Grand jury declines to indict former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, AP sources say

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department failed Tuesday to obtain a grand jury indictment against a former White House staffer who provided dramatic but disputed testimony against President Donald Trump before a House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, according to two people familiar with the matter.

A grand jury in Washington rejected prosecutors’ request to return an indictment charging Cassidy Hutchinson, said the sources, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly. It is the latest setback in the Justice Department’s efforts to indict the Republican president’s alleged adversaries.

The details of prosecutors’ allegations against Hutchinson were not immediately clear, but Republican lawmakers had accused her of lying under oath during her explosive 2022 testimony about Trump’s behavior on Jan. 6, when a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol to stop Congress from certifying his election defeat to Democrat Joe Biden.

WATCH: Cassidy Hutchinson talks about what she saw and experienced in the Trump White House

That account, revealed in a surprise hearing announced just 24 hours earlier, was seen at the time as particularly powerful given Hutchinson’s proximity to power as a special assistant to Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff.

Hutchinson described an angry and defiant president who tried to let armed protesters avoid security checks at a rally that morning to protest his 2020 election defeat and who then grabbed the steering wheel of the presidential SUV when the Secret Service refused to let him drive to the Capitol. And when events at the Capitol turned violent, with the crowd chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” she testified that Trump refused to intervene.

Trump then denied much of what Hutchinson said on his social media platform, Truth Social. He called it “totally false” and “bad news.”

Hutchinson’s description of the altercation inside the presidential SUV was considered particularly explosive, although she acknowledged during her testimony that she was relaying what she had heard from a White House security official and that she did not have direct knowledge of the episode because she was not there.

His account was quickly disputed.

In March 2024, House Republicans released an undisclosed transcript of the select committee’s interview with a Secret Service officer who drove the presidential SUV. This transcript from the presidential limousine driver contradicts some of Hutchinson’s testimony but corroborates other aspects of his account, including Trump’s attempt to join the mob scene at the Capitol.

LEARN MORE: Read the transcripts of Cassidy Hutchinson’s closed-door testimony on January 6

The driver said he did not see the altercation Hutchinson described.

But the driver said Trump “never grabbed the wheel.”

“I didn’t see him at all, you know, rushing to try to get in the front seat,” the driver said.

Hutchinson alleged that members of Trump’s inner circle dangled job opportunities and financial aid to her while she cooperated with the committee. She also testified that her own lawyer — a former ethics adviser in the Trump White House — told her “the less you remember, the better.”

“It seems ridiculous, because in my heart I knew where my loyalties lay, and my loyalties lay with the truth,” she told the committee. “And I never wanted to stray from that.”

The U.S. House of Representatives impeached Trump in 2021 over allegations that he incited the mob to attack the Capitol, but he was later acquitted by the Senate. The Justice Department under Biden charged Trump with criminal wrongdoing, accusing him of working illegally to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the run-up to the Capitol attack, but then-special counsel Jack Smith dropped the case after Trump’s presidential victory in 2024. Longstanding Justice Department policy states that sitting presidents cannot be subject to criminal prosecution.

Hutchinson, a native of Pennington, New Jersey, previously worked in the White House Office of Legislative Affairs and interned for Republicans including Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.