(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Then-January 6th Commission Vice Chair Liz Cheney secretly communicated with the committee’s “star witness,” Cassidy Hutchinson, pressuring her to change lawyers in a possible ethics violation, according to a new report from Just the News.
Just the News reported on Tuesday that Hutchinson fired her attorney, Stefan Passantino, in 2022, just days after she began communicating with Cheney over the encrypted app Signal. Just the News’s source is the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, which also published a press release on the matter.
Passantino told Just the News that he never authorized Cheney to talk to his client without him present.
🧵NEW: Chairman @RepLoudermilk obtained NEVER BEFORE SEEN correspondence between J6 Select Committee’s Liz Cheney and Cassidy Hutchinson.
— Oversight Subcommittee (@OversightAdmn) October 15, 2024
“I absolutely had no knowledge at the time that Congresswoman Liz Cheney was communicating with my client behind my back—either directly, through her staff, or through cutouts,” Passantino told Just the News. “I filed suit against Congress over a year ago on these matters and had absolute confidence in my claims at the time I filed them.”
According to Just the News, DC Bar rules state that “a lawyer shall not communicate or cause another to communicate about the subject of the representation with a person known to be represented by another lawyer in the matter, unless the lawyer has the prior consent of the lawyer representing such other person or is authorized by law or a court order to do so.”
Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., whose committee uncovered the Cheney-Hutchinson communications, told Just the News that he finds Cheney’s actions unethical—and possibly illegal.
“Not only is communicating with a witness without their attorney present unethical, it undermines the integrity of an investigation,” Loudermilk reportedly said.
“As a licensed attorney, Liz Cheney would have known the ethical and legal issues with this communication,” he said.
“Clearly, Cheney did not want Stefan Passantino representing Hutchinson; as shortly after Cheney and Hutchinson began communicating, Cheney convinced Hutchinson to fire Passantino, and arranged for a new attorney to represent Hutchinson pro-bono. “
Hutchinson would also change her testimony, as has been widely documented.
Specifically, Hutchinson testified on June 28, 2022, that Trump tried to control the steering wheel while being driven to the White House following his Jan. 6 speech. Additionally, she claimed that the former president lunged at another agent.
However, in her previous three transcribed interviews on February 23, 2022, March 7, 2022, and May 17, 2022, she did not mention that interaction, according to a later investiatino from Loudermilk’s committee.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
