Grand jury refuses to indict former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson,
AP sources say
[October 28, 2026]
By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER and ERIC TUCKER
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department on Tuesday failed to secure 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, U.S. Capitol
insurrection, according to two people familiar with the matter.
A grand jury in Washington rejected prosecutors’ request to return an
indictment against Cassidy Hutchinson, said the people, who spoke to The
Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not
authorized to publicly discuss the case. It’s the latest setback in the
Justice Department's efforts to persuade grand jurors in the nation's
capital to bring politically sensitive cases.
Details of prosecutors’ allegations against Hutchinson were not
immediately clear, but Republican lawmakers had accused her of lying
under oath in her explosive testimony in 2022 about Trump’s behavior on
Jan. 6, when a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol to halt the
congressional certification of his election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
The effort to indict Hutchinson was hardly isolated. It is part of a
surge in politically sensitive actions by the Justice Department in the
run-up to next week’s midterm elections targeting perceived adversaries
of the president, including a new attempt to prosecute former FBI
Director James Comey and a search by federal agents of the home of
outspoken Trump critic and Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
It's highly unusual for grand juries to decline to return indictments,
but the Justice Department under Trump has been rebuked by citizens in
the nation's capital in a number of high-profile cases. A grand jury in
Washington earlier this year declined to indict Democratic lawmakers in
connection with a video they recorded urging U.S. service members to
follow established military protocols and reject orders they believe to
be unlawful.
Hutchinson declined to comment through her lawyer on Tuesday.
Hutchinson said Trump was angry and defiant on Jan. 6
Hutchinson's testimony, at a surprise hearing announced just 24 hours
earlier, was seen at the time as particularly compelling given her
proximity to power as special assistant to Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief
of staff.
She described an angry, defiant president who was trying to let armed
protesters avoid security screenings at a rally that morning to protest
his 2020 election defeat and who later grabbed at the steering wheel of
the presidential SUV when the Secret Service refused to let him go to
the Capitol. And when the events at the Capitol spiraled toward
violence, with the crowd chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” she testified that
Trump declined to intervene.
Trump at the time denied on his social media platform, Truth Social,
much of what Hutchinson said. He called her a “total phony” and “bad
news.”
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Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to Trump White House chief of staff
Mark Meadows, is sworn in before she testifies before the House
select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, at the Capitol in
Washington, June 28, 2022. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
Hutchinson’s description of the altercation inside the presidential
SUV was regarded as particularly explosive, even as she acknowledged
during her testimony that she was relaying what she had heard from a
White House security official and did not have firsthand knowledge
of the episode because she was not there.
Her account was quickly disputed.
In March 2024, House Republicans released a previously undisclosed
transcript of the Select Committee’s interview with a Secret Service
officer who drove the presidential SUV. That transcript of the
presidential limo driver contradicted some of Hutchinson’s testimony
but corroborated other aspects of her account, including Trump’s
attempt to join the mob scene at the Capitol.
The driver described the president as insistent on going to the
Capitol but said he did not see the altercation that Hutchinson
described. The driver said Trump “never grabbed the steering wheel"
and also said: “I didn’t see him, you know, lunge to try to get into
the front seat at all."
Hutchinson has alleged that members of Trump’s inner circle dangled
job opportunities and financial assistance while she was cooperating
with the committee. She also testified in a closed-door interview
released by the committee that a former lawyer of hers — a former
ethics counsel in the Trump White House — told her “the less you
remember, the better.”
“It feels ridiculous, because in my heart I knew where my loyalties
lied, and my loyalties lied with the truth,” she told the committee.
“And I never wanted to diverge from that.” The former attorney has
disputed that account.
The U.S. House of Representatives impeached Trump in 2021 on
allegations that he incited the mob that attacked the Capitol, but
he was later acquitted by the Senate. The Justice Department under
Biden charged Trump with felony offenses, accusing him of illegally
working to overturn his 2020 election loss in the run-up to the
Capitol attack, but then-special counsel Jack Smith abandoned the
case after Trump’s 2024 presidential victory. Longstanding Justice
Department policy says sitting presidents cannot face 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.
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