A well-known Georgia attorney advised a witness to avoid providing information to a congressional committee investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, according to testimony unveiled Thursday.
Cassidy Hutchinson, the former White House aide who provided some of the most sensational testimony during hearings held last summer by the U.S. House’s Jan. 6 committee, told investigators that attorney Stefan Passantino also offered to find her jobs as she prepared to testify. And he said she would be “taken care of” if she remained loyal to Trump, whose political action committee was paying her legal bills.
“I want to make this clear to you: Stefan never told me to lie,” Hutchinson told investigators during an interview in September, according to a transcript the committee released Thursday. “He specifically told me, ‘I don’t want you to perjure yourself, but ‘I don’t recall’ isn’t perjury. They don’t know what you can and can’t recall.’ ”
Passantino led the White House Counsel’s ethics office under Trump in 2017-18 and has been well known in Republican politics in Georgia. He issued a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution saying he had “represented Ms. Hutchinson honorably, ethically and fully consistent with her sole interests as she communicated them to me.”
“I believed Ms. Hutchinson was being truthful and cooperative with the Committee throughout the several interview sessions in which I represented her,” he said.
Hutchinson served as an aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows under Trump. Passantino represented her after the House Jan. 6 committee subpoenaed her testimony earlier this year.
In interviews with the committee in September, Hutchinson said she initially did not know for sure who was paying Passantino to represent her, though she suspected it was “Trump world.” She said she asked, but he declined to tell her.
“And he said, ‘If you want to know at the end, we’ll let you know, but we’re not telling people where funding is coming from right now,’ ” Hutchinson told investigators. “‘Don’t worry, we’re taking care of you. Like, you’re never going to get a bill for this, so if that’s what you’re worried about.’ ”
According to The New York Times, Trump’s Save America PAC paid for Passantino to represent Hutchinson and other witnesses who appeared before the Jan. 6 panel.
She said Passantino also discouraged her from telling investigators too much. “The less you remember, the better,” Hutchinson said he told her.
One example: Hutchinson testified during the summer that Trump wanted to go to the U.S. Capitol after urging his supporters to do the same during the Jan. 6, 2021, rally that evolved into a riot.
When Secret Service agents refused to take him because it wasn’t safe, Hutchinson testified that Trump became so angry that he lunged at one of the agents and tried to grab the steering wheel of the vehicle he was sitting in. Hutchinson said she heard the story from one of the agents present, though her account has been disputed.
Hutchinson said Passantino urged her not to repeat the story to investigators even if they asked about it.
“I remember he, like, sat back in his chair, and he’s like, ‘no, no, no, no, no. We don’t want to go there. We don’t want to talk about that,’ ” she told investigators.
Hutchinson said Passantino talked about finding her jobs as she prepared for congressional interviews, though the jobs never materialized. She expressed anxiety about not being forthcoming with the committee initially and eventually replaced Passantino with other attorneys.
“It is not uncommon for clients to change lawyers because their interests or strategies change,” Passantino told the AJC. “It is also not uncommon for a third-party, including a political committee, to cover a client’s fees at the client’s request.”
In the executive summary of its final report, released Monday, the House committee appeared to express concerns about Passantino’s conduct.
“The committee has substantial concerns regarding potential efforts to obstruct its investigation, including by certain counsel (some paid by groups connected to the former president) who may have advised clients to provide false or misleading testimony to the committee,” the report says.
It says such actions could violate federal law, and “both the U.S. Department of Justice and the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office have already obtained information relevant to these matters, including from the committee directly.”
Passantino said the House committee “never reached out to me to get the facts.”
He said he is taking a leave of absence from the Michael Best law firm, where he now practices. He remains a partner at the firm Elections LLC.
Staff writer Tia Mitchell contributed to this article.
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