Trump’s White House lawyer challenges Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony on handwritten note

Trump’s former White House attorney Eric Herschmann claims a handwritten note regarding a potential statement then-President Donald Trump might issue during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was written by him in a meeting at the White House that afternoon, not by White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
During the committee hearing on Tuesday, Jan. 6, Rep. Liz Cheney displayed a handwritten note that Hutchinson said he wrote after Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, gave her a note card and pen to take dictation.
Sources familiar with the matter said Herschmann previously told the committee that he wrote the memo.
“The handwritten note that Cassidy Hutchinson testified to was written by her was actually written by Eric Herschmann on January 6, 2021,” a spokesperson for Herschmann told ABC News on Tuesday evening.
“All sources with direct knowledge and law enforcement have and will confirm that it was written by Mr. Herschmann,” the spokesperson said.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Hutchinson, testifying to the note, said, “It’s a note that I wrote under the direction of the chief of staff on January 6, probably around 3 a.m..”
“And it’s on the Chief of Staff’s correspondence card, but is that your handwriting, Mrs. Hutchinson?” Rep. Cheney asked.
Cassidy Hutchinson, who was an aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows during the administration of former President Donald Trump, arrives to testify at a House Select Committee public hearing to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol, on Capitol Hill, June 28, 2022.
Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
“It’s my handwriting,” Hutchinson replied.
Hutchinson, a former Meadows senior aide, said Meadows handed him the note card and a pen and began dictating a potential statement for Trump to release amid the Capitol riot.
Hutchinson also said that Herschmann suggested editing the statement and “putting ‘without legal permission'”.
In response to Herschmann’s claim, a spokesperson for the Jan. 6 committee said, “The committee has been diligent about this and has found Ms. Hutchinson’s account to be credible on this matter. Although we understand that she and Mr. Herschmann may have different memories of who wrote the note, what is ultimately important is that the two White House officials believed that the president should have immediately ordered his supporters to leave the capitol building.
“The note commemorated that,” the committee spokesman said. “But Mr. Trump didn’t take that step at the time.”
The Jan. 6 committee repeatedly relied on Herschmann’s candid and sometimes vulgar testimony throughout the June hearings, including when the former White House attorney said he had shot down the plan. former Trump Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark seeking to cancel the 2020 election.
Herschmann, a former White House attorney for Trump, also defended former President Trump in Trump’s first impeachment trial and worked in the West Wing as a senior adviser.
A lawyer for Hutchinson did not respond to an ABC News request for comment, nor did Meadows.