We’re finally in the “it’s all coming out now” stage
Months ago, the January 6th Committee announced that it had caught a Trump White House official allegedly instructing Cassidy Hutchinson to give misleading testimony to the committee, and referred the matter to the Department of Justice. But the committee never did reveal that official’s name.
The committee presumably decided not to publicly reveal the official’s name in order to help the DOJ in its ability to pressure and potentially flip him against bigger fish without interference. In any case, it was yet another one of those Trump era criminal plots that faded from the headlines and was widely presumed to have gone nowhere, simply because the public wasn’t hearing about it anymore.
Now CNN is reporting that the individual in question is Trump White House ethics lawyer Stefan Passantino. Here’s the interesting part: just two weeks ago, ABC News reported that a DOJ grand jury had been subpoenaing communications between 2020 election officials and Trump officials, including – you guessed it – Stefan Passantino. Is this a coincidence? Probably not.
Interestingly, CNN says it got Passantino’s name from someone familiar with the January 6th Committee’s work. So now in the big picture we know that the committee discovered months ago that Passantino was allegedly engaging in felony witness tampering against Hutchinson and referred him to the DOJ, and since that time the DOJ has added Passantino to the list of the specific Trump White House officials who are being investigated. And now that Passantino’s name is out there anyway as a subject or target of the DOJ investigation, someone “familiar with the committee’s work” is confirming to CNN that Passantino is the person who was previously referred to the DOJ for witness tampering.
So why is this all coming out now? Because we’re in the endgame. The January 6th Committee has completed its investigation and is in the process of releasing everything it has. Special Counsel Jack Smith has empaneled a fresh grand jury, for the apparent purpose of bringing indictments. When you get to this part of the endgame, the things that were strategically under wraps begin to finally come out. There will be more of this. Here we go.
