Grand Jury Hears Evidence on Cassidy Hutchinson’s Jan. 6 Account

A federal grand jury in Washington has been shown evidence on whether former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson made false statements to the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. As of yet, no charge has been filed.

Fox News Digital reported Thursday, citing a source familiar with the matter, that the grand jury has already heard evidence and that more could be presented as soon as next week. CBS News, citing two sources, and The Washington Post, citing two people familiar with the matter, reported the same presentation. Punchbowl News reported first that prosecutors are seeking an indictment. The New York Post reported that Hutchinson had not been subpoenaed to appear as of Thursday. The inquiry is being handled through the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, not the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, the usual home for a false-statements case. A department spokesman said the department does not confirm or deny investigations.

Hutchinson was a special assistant to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. She became the committee’s most watched witness at a televised hearing on June 28, 2022, after several closed-door interviews. Public reporting has not identified which statements the grand jury is reviewing. The accounts that drew the sharpest contradictions are on the record.

The center of the dispute is what she said happened in the presidential SUV after Trump’s Ellipse speech. Hutchinson did not claim to have seen it. She said deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato pulled her into his office, where Secret Service agent Bobby Engel was sitting and looked “somewhat discombobulated.” She claimed Ornato said that Trump, told he could not go to the Capitol, said something to the effect of “I’m the f’ing president, take me up to the Capitol now.” She said Ornato told her Trump “reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel,” that Engel grabbed his arm and said they were going back to the West Wing, and that Trump then “used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engel.” She said Ornato motioned toward his clavicles as he told the story, and that Engel did not correct it.

Ornato denied the briefing. Sources close to him told Fox News and NBC News the day of the hearing that he first heard the steering-wheel account during her public testimony and was willing to say so under oath. A source close to Engel said the same. A source close to the Secret Service told Fox that Trump was furious in the SUV and did want to go to the Capitol, and that the steering-wheel account was false. Trump wrote on Truth Social that the story was “sick” and fraudulent, and that grabbing the wheel “wouldn’t even have been possible.”

A March 2024 report from Rep. Barry Loudermilk’s House Administration subcommittee quoted the driver’s transcribed testimony: “He never grabbed the steering wheel. I didn’t see him, you know, lunge to try to get into the front seat at all.” The same report said Ornato, in a Nov. 29, 2022, interview, testified that the first time he heard the story Hutchinson attributed to him was during her public hearing. Loudermilk’s report also said Hutchinson gave three transcribed interviews before substantially revising her account in a fourth, and that the select committee promoted the revised version while withholding firsthand testimony that cut against it. The committee did not refer her. Loudermilk later sent a referral, backed by House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan. The New York Times reported in April 2026 that the Civil Rights Division had begun looking at whether she lied under oath.

A second set of lines from the same hearing has not been tied by name to the grand jury, but it is part of the testimony Republicans have treated as a false-statements candidate. Hutchinson said she was “in the vicinity of a conversation” and overheard Trump say something to the effect of “I don’t f’ing care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the f’ing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here.” She attributed the weapons list — knives, pistols, rifles, bear spray, spears on flagpoles — to Ornato, in a morning briefing with Meadows. That account was offered as something she overheard, not something she saw at the magnetometers.

Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig, speaking on CNN Thursday night, focused on the structure of the SUV story. He said Hutchinson did not testify that she witnessed the event. She testified that Ornato told her about it. “The question is not did that event happen,” he said. “It’s just, did this conversation happen between Hutchinson and Ornato?” A grand jury presentation is not a finding that a statement was false. Federal grand juries hear the government’s evidence in secret and can decline to indict.

False statements to Congress are a felony if the government can prove the speaker knew the statement was false and that it was material. Perjury under 18 U.S.C. § 1621 carries up to five years. The reporting available Thursday does not include a target letter, a list of statements, or a timetable beyond the source’s note that more evidence may go to the grand jury next week.