Her story was instantly toast.
And as a result the January 6 Committee finally implodes.
This week, the January 6 Committee made much of the appearance of Cassidy Hutchinson, a young former aide to Trump’s White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Over there in the Washington Times, the paper’s editorial board quoted the late philosopher Eric Hoffer as it described the appearance of Ms. Hutchinson:
Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.
Indeed. The January 6 Committee stands revealed for exactly what it always has been — a corrupt, anti-constitutional racket.
This was Hutchinson’s fourth appearance in front of a committee filled with lawyers, and she proceeded to testify — for the first time on camera — with nothing more than hearsay. As all of the committee members well know, hearsay is inadmissible in a court of law. And in allowing it in the committee hearing, the committee and its all-lawyer members set themselves up to look like village idiots. As the Times also said:
In none of the instances emphasized by the media did Ms. Hutchinson actually witness the activity to which she testified. She never heard former President Donald Trump say anything about Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6. She never saw Mr. Trump throw anything. She wasn’t in the car with Mr. Trump on Jan. 6.
In a blink, Hutchinson was contradicted by the very Secret Service agents she cited as her sources. They have also volunteered to do so in public testimony. Under oath.
The fact that committee members knew this was the case ahead of time directly damages their own credibility. In turning their committee into a racket, they made themselves look like fools. Not to mention that Hutchinson herself, she who was so upset about January 6 that she stayed working with Trump until January 21 and then wanted to be hired to work for him in Florida, has destroyed her own credibility.
Then there’s the matter of committee member and vice-chair, Wyoming’s “Republican” Rep. Liz Cheney. Cheney, by the way, took time out to go, of all places, to the Reagan Library, where she proceeded to say this:
We are confronting a domestic threat that we have never faced before. And that is a former president who is attempting to unravel the foundations of our Constitutional Republic…. And he is aided by Republican leaders and elected officials who have made themselves willing hostages to this dangerous and irrational man.
Hello? Let’s be clear. Cheney has it decidedly backwards. It is Cheney and her fellow committee members who are attempting to unravel the foundations of our constitutional Republic. It is Cheney and her fellow committee members who are the domestic threat we have never faced before.
While the Washington Times editorial did not mention Cheney’s Reagan Library speech, it quite accurately described the game Cheney and the Committee are playing, saying:
Wednesday’s hearing made clear the committee has been about three things all along. First, it wanted to disqualify Mr.Trump from running for public office again.
More disturbingly, it wanted to marginalize those voters who supported and support Mr. Trump and make sure that they are disqualified from participating in the political life of the Republican Party specifically, and the United States more generally. The presence on the committee of legacy Republican Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger makes it clear that part of the mob that has organized against Mr. Trump’s supporters includes the sad and decayed remnants of your father’s Republican Party.
Third, the committee is designed to send an unequivocal message to any future aspirants to public life that transgression of policy norms — not behavioral norms — will be met with the harshest possible measures. If it were about behavioral norms, phenomena like Black Lives Matter riots, attempted assassinations of Supreme Court justices, and firebombing churches and pregnancy centers would be under the microscope.
Bingo.
The real problem here, and it is indeed a serious problem, is that Cheney, Kinzinger, and the Pelosi-created and staffed committee is itself an anti-constitutional mob that has violated one constitutional norm after another. And the reasons are exactly as the Times suggests:
It want[s] to disqualify [former President] Trump from running for public office ever again.
More disturbingly, it want[s] to marginalize those voters who supported and support Mr. Trump and make sure that they are disqualified from participating in the political life of the Republican Party specifically, and the United States more generally.
And in their quest to do these things, Cheney, Kinzinger, and company, as my colleague Melissa Mackenzie has catalogued in detail here in The American Spectator, have gone on a fascist, authoritarian, and decidedly anti-constitutional jihad. This has included subpoenaing AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile to scoop up the private texts, emails, and phone records of “not just the 100-plus citizens that have been named in subpoenas” but “all individuals on the subscriber’s account and everyone those people messaged or spoke to” — which, Melissa correctly notes, “is tens of thousands of moms, children, clergy, reporters, and Republican and conservative influencers who were in touch with everyone from White House aides to prominent activists.”
Again, this is straight-up fascism, with not a constitutional thing about it.
If Cassidy Hutchinson has done anything, it is to lure the committee into vividly illustrating just how corrupt it is — and has been from the moment of its creation.
Which is to say — thanks to Hutchinson, the January 6 Committee racket has finally imploded.
And if, as many expect, the House reverts to Republican control with the November elections, one of the first items of business on the agenda come January should be an investigation of the January 6 Committee and its members and staff.
This decidedly anti-constitutional racket should never — say again, never — be allowed to happen again.
