Hutch ado about nothing
The least important detail of Cassidy Hutchinson's January 6 committee testimony is now the most hyped.
One reason is the shiny-object permanence we all suffer from to some degree. Former President Donald Trump trying to grab his SUV's steering wheel and lunging for an agent truly is the salacious stuff memes are made of (nice one, Monica.)
Then there’s the real reason. Trumpist dead-enders very likely used the anecdote to cloud Hutchinson's damning testimony of Trump's potential criminality, and willing Washington reporters let them. The episode reveals everything about the selfish bad habits that (still!) turn ostensibly well-meaning journalists into the propaganda tools of our most reliable liars.
On Tuesday, Hutchinson, a former top aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, testified–under oath–to a shocking and legally meaningful litany of allegations. They ranged from Trump’s foreknowledge that his Jan. 6 crowd was armed, to Rudy Giuliani and Meadows seeking pardons for their coup-related conduct.
Within hours, several well-known Washington reporters had the pushback. Not to the testimony that Trump knowingly sent an armed mob toward the Capitol, or that he knew rioters were attacking police and threatening Mike Pence and for hours did nothing. The denial was limited to the most attention-grabbing and inconsequential part of the day: the SUV anecdote. Critically, the denial was anonymous. And the reporters who had it rushed to tweet.
No one denied that Trump was angry, or that he wanted to go to the Capitol. But it was all the right-wing media ecosystem needed. The retweets and Fox News segments snowballed into a full-fledged disinformation attack on the credibility of Cassidy Hutchinson’s hours of sworn testimony. If the SUV episode can’t be trusted, then you, dear viewer, have permission to dismiss the entire, cognitively troubling appearance as fake.
The denials of the SUV episode came from sources “close to the Secret Service.” I don't know who that person is, but the mostly likely source is former deputy White House chief of staff Tony Ornato or someone speaking on his behalf. Trump placed Ornato in his senior White House job as a detail from his post at the Secret Service. He was, and remains, a Trump loyalist and a Secret Service official. Hutchinson never claimed to have witnessed the SUV lunge, only that Ornato told her it happened.
It should be stated plainly: Ornato, like his boss Trump, has a reputation for lying. He also has a reputation for Trump loyalty bordering on unprofessionalism. So does Bobby Engel, the Secret Service agent who was in the SUV with Trump at the time of the alleged lunge, according to what Hutchinson says Ornato told her. I don’t have a way of knowing whether Hutchinson’s anecdote is accurate, or whether the denial is true. And neither do the reporters who rushed to post it.
Reporters are expected to report the news they get. But they’re also expected to exercise critical judgment and healthy skepticism. That thought bubble might have looked something like:
Hutchinson’s testimony was public and under oath, the anonymous denials are not. Hutchinson has no reason to lie about hearing this SUV detail, while her detractors have every reason to. Hutchinson has no known track record of working to discredit investigations by any dishonest means necessary, while Trumpworld is infamous for it. So if I report this, I should do it with lots of caveats and context, to minimize the chances that dishonest operators use me to muddy up a bunch of testimony that people should really pay attention to.
This is familiar territory: Trumpists unleashed similar tactics on the Mueller report. The FBI’s missteps in securing FISA warrants meant the entire investigation was phony and clearly exonerated Trump from any connection to Russians. Only it wasn’t and it didn’t. They used them in the prosecution of Michael Flynn, where Trump fanned a phony panic about the “unmasking” of American contacts of foreign surveillance targets, to pretend all of Flynn’s actual crimes were made up. They weren’t.
Why would reporters charge in and risk the low stakes of the SUV anecdote for the very high stakes of the rest of Hutchinson's testimony? For the clout, sure. Whoever gets the “Secret Service agent denies it” tweet first gets the attention. But another reason is a form of political reporting where any incremental process development is hot news, as long as you’re the one to report it. That works great when the stakes are some senator’s latest bluff in a budget standoff, but works way less well when they’re a predictable propaganda onslaught from the perpetrators of an attempted coup.
Reporters might’ve also considered Tuesday’s other stunning evidence, which is that Trumpworld loyalists appear to be tampering with committee witnesses. We’ve since learned that Trump is using donors’ money to pay for the lawyers of lower-level witnesses who stay loyal when questioned. If you think it’s a coincidence that once Hutchinson decided she had more to tell the panel, she dropped her Trumpworld lawyer, hired a new one, and testified, I’ve got a truck full of wallpaper-safe premium ketchup to sell you.
If Hutchinson got it wrong on what she was told, or if the SUV episode never happened, or if she misheard, let Ornato and other deniers say so–publicly, under oath, and under penalty of perjury. Even if they do, it won’t erase the damning, mostly direct testimony she gave on Tuesday about Trump’s astounding, and potentially criminal behavior.
And it especially doesn’t change the fact that, after seven years of Trump and his acolytes flooding the zone with garbage, many in the mainstream media still haven’t changed their fundamental instincts for covering him. These hearings may be reducing the likelihood Trump runs again, but if he does run, it’s truly terrifying that he can count on using the political press as easily as ever.
We’re taking a break next week to celebrate tiny American flags and great big American democracy. What better way to celebrate the 4th than to sign your friends up for Breaking the Vote?