#mark meadows

Lisa Needham at Daily Kos:

The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has Cassidy Hutchinson in its crosshairs, investigating whether the former White House aide lied to Congress when she testified before the Jan. 6 committee in 2022. If you’re wondering how ginning up perjury charges against Hutchinson, who worked for former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, is a job for the Civil Rights Division, get in line. That agency is supposed to protect the civil rights of Americans in areas like housing, immigration, voting, and employment. But under President Donald Trump, the DOJ has devolved into nothing but a weapon to be turned against anyone who has ever displeased him. So, apparently the work of protecting civil rights now includes the dirty work of attacking Trump’s opponents. 

Helpfully for Trump, the civil rights division is headed by Harmeet Dhillon, the truest of true believers in the Big Lie that the 2020 election was “stolen.” Dhillon has been bragging for months about her work to “bring to justice those who weaponized Jan. 6,” including begging Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok to agree with her that somehow she can ignore statutes of limitations in her noble quest to destroy anyone who thought that it was sorta kinda bad that Trump incited an insurrection.

So, the Civil Rights Division it is. The New York Times reported that going after Hutchinson would normally have fallen to former Fox News talking head Jeanine Pirro, the mighty U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. However, Pirro has had just a wee bit of trouble securing indictments.

The Times also reported that investigating Hutchinson may have been a last-ditch attempt by the now-booted Attorney General Pam Bondi to hang on to her job by showing that she would agree to any ham-fisted, illegal investigation Trump wanted. Gotta keep the real boss happy, right? Hutchinson is under fire because an unnamed Trump ally in Congress ostensibly “referred” this to the DOJ, which led to the investigation.

[...] It’s honestly sort of surprising that it took the DOJ this long to go after Hutchinson, given how explosive her testimony was. Her account of the day was pivotal, and she resisted incredible pressure—including job opportunities, money, and threats—from Trumpworld in choosing to appear.  Learning that Trump knew his supporters were armed but demanded security let them through anyway pretty much confirmed that Trump was fully aware that the people he was whipping into a frenzy were more than ready to turn violent. Learning that Trump attacked his own Secret Service agent when he wouldn’t take him to the Capitol to watch the violence he unleashed pretty much confirmed that Trump was both aware of and excited about the insurrection he created.