CLAY: Let’s dive right into it, ’cause I am fired up. We discussed a little bit yesterday the January 6th “bombshell witness,” 25-year-old Cassidy Hutchinson, who was working inside the White House with Mark Meadows, the chief of staff at the end of the Trump administration. The January 6th committee has done whatever they can to garner as much attention as they possibly can from a gullible and often complicit news media.
But yesterday’s testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson — which was hearsay about what happened from her perspective based on what she had been told inside of the limo after Donald Trump’s speech on January 6th — set a new low in terms of the willingness of Democrats to go after Donald Trump in this January 6th hearing. Let me explain what I mean by this. What she testified to is hearsay. I understand a lot of people don’t spend a lot of time on legal-related issues, but the general rule is, you are not allowed to testify to something that you were told by someone else that they witnessed.
That is textbook hearsay. So, the January 6th committee, which features a lot of lawyers working on it, made the decision to put this 25-year-old witness on, despite the fact they knew that she was making salacious comments that she herself had not witnessed regarding what Donald Trump may have done inside of that limo. I want to play you this cut because a lot of you are just hearing from the media about these stories and he didn’t even necessarily hear what Cassidy Hutchinson said. This is textbook hearsay. Listen.
CLAY: All of this 100% would be inadmissible in a court of law, Buck. And as if that were not enough, the Secret Service has now said nobody from the January 6th committee reached out to them to ask any of these details in the last 10 days and that both Secret Service agents are ready and prepared and willing to testify to the January 6th committee that what this woman, Cassidy Hutchinson, reported that had occurred and what they had said is not true and as the actual witnesses in that car they are happy to tell their side of the story, which is not what Cassidy Hutchinson said. Buck, this just has blown up even for an incompetent January 6th committee, I think this has destroyed any shred of credibility that they have. This is the worst thing they could have done.
BUCK: Well, this was their best shot, it seems. They were leading up to this is the witness that we didn’t know about before but now with the new bombshell testimony. And you can you can you could tell that they had lined it all up. It reminds me — you remember the morning — this was a great day in fake news history when Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test results came out.
CLAY: Oh, yeah.
BUCK: I was watching CNN in real time, and I actually got into it with their head of PR or whatever online. They were saying, vindication for Elizabeth Warren. It turns out she is .8% Native American, right? And then they realized, “Oh, my gosh. Wait. That’s not gonna work!” Like, they knew what the marching orders were, and it was obviously a catastrophe for them. They knew the marching orders here, “Oh, my gosh. The most riveting testimony ever.” Clay, this is a show trial. It’s not even a trial, right? So, it’s almost wrong to call it that.
CLAY: You couldn’t admit any of this in a trial.
BUCK: The whole thing is absurd. And when it shows you is in the absence of any Republican participation and also the absence of any agreed-upon procedures, exactly what you said, hearsay? Yeah, whatever, they’ll throw it in there. They don’t care. Just process is not justice. You actually have to have a just process, right? You have to actually have some protections in place to get to the truth. This isn’t about getting the truth. This is about propaganda. And, by the way, they all lined up for this one. The reporting, we just —
CLAY: Oh, yeah, we got a cut. I haven’t even heard this yet, but I think everybody’s gonna enjoy it. Greg put this together on our team. Here’s a montage of all the mainstream media breathlessly reacting to that hearsay commentary that you just saw.
BUCK: No which one are we going here? Because the Secret Service here is saying that this is not true. The montage is that it’s not true.
PIERRE THOMAS: The Secret Service will push back against any allegation of an assault against an agent or President Trump reaching for the steering wheel.
TOM LLAMAS: The Secret Service is telling you that that the lead agent disputes some of Hutchinson’s testimony.
JOY REID: Disputing some of that really dramatic story about Donald Trump trying to lunge forward and take control of The Beast.
PETER ALEXANDER: Prepared to testify under oath that neither man was assaulted and that Mr. Trump never lunged for the steering wheel.
JESSICA SCHNEIDER: The agents involved are prepared to testify under oath that the incident did not occur.
NEAL KATYAL: The Secret Service deny. This one little part, the steering wheel claim.
LAURA JARRETT: The agents would say that the incident itself described there just simply did not happen.
BUCK: That’s a big… Notice even variation there, Clay. Secret Service willing to come out under oath, “This just did not happen.” Essentially, the Secret Service — who, obviously, swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, law enforcement professionals — are willing to say in front of this committee, this never happened. Do you think…? Now we really get down to brass tacks. Do we think they’re going to follow up and you’re going to see the Secret Service agents involved? If they don’t call the Secret Service agent to get their testimony under oath, this thing is even bigger joke and sham than we’ve known it was all along.
CLAY: So, that is the reaction after initial breathless approval of everything that she had said. And I want to play this. But that is a good montage that was put together of people saying, oh, by the way, everything that she testified to essentially is untrue based on the people who were actually witnesses in the vehicle. Here is CNN’s Jamie Gangel — this is cut 11 — saying America and democracy are in debt to Cassidy Hutchinson.
GANGEL: Liz Cheney began her final comments by saying that we are in debt to Cassidy Hutchinson. I think America and democracy is in debt to this young woman.
BUCK: This was the best shot that they could come up with, which tells you a lot. But it’s also a reminder of the ongoing intelligence test here, which is, who will believe whatever crazy thing the fake news will say about the now former by 18 months president of the United States?
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: Remember back in September of 2020 when they were running with the Donald Trump said Americans who died in war are losers and suckers? That was the big one, oh, right before the election. It was their September Surprise, if you will, instead of an October Surprise. Trump didn’t say that, and it was so obvious. That’s not… There are things that the former president would say that perhaps you and I would say, “Ah, you know, he’s a little salty sometimes.” He’s a fighter. I get it.
Disrespecting our military dead? Nah. That’s not President Trump. Just didn’t happen. But people wanted to believe it, so they believed it. In this case, Clay, lunged for the throat of a Secret Service officer? Donald Trump is gonna try to manhandle a — he’s gonna choke out — a 40-year-old, highly trained Secret Service officer? I know a lot of those guys. I’ve worked around those guys. This just didn’t happen. Trump wouldn’t do it and it just didn’t happen.
CLAY: It also physically doesn’t make sense, Buck. The president rides in the back of the vehicle. In order for him to lunge and grab the steering wheel, first of all, how is he gonna steer from the back of the vehicle? And to jump all the way from the back of the vehicle to the front of the vehicle and take control of the steering wheel? It just doesn’t even physically make sense. And again, to your point, we’re not talking about the world’s greatest, most athletic man. We’re talking about a 75-year-old guy who’s gonna leap from the back of a vehicle to the front, grab a wheel, and then, what, like, steer it? He doesn’t still control the pedals, right? It’s just nonsensical.
BUCK: It goes back to your initial point. We don’t even have to… You know, hearsay as the legal term. If you’re serious here, meaning that the Democrats are serious about this story being true, of course you go with an eyewitness. Why do they go with a 25-year-old executive assistant or whatever who wasn’t even there? Like, think about the mentality all these months, think of the millions of taxpayer dollars that are being spent on the congressional salaries —
BUCK: Oh, but they don’t care. The point is when it comes to Trump, whether you’re a journalist, a lawyer, an intelligence officer, whatever, all of your ethics are supposed to be thrown out the window because stopping and now just defaming. Stopping Trump is all that matters.
CLAY: Yeah.
BUCK: And they can’t get out of that mentality, and what we see here is now any person… They thought this was gonna force everyone to go, “Oh, gosh. Donald Trump, he’s so scary. The nuclear codes,” and, remember, the president who didn’t start a war and didn’t watch as Europe had its biggest war since World War II, he’s the big threat? I don’t think so, folks.
CLAY: Also, the president — and this is a big point in his favor — that they said was gonna be a dictator? There was never a time in most of our lives where a president could have taken more power than in the early days after covid. If you were truly dictatorial in your belief scheme, there has never been, I don’t believe, in my life, a time — maybe right after 9/11 — when a president had more opportunity to take complete and total control.
Trump deferred to mayors, to governors, to executives in all different parts of the country. In fact, you can argue, if anything, that his federal control was too light because it led to some Draconian policies being implemented by officials in other states. And so this… I mean, we need to open up phone lines, too, because I think this is just such a ridiculous thing that they did. And I’m curious how many people in media will actually even call out the committee —
BUCK: My favorites, though, are the quoted Republicans. There are still this core of these Never Trumpers out there who this was their moment of vindication yesterday, Clay. And now the Secret Service has come out and say, “No, it didn’t happen. We’ll swear to the fact this didn’t happen.”
CLAY: And I, as a lawyer, almost want people that are lawyers that on this committee held to account by their bar association, like, how in the world did you ever put this witness up to tell her story?
CLAY: I know. Unfortunately. I’m a member of two. But yes, there are a — from a legal perspective what they did in this show trial was 100 billion percent indefensible, also untrue. And anyone out there who is in the media that helped to propagate these lies — and, Buck, you know, we were on the air, I was going through Twitter, and people were gleefully reacting to this, and it’s all a lie based on people who were actually there and witnesses.
And again, the January 6th committee, according to the Secret Service, did not even reach out in the last 10 days before they allowed this bombshell witness to testify to corroborate her comments in any way, her testimony that she heard from someone else who was there what happened, direct and clear and present hearsay. Be a good law exam question in the years ahead.
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