinson soon parlayed this work into a promotion, getting poached from the legislative affairs office by Meadows when he became Trump’s chief of staff in March 2020.

She was originally represented for her testimony with the committee by Stefan Passantino, a former Trump White House ethics lawyer whose legal fees were paid by Trump’s Save America PAC. In her initial depositions, Hutchinson “took pains to avoid speculating about the president,” and a friend of hers told the Times that she “warmed to the idea” of being more helpful to the committee, but “did not detect the same willingness” in Passantino, because “[h]e was there to insulate the big guy.”

Former Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-VA), a vocal Trump opponent, offered to create a legal defense fund for Hutchinson to hire a new lawyer, but that was not needed when Jody Hunt, a former Justice Department attorney, offered to represent her pro bono.

The Times article also describes Hutchinson as “[n]ow unemployed and sequestered with family and a security detail” and as having “developed an unlikely bond” with Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY). “[A]s someone ostracized by her party and stripped of her leadership post for her denunciations of Mr. Trump, Ms. Cheney admires the younger woman’s willingness to risk her alliances and professional standing by recounting what she saw in the final days of the Trump White House, friends say.”