Grand jury rejects DOJ bid to indict ex-Trump WH aide Cassidy Hutchinson:

A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., rejected a request by the Department of Justice to indict former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson in connection with her congressional testimony about President Donald Trump‘s conduct during the Jan. 6, 2021, mob attack on the U.S. Capitol, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

MS NOW confirmed the report and said prosecutors in the DOJ‘s Civil Rights Division sought to charge Hutchinson with a crime based on claims she made false statements, citing two people with knowledge of the case.

Senior DOJ lawyer Neville Hedley told Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui in open court on Tuesday afternoon that the grand jury had rejected the requested indictment without naming Hutchinson as the target, according to The Post.

It is extremely rare for a grand jury to refuse to indict when prosecutors present evidence of alleged crimes.

But federal prosecutors in Washington, since Trump took office again in January 2025, have several times failed to obtain a grand jury indictment they sought.

In recent weeks, prosecutors have filed separate criminal cases in U.S. District Court in D.C. against former FBI Director James Comey, and two former FBI officials with charging documents that are not grand jury indictments. In both cases, the alleged conduct occurred years earlier. Typically, in such cases, prosecutors would seek a grand jury indictment.

Comey’s lawyers have accused the DOJ of using a so-called information to charge him in an effort to avoid expiration of the 10-year statute of limitations on the charge of retaining or sharing national defense information. His lawyers have asked a judge to dismiss the case, saying that the deadline for obtaining a grand jury indictment was on Oct. 5, the day the criminal information was filed.

Hutchinson testified in June 2022 to the House Select Committee that investigated the Jan. 6 Capitol riot by a mob of Trump supporters, whose attack delayed for hours the confirmation of former President Joe Biden’s electoral victory in the 2020 election.

She said that after Trump spoke at a rally outside the White House that preceded the attack, then-White House official Tony Ornato asked her, “Did you effing hear what happened in [the president’s vehicle,] The Beast?”

She testified that Ornato told her that when Trump got in the car, he was under the impression from his then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that they going to the Capitol, as he had claimed in his speech to supporters at the rally.

When Robert Engle, the head of Trump’s security detail, said the president could not go there becaue the area was not secure, Trump “had a very strong, a very angry response to that,” Hutchinson testified that Ornato said.

“Tony described him as being irate,” Hutchinson said, noting that Trump had said something like: “I’m the effing president, take me up to the Capitol now, according to Ornato.

When Engel refused again to drive him to the Capitol, Trump “reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at…