An aide of former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is the surprise witness who will testify during Tuesday’s abruptly-added Jan. 6 panel hearing, according to a report.
Cassidy Hutchinson, who served as a special assistant in the White House during the Trump administration, will take the stand to provide intel on last year’s Capitol insurrection and the administration’s response, Punchbowl News reported.
The House select committee investigating the Capitol riot scheduled the last-minute hearing one day in advance in order to “present recently obtained evidence.”
Unlike the previous five hearings, the panel did not say who would be providing testimony or how many witnesses would be called.
Before announcing Tuesday’s hearing, the committee had said the rest of its scheduled hearings, which were set for this week, would be postponed to give the committee members time to process an influx of new evidence.
Hutchinson previously told the committee that Meadows was warned about the potential for violence on Jan. 6, 2021 ahead of time.
Most recently, she named several GOP lawmakers — Reps. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fl), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), and Scott Perry (R-Pa.) — who sought blanket pardons in the wake of the riot in a pre-recorded deposition revealed at an earlier hearing.
The former aide also told the House committee that then-President Donald Trump suggested he approved of the “hang Mike Pence” chants from the mob that stormed the Capitol in a conversation with Meadows, CNN reported late last month.
Among the evidence obtained is footage from documentary filmmaker Alex Holder — who filmed President Donald Trump and his family before and after the Capitol riot — as well as documents from the National Archives, and new tips that came in during the first four live hearings held in the past two weeks.