Cassidy Hutchinson's Testimony: A Primer in Authoritarian Corruption
"The less you remember, the better." White House lawyer Passantino to Hutchinson before her testimony
"The less you remember, the better." This is the advice Trump White House ethics lawyer Stefan Passantino gave his client Cassidy Hutchinson before she talked to the House Jan. 6 Committee. Hutchinson’s experiences with Trump’s inner circle (she was an aide to Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows), as recounted in the transcript of her interview, are a window onto how authoritarian corruption operates.
The failure of the attempt by Trump and the GOP to overthrow the 2020 election set in motion a massive Republican coverup and damage control operation. It shows many similarities with methods of crime concealment used by authoritarian states and parties and organized crime.
Each participant in such coverups is bound by omertà (the Mafia code of silence), which means they must say nothing that might harm their superior --and all of them must protect the Capo. Meadows used another aide, Ben Williamson, to remind Hutchinson of the rules right before her June testimony: he "know[s] you'll do the right thing tomorrow...and protect him and the boss."
"The less you remember, the better." This is the advice Trump White House ethics lawyer Stefan Passantino gave his client Cassidy Hutchinson before she talked to the House Jan. 6 Committee. Hutchinson’s experiences with Trump’s inner circle (she was an aide to Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows), as recounted in the transcript of her interview, are a window onto how authoritarian corruption operates.
The failure of the attempt by Trump and the GOP to overthrow the 2020 election set in motion a massive Republican coverup and damage control operation. It shows many similarities with methods of crime concealment used by authoritarian states and parties and organized crime.
Each participant in such coverups is bound by omertà (the Mafia code of silence), which means they must say nothing that might harm their superior --and all of them must protect the Capo. Meadows used another aide, Ben Williamson, to remind Hutchinson of the rules right before her June testimony: he "know[s] you'll do the right thing tomorrow...and protect him and the boss."
Instead, Hutchinson bravely recounted what she saw and heard in proximity to Meadows and other corrupt GOP elites up through the awful hours of violence on Jan. 6.
We have Hutchinson to thank for stating she overheard talk about Trump intending to return to the Capitol on Jan. 6 and perhaps even enter the Chamber. This is unsurprising if you study coups (I argued in a June interview that it was highly likely he tried to get there), but Trump loyalists knew that this information could be political dynamite. “No No No. We don’t want to go there,” Passantino said vehemently during their coaching session — there being the fact that Trump desired to be surrounded by his private thug army as he announced his victory.
The devil is in the details, and Hutchinson’s account contains many damning observations, such as Meadows’ lack of reaction to the news that the violence had started. He remained impassive and continued to scroll on his phone. The absence of surprise or alarm is another sign that violence was always part of the plan.
As I write in the corruption chapter of Strongmen, corruption is a process as well as a set of practices. Authoritarian leaders encourage changes in ethical and behavioral norms among government and party functionaries that over time make things that were considered illegal or immoral into acceptable actions, whether it is election fraud, lying to the public, or insurrection.
Shifting a bureaucratic and political climate to reward lawlessness starts with small things, as when Trump let those who worked for him know that the Hatch Act (which forbids government employees from engaging in certain forms of political activity) was an obstacle to his authoritarian aims. That's why at least ten Trump Administration officials, including Kellyanne Conway, felt free to violate it. “Let me know when the jail sentence starts,” was Conway’s sarcastic response to a reporter’s question about the impropriety.
Trump rewarded arrogance toward the rule of law and unethical behavior, which is why unscrupulous individuals like Passantino and Meadows rose in status during the Trump years and were in place to exercise influence when the power grab began. As the testimony of Hutchinson and others show, the conspirators held out the prospect of pardons and job offers to recruit people for election subversion and the coup and get them to stay silent afterwards. Such tactics are commonly used by authoritarians: Chilean Augusto Pinochet pardoned human rights abusers and “concealers” —those who wiped the records of abusers clean.
Passantino may have failed to intimidate Hutchinson, but he managed his part of the coverup well enough to be "taken care of" by “the family” of Trump loyalists. Once Hutchinson's testimony drew public attention to his practices, he took a leave from his job at the law firm Michael Best & Friedrich. Luckily another law firm he founded, “Elections LLC,” earns millions from Trump-affiliated political action committees.
As for Hutchinson, she continued to work for Trump for more than two months after he left the White House, but when she broke the code of silence with her 2022 testimonies she became an enemy and had to go into hiding.
It will take time to digest the Jan. 6 Committee’s final report and the transcripts that come out of its work. If Hutchinson’s is any indication, they will be a goldmine for anyone who wants to understand how political, administrative and political party cultures shifted under the impetus of Trump's authoritarian ambitions. This encouraged hundreds of federal employees, sitting GOP lawmakers included, to join the conspiracy to overthrow the government and do anything necessary, including backing a violent insurrection, to keep the Capo in power and protect him even when the coup failed.