OPINION:
When President Biden honored Rep. Bennie Thompson and former Rep. Liz Cheney on Jan. 2 with a presidential citizenship award, the trio had a common bond: Parlay Jan. 6, 2021, into the destruction of Donald Trump.
Mr. Biden built his administration around prosecuting Jan. 6 Capitol rioters. In speeches, he extended their crimes to all Trump voters.
“MAGA Republicans have made their choice. They embrace anger. They thrive on chaos. They live not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies,” Mr. Biden said in September 2022, without actually documenting what these patriotic, hardworking, faith-based Trump voters are doing criminally around the country.
Mr. Thompson and his boss, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, put together a rigged select Jan. 6 committee in 2021. By rejecting official Republican picks, they banned any real cross-examination, a hallmark of American justice. They choreographed testimony with the help of a former ABC News executive to feed the public and news media Democrat reelection propaganda.
Mr. Thompson shares a Biden fantasy that Mr. Trump is imprisoned for the rest of his life. Mr. Thompson also said that if Mr. Trump were imprisoned, his Secret Service protection would be stripped. Yikes! There’s another fantasy altogether.
Mrs. Pelosi’s idea of a Republican committee appointment was Trump critic Liz Cheney, whom Mr. Biden honored on her last day as a lawmaker. Republican Wyoming primary voters booted her from office. They were aghast at her new alliance with the Democrats’ destructive neo-Marxist movement: drug cartel open borders, race-based equity and discrimination, packed Supreme Court, soft on crime.
Republicans are now lambasting the way Ms. Cheney formed a backroom alliance with fellow Trump defector Cassidy Hutchinson, a former scheduler for White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
At first, Ms. Hutchinson, who joined Mr. Trump’s team as a 20-something, provided mundane Jan. 6 committee testimony. But once she hooked up with Ms. Cheney, who publicly vowed to bury Mr. Trump, Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony broke speed limits. She spewed incendiary allegations against Mr. Trump. None was more explosive than when she said that Mr. Trump, on Jan. 6 from his limousine back seat, tried to grab the Secret Service limo steering wheel and lunged at a Secret Service agent. Reason: He was mad the agents would disapprove motoring to the raucous Capitol protest.
Ms. Hutchinson’s unique recall thrust her from backroom transcription to televised star witness and then, of course, a book deal.
Republicans took power in 2023 and assigned Rep. Barry Loudermilk, chair of the House Administration subcommittee on oversight, to investigate Mr. Thompson’s sham panel.
His report on Dec. 17 accused Ms. Hutchinson of lying and Ms. Cheney of unethical conduct.
Ms. Hutchinson’s steering wheel tale was thirdhand, and the two people she quoted promptly denied they had said any such thing. And the on-scene Secret Service agents said it never happened. In all, Mr. Loudermilk said, eight of Mr. Hutchinson’s media-loving claims were false or distorted.
But Democrats don’t care. They nursed the hoax Hillary Clinton campaign dossier, and when it ran out of gas, they hopped on another hoax ride.
“Hutchinson gave Representative Cheney and the other Members of the Select Committee exactly what they were looking for,” the Loudermilk report said.”Following her second interview, Hutchinson drastically switched her narrative and began testifying to a variety of unsubstantiated and uncorroborated claims that ultimately appeared in the Select Committee’s final report.”
What happened?
Ms. Hutchinson was communicating with her friend and another Trump defector, Alyssa Farah Griffin. She served as White House director of strategic communications. In August 2022, after aiding Ms. Hutchinson, she became a co-host on ABC’s liberal-dominated daytime talk show “The View.”
Months before that, Ms. Griffin had become an intermediary for Hutchinson-Cheney communications. Ultimately, Ms. Hutchinson and Ms. Cheney chatted directly.
“Alyssa Farah Griffin back-channeled with Vice Chair Liz Cheney to help Hutchinson change her story,” the Loudermilk report said.
Ms. Griffin helped set up Ms. Hutchinson’s third transcribed interview on May 17, 2022, without notifying her attorney, Stefan Passantino. Ms. Griffin and Ms. Hutchinson “colluded to create a false story” on the reason for another committee interview, the Loudermilk report said. This session is when a “series of uncorroborated and unverified stories” started to flow. For example, in the double hearsay, Mr. Trump “lunged” toward a Secret Service agent.
Ms. Hutchinson reached out directly to Ms. Cheney. They talked for days in May and June. They kept Mr. Passantino in the dark.
“It must be emphasized that Representative Cheney would likely have known her communications without the knowledge of Hutchinson’s attorney were illicit and unethical at that time,” the Loudermilk findings said.
Ms. Cheney then got Ms. Hutchinson to fire Mr. Passantino and hook up with Cheney-friendly attorneys.
On June 20, Ms. Hutchinson sat for a fourth committee interview. This one eschewed the normal, well-attended settings. Ms. Cheney used her “private hideaway” inside the Capitol.
Six days later, Ms. Cheney rushed Ms. Hutchinson’s public televised committee appearance to repeat her secondhand and thirdhand claims.
It took months for Mr. Loudermilk to catch up by taking each of her unsubstantiated claims and writing report language such as “Cassidy Hutchinson lied about the classification status of documents to disparage Mark Meadows.”
The Secret Service agents inside the vehicle, including lead agents Bobby Engel, as it moved from his Mall speech site to the White House. They were interviewed by the Department of Homeland Security inspector general.
The inspector general’s July 31 report said, “We asked agents whether the President reached for the steering wheel of the limousine or lunged toward the detail lead when his request to go to the Capitol was denied, and witnesses said those actions did not occur.”
Also, the FBI lived up to its anti-Republican activism. The Loudermilk committee asked for a copy of FBI summarizing notes, known as 302s, from interviewing Ms. Hutchinson. The FBI stonewalled.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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