The New York Times is reporting that Cassidy Hutchinson’s bombshell testimony at last month’s public hearing of the House Jan. 6 select committee has jolted top officials at the Department of Justice into looking more closely at possible criminal culpability by former President Donald Trump.
The Times story said:
The electrifying public testimony delivered last month to the House Jan. 6 panel by Ms. Hutchinson, a former White House aide who was witness to many key moments, jolted top Justice Department officials into discussing the topic of Mr. Trump more directly, at times in the presence of Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco.
In conversations at the department the day after Ms. Hutchinson’s appearance, some of which included Ms. Monaco, officials talked about the pressure that the testimony created to scrutinize Mr. Trump’s potential criminal culpability and whether he intended to break the law.
Ms. Hutchinson’s disclosures seemed to have opened a path to broaching the most sensitive topic of all: Mr. Trump’s own actions ahead of the attack.
The DOJ has been methodically working its way up from lower-level activists up to people within Trump’s inner circle — such as conservative lawyer John Eastman and ex-DOJ official Jeffrey Clark — involved in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The DOJ has also issued subpoenas to people involved in creating slates of fake Trump electors in swing states won by Joe Biden.
But Hutchinson’s testimony revealed that Trump knew some of his supporters at the Jan. 6 rally at The Ellipse were armed, that he desperately wanted his Secret Service detail to take him to the Capitol as a mob marched there, and that White House Counsel Pat Cipollone feared that Trump’s conduct that day would result in
“charges of every crime imaginable.”
The Times reported that Hutchinson’s allegations “were largely new” to top DOJ officials and “grabbed their attention.”
The story read:
A flurry of recent subpoenas related to the electors inquiry and
raids related to the inspector general’s investigation into Mr. Clark — which were done with the knowledge of the department’s senior leaders — suggest that those investigations are accelerating. At the very least, those moves indicate that prosecutors are inching closer to the former president.
The Justice Department has indicted members of far-right extremist groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers on charges of seditious conspiracy for their role in the Capitol insurrection. Tuesday’s Jan. 6 committee public hearing will be looking at the link between these groups and people closer to Trump, for example former Gen. Mike Flynn and Roger Stone.
The Times story added that in 2016 rank-and-file FBI agents did not need approval to investigate actions by then presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Trump. But Attorney General William P. Barr issued a memo that requires the attorney general, via the deputy attorney general, to approve such a move. Barr’s memo applies to investigations into a presidential or vice-presidential candidate — or their senior campaign staff or advisers.
That puts the focus on Monaco, who runs the DOJ’s day-to-day operation and oversees all prosecutions, including those related to the Jan. 6 investigation. Her team has requested transcripts of the hundreds of interviews conducted by the House Jan. 6 committee, but the panel has been reluctant to do so before it concludes its hearings.
Given all the past disappointments, it’s difficult to assess what import to give this New York Times story. Does it mean that the DOJ is moving towards targeting Trump in its investigation, or will the Teflon Don once again avoid being held accountable for his actions?