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  5. Former WH aide says Trump allies helped deliver a ‘dolly of boxes’ full of what may have been classified intelligence documents to the Situation Room in the final days of Trump’s presidency

Former WH aide says Trump allies helped deliver a ‘dolly of boxes’ full of what may have been classified intelligence documents to the Situation Room in the final days of Trump’s presidency

Azmi Haroun   

Former WH aide says Trump allies helped deliver a ‘dolly of boxes’ full of what may have been classified intelligence documents to the Situation Room in the final days of Trump’s presidency
PoliticsPolitics2 min read
  • A former WH aide detailed the flow of intelligence documents to the Situation Room during Trump's last days.
  • Cassidy Hutchinson had previously told the January 6 committee that Mark Meadows burned documents.

A former Trump White House official said that she observed a revolving door of Trump allies and intelligence staff visiting the Situation Room in the last weeks of Trump's presidency, delivering boxes full of potentially classified documents days before the violent insurrection.

Cassidy Hutchinson, who served as an aide for former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, told the January 6 committee that she helped coordinate the delivery of documents from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to the White House. In a transcript released Tuesday by the January 6 committee, Hutchinson said she liaised with former Rep. Devin Nunes and that the documents were delivered in the final weeks of December 2020, in a dolly of boxes.

"On December 31st — or December 30th — we got all the documents, Hutchinson told the committee in a May 17, 2022 interview. "They came up on a dolly in a few boxes and I had to sign for them. And then he called White House counsel down."

Hutchinson had previously testified that she witnessed Meadows burning documents in a fireplace after meeting with Rep. Scott Perry. She told the committee in May that Meadows also made multiple copies of documents.

She added that HPSCI staffers met with former Trump lawyer Pat Cipollone, Meadows, and Nunes and that she did not personally review the content of the documents. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy was also involved in the conversations around the documents, she testified.

"I don't know if it was the Situation Room that brought them or if it was somebody, a staffer from -- I don't know -- because they came from the Hill, I don't know how, like what the protocol is for releasing them," Hutchinson said, per the transcript, adding that a member of the Situation Room staff delivered the boxes. "I don't know if they have to go through the FBI or the CIA, or if it was something they could have sent to the Situation Room to print and bind there."

In the interview with the committee, Hutchinson said she didn't know why the documents were being lugged from the Hill to the White House.

"HPSCI had seen these documents at some point and had these documents at some point and were aware of the contents of these documents," she said. "I am not sure if it's something that the Republican HPSCI staffers had deeply looked into or if it was more the intention to bring them to the White House to look into them."

"And why would they need to bring them to the White House to look into them?" Rep. Liz Cheney asked Hutchinson in the interview.

"I don't know," she answered, maintaining that she never took part in the meetings between the White House officials and Republican allies, despite her top security clearance.

Meadows did not respond to Insider's request for comment.


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