Cassidy Hutchinson and Rep. Liz Cheney have forged an 'unlikely bond' amid January 6 testimony process, per a New York Times report
- Cassidy Hutchinson and Liz Cheney have formed an "unlikely bond" according to The New York Times.
- Hutchinson, a former White House aide, delivered damning public testimony in the Jan. 6 probe last month.
Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Trump White House aide whose explosive January 6 testimony stunned Washington last month, has found what The New York Times described as an "unlikely bond" with Rep. Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican who has been ostracized from the GOP for criticizing the former president and serving as vice-chair on the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot.
The two Republican women — both on the outs with the party's overwhelming Trump faction — have developed this relationship as the January 6 panel riot zeroes in on increasingly damning testimony about former President Donald Trump.
On June 28, Hutchinson publicly testified before the panel, dropping bombshell after bombshell about Trump's actions on January 6, 2021. The 26-year-old, who served as a top aide to former Trump administration chief of staff Mark Meadows, described a fuming president who knew his supporters were armed, seemingly unconcerned about the possibility of violence.
Her testimony offered color and insight into the chaotic hours of January 6, 2021, as a mob of Trump supporters laid siege to the Capitol in an attack that led to five deaths and multiple injuries. Hutchinson also revealed that former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows were among those who asked the former president for a preemptive pardon in the aftermath of the attack.
In a Sunday report, The Times traced Hutchinson's trajectory from a conservative college student to a wunderkind White House aide to a star witness in the January 6 panel's ongoing probe. Hutchinson was deposed by the committee three times in private before making her public debut. For months, she was represented for free by a Trump world lawyer whose primary interest seemed to be protecting the former president, according to The Times. Hutchinson eventually opened up to the idea of cooperating more fully with the panel and found new, pro-bono representation.
As she offered more details about her recollection of Trump on January 6, the committee decided it was time to put Hutchinson on the national stage, the outlet reported.
In the weeks since her public testimony, Hutchinson has been sequestered with her family and a security detail, according to The Times. The once-White House prodigy is now unemployed and facing criticism from Trumpworld and the former president himself. But she's found an admirer in Cheney.
The congresswoman admires Hutchinson's dedication to the country over personal power, according to The Times.
"I have been incredibly moved by young women that I have met and that have come forward to testify in the January 6 committee," Cheney said in a speech at the Reagan Library the day after Hutchinson testified. "Some of these are young women who worked on the Trump campaign, some worked in the Trump White House, some who worked in offices on Capitol Hill, all who knew immediately that what happened that day must never happen again."
"America had the chance to meet one of these young women yesterday, Ms. Cassidy Hutchinson," Cheney continued to a round of applause. "Her superiors, men many years older, a number of them hiding behind executive privilege, anonymity, and intimidation, but her bravery and patriotism yesterday were awesome to behold."