The Associated Press is performing exactly as the Democrat-run January 6 Committee hoped the media would, reporting Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony as fact, and that it was not contradicted by former White House counsel Pat Cipollone.
Hutchinson made a number of sensational factual claims last month that were immediately disputed, such as the claim that then-President Donald Trump tried to seize the steering wheel of his car, a claim that was contested by the Secret Service.
The Secret Service made the unusual public statement that the January 6 Committee had not attempted to contact it to confirm the details of Hutchinson’s account. That pattern was repeated with other extraordinary claims Hutchinson made.
For example, the committee did not ask Cipollone whether he had, as Hutchinson claimed, said that Trump officials could be “charged with every crime imaginable.” Members of the committee admitted they did not ask him to confirm the quote.
When questioned — even by sympathetic establishment media outlets — about why the committee had not sought to corroborate Hutchinson’s account, members claimed — falsely — that they never ask witnesses about what others have said.
They also repeated the mantra that Cipollone had not contradicted Hutchinson — which, of course, was the point of not asking him about what she said. Instead of treating Hutchinson’s claims with due skepticism, the AP’s Lisa Mascaro followed the Democrats’ line in a report Monday about upcoming testimony on Tuesday:
This week’s session comes after former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson provided stunning accounts under oath of an angry Trump who knowingly sent armed supporters to the Capitol on Jan. 6 and then refused to quickly call them off as violence erupted, siding with the rioters as they searched menacingly for Vice President Mike Pence.
Trump has said Cassidy’s account is not true. But Cipollone at Friday’s private session did not contradict earlier testimony. Raskin said the panel planned to use “a lot” of Cipollone’s testimony.
Even the New York Times noted that Cipollone had warned the panel privately he did not agree with Hutchinson’s account. But to the AP, it was uncontested.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.