Fox News Legal Analyst Andy McCarthy Calls Hutchinson Testimony ‘Devastating’ for Trump: ‘Things Will Not Be the Same After This’

“Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, provided compelling testimony Tuesday that former president Donald Trump is singularly culpable for the Capitol riot.”

That’s the assessment of the prominent legal analyst who serves as a Fox News contributor. In a stunning National Review column published late Tuesday, former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy spelled out why Hutchinson’s testimony was such bad news for Trump — particularly from a legal standpoint.

“The testimony in a session of the House January 6 committee — a session abruptly called, reportedly due to concerns about Ms. Hutchinson’s safety — was devastating because it was directly about the former president,” McCarthy wrote. “The day’s lone witness pulled back the curtain that countless advisers and aides kept around the mercurial Trump for four years.”

McCarthy did include the caveats that there are Hutchinson did not face cross-examination, and also there are “significant questions about aspects of her account, particularly where it involved hearsay.” Yet McCarthy compared the Jan. 6 Committee to a grand jury, not a trial jury, and argued that the Hutchinson testimony cannot simply be wished away by Trump fans.

“To be sure, no one gets convicted at the grand-jury stage, but an awful lot of people get indicted this way, and on far less evidence than the country heard today,” McCarthy wrote. “Moreover, when we say the committee lacks due-process legitimacy, that means it lacks legitimacy as an ultimate finder of fact. It does not mean that we can blithely dismiss any evidence the committee discloses. It does not mean that, because we’d prefer that the evidence not be true, we can dismiss it out of hand because we don’t like the Democrats or the committee process.”

The Fox News contributor added ominously, “Things will not be the same after this.”