IT'S A RICO CASE:

Among the transcripts released by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S Capitol is one from Cassidy Hutchinson, the former top aide to Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows. In it, Hutchinson tells the interviewers that what she calls "Trump world" set her up with her first attorney, Stefan Passantino. He refused to tell her who was paying the bills--it was Trump's political action committee--and she worried that "they will ruin my life... if I do anything that they don't want me to do."

Emphasizing repeated references to "loyalty," and "Trump world," Hutchinson told the committee that Passantino urged her not to tell what she knew, prodding her to say she didn't recall events she clearly did. "If you don't 100 percent recall something, even if you don't recall a date or somebody who may or may not have been in the room, that's an entirely fine answer, and we want you to use that response as much as you deem necessary." "Look," he told her, "the goal with you is to get you in and out. Keep your answers short, sweet, and simple, seven words or less. The less the committee thinks you know, the better, the quicker it's going to go. It's going to be painless. And then you're going to be taken care of."

"We just want to focus on protecting the President," Passantino said. "We're gonna get you a really good job in Trump world. You don't need to apply to other places. We're gonna get you taken care of. We want to keep you in the family." Hutchinson told of being scared of what they could do to her. "I'd seen how vicious they can be. And part of that's politics, but...I think some of it is unique to Trump world, the level they'll go to to tear somebody else down. And I was scared of that." [...]

Hutchinson's moral reckoning stands in stark contrast to a court filing yesterday that revealed Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity pushed the idea on air that Trump had won the 2020 election even though, as he said under oath, "I did not believe it for one second." Dominion Voting Systems has filed a $1.6 billion lawsuit against the Fox News Channel and its parent company, Fox Corporation, for defamation after its frequent declarations that voting systems rigged the election. Testimony like Hannity's makes a strong case that the outlet knew it was lying when it pushed the story that Trump had won the election.

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