- Donald Trump took aim at a former top White House aide who offered damning testimony.
- Trump said that Cassidy Hutchinson is "bad news" and claimed that he "hardly" knows her.
- Trump's response to Hutchinson's testimony fits with how he has tried to distance himself from unflattering portrayals.
Donald Trump on Tuesday lit into former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson as she offered damning testimony to the House January 6 committee about the ex-president's actions before and during the deadly 2021 attack on the Capitol.
"I hardly know who this person, Cassidy Hutchinson, is, other than I heard very negative things about her (a total phony and "leaker") …," Trump wrote in part on his social media platform, Truth.
Trump posted his statement while Hutchinson was still testifying during the hastily-arranged January 6 committee hearing. There, she explained that Trump lunged at his presidential limousine driver and tried to grab the steering wheel in a last-ditch effort to get to the US Capitol. She also recounted another episode where Trump angrily threw his lunch against a White House wall.
The former president has often tried to claim that he barely knows people in his orbit who get in legal trouble or who offer damning accounts about him. He also used it as a way to distance himself from disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein after Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges. In many cases, there are photos and videos that show these people with Trump.
In Cassidy's case, she was a senior aide to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. She testified multiple times about her responsibility to keep Meadows in the loop on any number of matters.
While Trump took aim at his former aide, others who worked with her in the White House rallied around Hutchinson.
"Anyone downplaying Cassidy Hutchinson's role or her access in the West Wing either doesn't understand how the Trump WH worked or is attempting to discredit her because they're scared of how damning this testimony is," Sarah Matthews, a former deputy White House press secretary, wrote on Twitter.
Matthews resigned in the wake of the January 6 Capitol riot.
Trump also claimed that Hutchinson tried to work for him during his post-presidency. According to a Bloomberg News report from mid-January 2021, Hutchinson was among those who were viewed as possibly working for Trump after he left office.
"I personally turned her request down," Trump wrote. "Why did she want to go with us if she felt we were so terrible? I understand that she was very upset and angry that I didn't want her to go, or be a member of the team. She is bad news!"
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