At the end of Tuesday’s Jan. 6 panel hearing, committee vice chair Liz Cheney (R-WY) offered up a surprising revelation: Former president Donald Trump, she said, had personally reached out to a witness after ex-Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson gave her jaw-dropping testimony last month.
Now we’ve learned new details about the person on the receiving end of Trump’s phone call. CNN, NBC News and ABC News reported late Wednesday that the person was a White House support staff member who was a witness in the House Jan. 6 Committee’s investigation.
The outlets confirmed that the support staffer was the witness Cheney was referring to during the panel’s hearing on Tuesday, when she revealed that Trump had tried to call “a witness you have not yet seen in these hearings.”
“That person declined to answer or respond to President Trump’s call and instead alerted their lawyer to the call,” the Wyoming Republican said. “Their lawyer alerted us.”
The witness would have been able to corroborate part of Hutchinson’s testimony, according to CNN. Their conversations with the committee are reportedly not part of a deposition.
CNN and ABC News both noted that the staffer didn’t have regular contact with Trump, making the call particularly surprising and concerning.
None of the three outlets identified the person by name; CNN reported that its sources had not given a name and had only provided a description of the person’s position in the White House.
On Tuesday, Cheney said the committee had reported Trump’s call to the Justice Department.
“Let me say one more time, we will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously,” she warned
Cheney had previously brought up the issue of potential witness intimidation from Trumpworld at Hutchinson’s hearing. The committee vice chair presented two quotes from testimony the panel had heard that described menacing calls from Trump allies to a witness Cheney did not name.
Politico, the Washington Post and the Guardian have since reported that it was Hutchinson who received those calls.
