Last June, former Mark Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified before the January 6 committee that she had been told President Donald Trump tried to grab the steering wheel of the presidential limousine on January 6, 2021, after he had been told he would not be taken to the Capitol.
This led to some disputes, within the Secret Service, over whether or not this had happened.
Now, there is word that Secret Service agents have testified before the grand jury looking into January 6.
According to NBC News, either five or six Secret Service agents have appeared before the January 6 grand jury. The agents appeared in response to subpoenas, although it “is not known what the agents’ proximity to Trump was on Jan. 6 or what information they may have provided to the grand jury.”
The NBC report added, in reference to Hutchinson’s testimony, that the agents “may be able to confirm, deny or provide more details on a story first told by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson to the now-defunct Jan. 6 committee in Congress,” although it’s not clear whether that is a focus of the probe.
The grand jury has convened in Washington and is looking into whether former President Donald Trump and others committed crimes in relation to their attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
NBC reported that more than 20 Secret Service agents had appeared before the grand jury that was investigating Trump’s handling of classified documents which led to his indictment earlier this month.
It’s not known what the timetable is for any charging decisions from the January 6 grand jury. Most recently, 2020 Donald Trump campaign personnel have been testifying before the grand jury, including Gary Michael Brown, who was deputy director of Election Day operations for Trump’s 2020 campaign.
Brown, per NBC News, had been subpoenaed last year by the January 6 Committee, after it said it found “credible evidence” that Brown was “aware of, and participated in, efforts to promote unsupported allegations of fraud in the November 2020 Presidential election and encourage state legislators to alter the outcome of the November 2020 election by, among other things, appointing alternate slates of electors to send competing electoral votes to the United States Congress.”
The committee also claimed that Brown was part of an effort “to contact Republican members of state legislatures in certain states that former President Trump had lost and urge them to ‘reclaim’ their authority by sending an alternate slate of electors that would support former President Trump.”
Speaking of elections and state legislators, the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday dealt a fatal blow to what is known as the Independent State Legislature doctrine.
According to CNN, the Court, in a 6-3 decision, found that the North Carolina Supreme Court “did not violate the elections clause of the US Constitution when it invalidated the state’s 2022 congressional map.”
“State courts retain the authority to apply state constitutional restraints when legislatures act under the power conferred upon them by the Elections Clause,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his majority opinion in Moore v. Harper.
“Federal courts,” Roberts added, “must not abandon their duty to exercise judicial review.”
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissented, with the other six justices ruling in the majority.
The Independent State Legislature doctrine is a fringe legal theory, which was among those invoked by the Trump campaign in their attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The Supreme Court refused to hear Trump’s case making that argument, although the same three justices — Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch — had endorsed Trump’s legal arguments at the time.
Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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