A grand jury declines to indict Cassidy Hutchinson over her January 6 testimony

Prosecutors took their case against Cassidy Hutchinson to a grand jury on Tuesday, and the grand jury sent it back.

A source familiar with the matter told Reuters the panel declined to indict the former White House aide. The Justice Department has investigated whether Hutchinson gave false testimony to the House committee that investigated the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. She was the committee star witness in 2022, testifying that President Trump knew the crowd that day could turn violent and still urged supporters to march on the Capitol. Hutchinson has maintained that her testimony was truthful. Her lawyers did not respond to requests for comment.

The rejection surfaced in a courtroom almost sideways. A federal prosecutor told US Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui during a hearing that a grand jury in Washington had returned a nonconcurrence, the formal term for refusing an indictment, but the prosecutor named no defendant and no charges in open court. Sources familiar with the matter confirmed to CNN and Reuters that the case was Hutchinson. A second source told Reuters the grand jury had been meeting on Tuesday without knowing whether the panel had finished.

Refusals like this are rare, because prosecutors need only probable cause to win an indictment and they control what the panel hears. This department has now collected several of them. Grand juries have declined charges in cases involving former FBI Director James Comey on one count, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and six lawmakers who urged service members to disobey illegal orders, CNN reported. The House Committee on Administration has argued that a handwriting analysis undercuts part of Hutchinson account of a note she testified she wrote, and that other White House and Secret Service witnesses did not corroborate parts of her story. Her defenders answer that she relayed what she was told, and that a witness repeating a false story told to her is a different thing in law from a witness lying.

A refusal does not close the file. Prosecutors can gather more evidence and present the case again, and nothing made public on Tuesday says how the jurors voted. What Tuesday settled is narrower. The department spent months building a case against the most damaging witness of the January 6 hearings, and the first citizens asked to approve charges said no.