Former special counsel Jack Smith undercut the claims of Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide and witness to the Jan. 6 committee, in recent testimony before Congress.

Smith told the House Judiciary Committee this month that he evaluated Hutchinson’s explosive allegations as part of his investigation and prosecution of the president, according to a transcript released Wednesday. Donald Trump Related to the 2020 election. Smith said they were flawed because Hutchinson did not provide first-hand information.

Asked during the deposition how he would cross-examine Hutchinson, Smith said he would move to suppress parts of her testimony.

Jack Smith denies politics played any role in Trump prosecution at House hearing

Former Special Counsel Jack Smith arrives for closed-door testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, December 17, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“If I were a defense attorney and Ms. Hutchinson was a witness, the first thing I would do is try to exclude some of her testimony because that’s hearsay and I don’t have all of her testimony right now, but I do remember that that was a good part of it,” Smith said.

Smith was also asked about specific claims made by Hutchinson, including that Trump knew some of his supporters would be armed at his rallies and that Trump tried to grab his driver’s steering wheel out of anger.

Hutchinson “was a second or even third-hand witness,” Smith said, adding that other witnesses gave a “different perspective” than hers.

On June 28, 2022, during a public hearing of the House Select Committee on January 6 on Capitol Hill, Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Mark Meadows when he was White House chief of staff in the Trump administration, pointed to her neck and recounted stories involving President Trump. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

“We interviewed, I think, the person who spoke to her and, if I recall correctly, we also interviewed the officers who were present, including the officer in the car,” Smith said. “If I recall correctly, that officer said President Trump was very angry and wanted to go to the Capitol, but his version of events was different than what Cassidy Hutchinson said she had heard secondhand from others.”

Smith noted that “many of the things in her evidence were second-hand hearsay, things she heard from other people, so that testimony may or may not be admissible and it certainly won’t be as strong as first-hand testimony.”

Hutchinson became a key witness in the Democratic-led Jan. 6 committee investigation. Attack on the U.S. Capitoltestified privately and publicly multiple times. Her testimony grabbed headlines, but her claims became a focus of scrutiny from Republicans, who found the committee’s work lacked credibility because its only Republican members were two outspoken anti-Trump lawmakers.

Hutchinson served as a top aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the final months of Trump’s first term as president, giving her insight into internal discussions among White House officials following the 2020 election.

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Scenes from the riots at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. (Julio Cortez, Archives)

Hutchinson testified under oath during a well-publicized hearing in June 2022 about warnings within the White House about possible violence on Jan. 6 and Trump’s alleged awareness that some supporters attending his rallies would be armed.

In another account that was later challenged by other witnesses, Hutchinson also recalled a conversation in which Trump tried to wrest the steering wheel from a U.S. Secret Service agent because he wanted to go to the Capitol instead of the West Wing.

Hutchinson testified that she was told the president “said something to the effect of, ‘I’m the damn president, get me to the Capitol now,’ to which (the agent) responded, ‘Sir, we have to get back to the West Wing.'” The president reached toward the front of the vehicle and grabbed the steering wheel. “

Hutchinson had not mentioned this particular story in any previous interviews with the committee. She later said she had been withheld at the behest of former lawyer Staffan Passantino.

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Smith was asked about Hutchinson during more than eight hours of closed-door testimony this month that focused on his investigation and prosecution of Trump in connection with the 2020 election and Trump’s alleged retention of classified material.

Smith also defended his investigative actions, including subpoenaing phone data from Senate and House members. He also defended some of his prosecutorial decisions, including seeking a gag order against Trump and filing an unusually streamlined superseding indictment against Trump after the Supreme Court ruled that Trump enjoyed some presidential immunity protections.