The Trump Secret Service criminal scandal
No one should be surprised that the most useful witnesses in the January 6th Committee have been people who don’t have any criminal liability of their own when it comes to the election overthrow and Capitol attack, and can therefore simply testify against everyone else. Cassidy Hutchinson, who saw much of the Trump-Meadows crime spree but refused to participate in it, has been the star witness. Others like Bill Barr and Pat Cipollone, who may be hiding their own dark secrets in other areas, have nonetheless been able to testify without putting themselves at legal risk.
In contrast, the more potential criminal liability an individual faces, the more difficult it is for that person to testify to Congress without incriminating himself or herself in the process. It’s not as simple as just pleading the Fifth, because you can only get away with doing that in response to specific questions, not your entire testimony. And if you answer the questions you think won’t incriminate you, you could easily slip up and incriminate yourself anyway.
That’s why people like Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro decided to just let themselves get indicted for contempt of Congress, which comes with a fairly short prison sentence, instead of testifying to Congress and risking making it easier for the DOJ to nail them on charges like seditious conspiracy. All of that brings us to this Trump Secret Service scandal.
When Cassidy Hutchinson publicly testified that Donald Trump tried and failed to commandeer his vehicle from the Secret Service in an attempt at driving himself to the Capitol so he could personally lead the insurrection, it clearly incriminated Trump. It also established the two Secret Service agents in question as material witnesses.
Someone anonymously leaked to the media that these two Secret Service agents disputed Hutchinson’s story. But now a Capitol Police officer has publicly corroborated Hutchinson’s story – even as the Secret Service finds itself under criminal investigation for having deleted agents’ relevant text messages after investigative bodies had formally requested those messages.
In a surreal turn of events, the January 6th Committee has revealed that the two Secret Service agents in question have retained private attorneys who do not work for the Secret Service or the government. The committee is also confirming that these two agents, who had previously given closed door testimony, are no longer cooperating.
To be clear, hiring a criminal defense attorney does not prove that these two agents are guilty of anything. Nor does their refusal to continue cooperating with Congress. But it is an indicator that they fear they’ll end up criminally indicted for something, even if they consider themselves innocent.
There is still no publicly known evidence indicating that anyone in the Secret Service committed any crimes in relation to January 6th. But if these agents were involved in the deletion of their own text messages after Congress requested them, that’s potentially obstruction of justice. And if they gave testimony to Congress that’s since been disproven by the evidence, that would invite criminal liability as well.
So it’s possible that these two agents are hiring criminal defense attorneys simply because they fear going down on a process crime like obstruction or lying to Congress, and not because of anything they did wrong on January 6th. If that’s the case, their best move would to be cut cooperation deals, which could get them immunity. But if they or anyone else in the Secret Service is facing more severe criminal exposure due to actions they took on January 6th, it would be much more difficult for them to cooperate.
In any case the key questions remain: who deleted these text messages, and why? Did someone in the Secret Service delete them merely to try to protect Donald Trump, or was someone in the Secret Service trying to cover up the actions of the Secret Service itself on January 6th?
It’s worth keeping in mind that for every Mark Meadows there is a Cassidy Hutchinson. There are surely other Secret Service personnel who have seen and heard whatever has been going on behind the scenes. It’ll be the job of the January 6th Committee, the Homeland Security Inspector General, and others to figure out who those personnel are – and put them in a position where they decide to testify about what they saw rather than getting themselves indicted for contempt.
