When House Republicans summoned former special counsel Jack Smith to Capitol Hill in January, the prosecutor probably expected a series of questions related to his criminal cases against then-former President Donald Trump. That’s not quite what happened.

Instead, GOP lawmakers seemed preoccupied with, of all people, Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who served as Trump’s right hand in his first term.

In his testimony, Smith made clear that Hutchinson’s testimony played little to no role in his decision to bring criminal charges against Trump. Congressional Republicans apparently didn’t much care: Two months later, the GOP’s Jan. 6 committee — which is intended to serve as a conservative counterweight to the actual, bipartisan Jan. 6 select committee — asked Trump’s Justice Department to go after Hutchinson, alleging she lied to Congress during her 2022 testimony.

As a rule, when members of Congress refer someone to the Justice Department for prosecution, it sounds dramatic, but there’s no guarantee prosecutors will take the referral seriously. The DOJ might appreciate a heads-up from lawmakers about suspected wrongdoing, but it’s just as likely to ignore the recommendation.

In this case, common sense suggested that Main Justice would blow off a criminal referral of Hutchinson, recognizing it as more of a political stunt than a serious suggestion. As it turns out, the opposite has happened.

MS NOW confirmed this week that the Justice Department is seeking a federal criminal indictment against Hutchinson, and as recently as Tuesday, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division had presented evidence to a federal grand jury.

The developments come several months after The New York Times reported then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, desperate to impress Trump before she was fired, personally intervened in the case and initiated an inquiry into Hutchinson, ignoring DOJ officials who expressed skepticism about whether there was a viable criminal case.

A separate Times report noted that then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche — who has since succeeded Bondi — also “pushed prosecutors to investigate” the former White House aide.

The matter was then given to Harmeet Dhillon, the controversial Trump loyalist who runs the Civil Rights Division, which wouldn’t appear to have any relevant jurisdiction over a case like this.

Time will tell what, if anything, comes of the investigation, but the fact that Hutchinson is a Team Trump target is itself evidence of a twisted political environment in which people can expect to face prosecutorial scrutiny for having wronged the incumbent president, who remains desperate to use the levers of federal power to punish anyone he perceives as an enemy.

It’s worth noting for context that Kash Patel, prior to the podcast personality becoming the FBI director, included Hutchinson on his notorious “government gangsters” enemies list.

Based on the publicly available information, there’s no reason to believe Hutchinson, who delivered stunning testimony more than four years ago about what transpired on Jan. 6, did anything wrong. But the president himself has used his social media platform to talk about Hutchinson; he clearly controls the DOJ; and Blanche has already made it abundantly clear that he doesn’t see a problem with Trump trying to use federal law enforcement to punish his foes. Watch this space.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post Why Trump’s Justice Department is still trying to indict Cassidy Hutchinson appeared first on MS NOW.

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