Thurday's postcard, and a tribute to Cassidy Hutchinson
March 23, 2023
Spring run-off near Badger Lake
Cassidy Hutchinson’s Parable
Among the fateful twists in my life is that I grew up in the tropics with freckled, Irish skin in an era before sunscreen. I try to approach this part of my history with acceptance and humor. As my head was being adjusted into a tire-sized ring for “photodynamic” therapy Monday morning I couldn’t resist asking aloud: “Isn’t this what happened to Mike Pence?”
This will help explain why—in post treatment sequester—I spent a beautiful spring day indoors yesterday, over-ingesting bad news by radio and internet.
To write “bad news” is not nearly accurate enough.
We are so beyond that. Bad news is an earthquake, a drought, an avalanche that closes I-90 in the mountains, a red tide closing beaches in Florida. What rattles me are the deeper trends, not just with climate change but the persisting assault on civil society by the Trump-MAGA movement. Aside from shielding the wealthiest 1 percent from taxation, today’s Republican Party just seems committed to eradicating democratic values and institutions that stand in the way of a white-grievance, authoritarian state.
As a journalist I’ve focused on the corruptions that have come to light in the civil defamation lawsuit against Fox News brought by Dominion Voting Systems. As several others have observed, the undisputed testimony and records reveal a crazy, upside-down abuse of what many of us regard as a sacred, public trust, namely the willful promotion of a bogus story—a stolen presidential election—to hold an audience for advertisers.
The audience, of course, was Republican-voting Trump supporters who viewed Donald Trump as their avatar, or as he put it in a recent speech to his most ardent followers—“I am your retribution.”
Trump awaits indictment, now, from state and federal prosecutors. But the crazy shame of it, for us, is that his as-yet unpunished criminality has been a well-known part of his business and political practices for years. Columns and books were written by well-respected writers, including Pultizer Prize-winning financial writer David Cay Johnston. It’s telling that one of the writers who warned most passionately about Trump was Tony Schwartz who ghost-wrote Trump’s popular book The Art of the Deal.
Despite all the splatter about Trump being prosecuted for purely political reasons, it was Trump’s Justice Department that pointed to him as “individual one” in the case against former Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen. Cohen was sent to prison for carrying out Trump’s orders. Likewise, the Trump organization’s Chief Financial Officer, Allen Weisselberg, pled guilty to 11 felonies last year. The list of Trump associates convicted of major crimes goes on from there.
It is mind-boggling to think about how such a rotten person could get elected President, and all the more disheartening that he still effectively controls one of our two major parties.
Cassidy Hutchinson testifying before the 1/6 Committee last summer (image courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
The voice that cut through this insanity, at least for me, is that of Cassidy Hutchinson. You may recall Ms. Hutchinson for her testimony last summer before the Congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol. She was a top aide to former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and from her West Wing office, within steps of the Oval Office, she was privy to much of the drama that unfolded on 1/6.
Unable to afford a lawyer, Hutchinson reluctantly and nervously accepted one from what she termed “Trump World.” That lawyer, Stefan Passantino, is now facing a hefty bar complaint, alleging he engaged in witness tampering by pressuring the then-26 year-old Hutchinson to remain loyal to President Trump.
Hutchinson said she was promised that “Trump World” would take care of her as long as she followed Passantino’s directions. But in April of 2022, as she reviewed a legal document summarizing her testimony, she had a crisis of conscience.
Among the people she confided in was her mother.
“I am completely indebted to these people. They will ruin my life, Mom, if I do anything that they don’t want me to do,” she told her mom.
She looked to the past, to Watergate, and found the story of Alexander Butterfield, the White House aide who came forward to the Senate Watergate Committee about the audio-taping system President Nixon had installed in the Oval Office. The tapes sealed Nixon’s fate, and forced his resignation.
On the heels of her crisis Cassidy Hutchinson desperately sought to replace her lawyer (and ultimately did, with a pro bono attorney) and the rest is history.
She stood in the lights and told her story. And the way she told it—the description of how she looked herself in the mirror and realized she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t tell the truth—is a modern Bible story, a parable of good facing down evil to the core.
It’s too soon to know how the current, historic maelstrom in our politics plays out, but my sense is the central question has to be answered one way or the other. Trump would like us to believe—as his supporters believe, or seem to—that his legal troubles are driven by a nefarious deep state of insiders who despise the common people he claims to champion. The counter-narrative has a darker and indelible mark of truth to it: that it’s the biggest scam in our history; that Trump will pass into history as a grifter, a liar, and a criminal.
There will come a time when the dust will settle and something like the truth will prevail. When that happens, we should remember Cassidy Hutchison, and thank her again.
—tjc