For months, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol meticulously gathered evidence, carefully wrote and rewrote scripts and painstakingly gathered video testimony to present at its televised hearings. Then came Monday, when that pattern of extreme caution ran into a showdown. With less than 24 hours’ notice, the committee announced it would hold a hearing the following afternoon with only one living witness: 25-year-old Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide. The result was the most explosive day of testimony yet in a series of revelation-rich hearings. Hutchinson testified that former President Donald Trump knew his supporters were carrying guns that day but urged them to the Capitol anyway. She also recounted Deputy Chief of Staff Anthony Ornato telling her that Trump had become enraged with a Secret Service agent after the president was told he could not accompany rioters as they exited the Ellipse. Many people close to the committee’s work say the sudden decision to release Hutchinson’s testimony, which surprised even some of her top aides and included going public with details the committee itself had learned days earlier , was necessary to prevent the account from leaking. With evidence that Trump allies were trying to influence her decision to speak, some members also worried she might back down if they waited any longer. By rolling the dice, the committee got the attention it sought for its message that Trump’s role in precipitating the Jan. 6 attack was illegal, unconstitutional, and barring any future bids for public office. Hutchinson’s account of cleaning Trump ketchup off the walls of the White House and pleading with her one-time boss, former chief of staff Mark Meadows, to put down his phone and help quell the rebellion on Capitol Hill was watched more than any finale of the NBA except for one game this year. But with Hutchinson rushing to the witness stand, the panel also opened up to criticism that it failed to thoroughly vet her claims. Hutchinson has come under intense scrutiny from Trump and his allies, who have accused her of lying or ridiculed her for reporting rumors that would not be valid in a criminal trial. So far, no one has publicly corroborated her account of a race between Trump and the Secret Service in his presidential SUV, but no one is known to have disputed it under oath either. The officials said on condition of anonymity that the Secret Service agents involved are prepared to challenge Hutchinson in sworn testimony, though they do not appear to have done so. A person familiar with the investigation, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to address sensitive issues, called the story of Trump falling for a Secret Service agent an “impermissible error” that amounted to colorful, when the main point Not disputed, was that Trump was furious that he was barred from proceeding to Capitol Hill. “The reality is Cassidy told the truth about a conversation that was leaked to her and I can’t see a motive for her to lie about it,” the person said. “But the reality is also that the committee has to be perfect. They probably shouldn’t have brought it there. I think we know that Secret Service agents are very protective of their information.” Others, however, supported the decision to move as quickly as possible to make Hutchinson’s testimony public. “It was exactly the right call,” said Ted Butrus, a prominent Democratic attorney and donor. “They had an extremely credible witness with no reason not to tell the truth. There are reasons why he would not want to proceed. She reported the facts very accurately as to what she was told.” Nick Ackerman, a former federal prosecutor who investigated the Watergate scandal, noted that it is irrelevant that Hutchinson’s testimony might not hold up in a criminal trial. The House committee is trying to convince Americans that Trump should never hold office again, he said — and is doing so effectively by creating a dramatic, digestible story. “She was very well prepared,” Ackerman said. “And they minimized the risk by making excerpts on tape. You can’t do that as a prosecutor, where you put in your testimony and do your summation at the same time. The public learns the full extent of what happened here.” A committee aide called Hutchinson’s testimony “a watershed moment in the committee’s work to uphold the rule of law and protect American democracy. Anyone who questions the gravity and impact of this hearing either didn’t attend it, doesn’t understand the totality of the committee’s evidence, or has another agenda.” Public opinion polls released in recent days offer little indication of whether hearings have begun to change their minds. A poll released Thursday by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Chicago shows 49 percent of respondents say Trump bears responsibility for the Capitol attack, within the margin of error of the result in January, 46 %. Those numbers may not reflect the impact of Hutchinson’s testimony Tuesday, which drew the largest audience of any of the day’s hearings so far. The first committee hearing, which aired in prime time on June 9, drew more than 20 million viewers across a dozen outlets. Hutchinson’s Tuesday hearing drew 13 million viewers, according to Nielsen, a remarkable number for daytime television. Fox News, which did not air its prime-time debut, has televised the panel’s daily proceedings, and one of its most recognizable personalities even praised it. “This testimony is amazing,” Bret Baier, anchor of the network’s 6 p.m. newscast, said Tuesday during a break in Hutchinson’s appearance. Later, after the hearing concluded, Baier downplayed Trump’s efforts to deny her allegations, noting that the former president made his comments on his own social media platform and Hutchinson was “under oath on Capitol Hill.” The hearings broke with Trump voters in ways that many inside-the-Beltway obsessions don’t, according to Sarah Longwell, a Republican anti-Trump strategist who co-hosts Bulwark’s “Focus Group” podcast. In three focus groups held with Trump voters since the hearings began, participants said they knew about the hearings or attended parts of them. “That’s not a technical term, but I would describe their involvement as ‘hate watching’ in some of it,” Longwell said. “They’re like, ‘Oh, I turned it off, it’s so partisan, they’re just trying to get Trump.’ But at the end of the day, they’re still following it.” Trump surrogates initially tried to dismiss the hearings and highlight other issues, such as gas prices. But that failed, Longwell said, because of how effectively the committee used Trump’s own aides and other prominent Republicans as witnesses. Trump’s allies were forced to respond, driving headlines and prompting Fox News to devote coverage time to rebuttals. Trump has also issued a running commentary of the hearings on his Truth Social platform, marked by frequent denials. “Her false story … is ‘sick’ and fraudulent,” Trump wrote of Hutchinson on Tuesday, calling the commission a “Kangaroo Court.” So far, however, the committee has avoided making any recalls, a possible reflection of the overall caution with which it has proceeded. The panel twice announced delays because members said they had to be careful not to make mistakes in their preparation. On June 15, the third scheduled hearing was postponed to avoid three proceedings in one week and the risk of mistakes. “It’s just technical issues. The staff that put together all the videos, you know, did the 1, 2, 3 — it was overwhelming,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a member of the committee, told reporters that day on Capitol Hill. “So we’re trying to give them some space to get their work done.” A week later, as the rest of Congress headed into a 17-day recess, the committee dropped plans to hold one or more hearings during the Independence Day recess for similar reasons: An avalanche of new material needed to be carefully digested and reviewed before she could be exposed to a national television audience. Lawmakers and committee aides have described a process in which their teams sift through testimony, both written and video, to gather the most revealing details and package them together. The team then goes back to the depositions and video to see what the witnesses said just before and after the selected clips, to guard against any suggestion by Trump-friendly witnesses that they were quoted out of context. By taking time to vet the details, committee members said they hoped to avoid giving Trump and his allies ammunition to discredit their work. “There has been a deluge of new evidence since we started. And we just have to take a breath, look at the new evidence, and then incorporate it into the hearings that we have scheduled,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told reporters on June 22. But Hutchinson’s revelations caused a change of plans. Hutchinson gave the first of four closed-door testimony to the commission in February. Some of the most exciting details from Tuesday’s hearing, however, did not emerge until the last of those meetings, the week of June 20. Committee members then agreed that they should question Hutchinson in a live hearing as soon as possible. If not, they feared the details would leak out, drop by drop, undermining the drama of a heavily scripted televised audition. Members also worried that pro-Trump forces would attempt, perhaps successfully, to intimidate Hutchinson into changing her story or refusing to testify publicly. The young woman’s willingness to risk her career and…
