Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to President Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, testified on Tuesday in the sixth public hearing of the January 6 Committee that she had heard third-hand accounts that Trump had tried to lead armed protesters in a march on Capitol Hill.
Specifically, Hutchinson testified that she heard deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato say that he heard Robert Engel, the U.S. Secret Service agent on Jan. 6, 2021, claim that Trump tried to seize the wheel of his car to force it to drive to the Capitol.
The testimony was not only hearsay — testifying about what a witness heard someone else say — but hearsay upon hearsay.
In ordinary trials, hearsay evidence is generally excluded in favor of testimony directly from the people who are alleged to have spoken. There are a variety of exceptions to the rule, but our legal system prizes…
