CNN Won’t Explain Omitting Exculpatory Evidence In Passantino Hit Piece

In 2022, a team of reporters at CNN published multiple hit pieces against a former Trump White House attorney who spent the next two years facing bar complaints and defending his law license. That attorney, Stefan Passantino, says CNN possessed exculpatory evidence but excluded it from the original piece — an assertion buoyed by the fact that CNN separately published transcripts containing such evidence on their website the following day. Now the outlet is refusing to go on the record to answer questions regarding their original omission.

On Tuesday, the network declined to comment on the record to The Federalist about why CNN apparently dismissed exculpatory evidence in their reporting of allegations against Stefan Passantino, a former head deputy ethics counsel in the Trump White House. Passantino was Cassidy Hutchinson’s initial lawyer to deal with requests from the Jan. 6 Committee. 

On Dec. 21, 2022, the network published an “exclusive” with the headline, “Trump’s former White House ethics lawyer told Cassidy Hutchinson to give misleading testimony to January 6 committee, sources say.”

As the House Committee on Jan. 6 wrapped up its work before the Republican majority was sworn in a month later, “sources familiar with the committee’s work” claimed Stefan Passantino urged her to lie about how much she remembered. Then she changed counsel before appearing publicly before the panel in June 2022. Here, Hutchinson became the Democrats’ breakout star when she relayed hearing others tell her about then-President Donald Trump’s supposed attempt to hijack a Secret Service vehicle. Hutchinson’s sources immediately went on record to deny her claims following her public appearance.

“Though the committee declined to identify the people, CNN has learned that Stefan Passantino, the top ethics attorney in the Trump White House, is the lawyer who allegedly advised his then-client, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, to tell the committee that she did not recall details that she did, sources familiar with the committee’s work tell CNN,” the network reported in its first December hit piece.

CNN cited a committee report and included a statement from Passantino denying the allegation but did not include Hutchinson’s full testimony from a Sept. 14, 2022 interview with the committee in which she herself said Passantino “didn’t tell [her] to lie.” She even said he told her “not to lie.” The transcript of the interview discussion was posted by CNN the day after the “exclusive,” and the network only briefly reported Hutchinson’s comments that “Passantino told her not to lie” halfway through a second story also published on Dec. 22, 2022.

“Cassidy Hutchinson told the January 6 committee she felt pressure from Trump allies not to talk and instead risk ‘contempt.’” the Dec. 22 headline read.

“The final straw for former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson with her first attorney, paid through allies of former President Donald Trump, came when he told her to stop cooperating with the January 6 House select committee even if she risked a contempt of Congress charge, transcripts of her interviews and sources familiar with her testimony tell CNN,” the story read.

An October report from House Republicans investigating the Jan. 6 Committee found Hutchinson was communicating directly with Jan. 6 Select Committee Vice-Chair Liz Cheney without Passantino’s knowledge while he was representing her. This report also notes how “the Subcommittee obtained messages between” television commentator Alyssa Farah Griffin and Hutchinson “where Hutchinson admits that Passantino was acting in her best interest and that she agreed with his counsel.”

Passantino said on Tucker Carlson’s podcast this month he was notified of a bar investigation into him just hours after one of CNN’s stories was published.

“It was not lost on me that a lot of the people who were on the Jan. 6 Committee who might potentially have had reason to give this to CNN were now all contributors,” such as Adam Kinzinger, Passantino said. “But what was particularly painful for me,” Passantino added, “was two hours after that story breaks, I then get a notification from the District of Columbia Bar, saying: This is to notify you that we have an open bar investigation relating to all of this conduct.”

During his interview with Tucker Carlson, Passantino recalled his discussion with a CNN reporter prior to the publishing of the first story in 2022. He remembered noting to the reporter that if “CNN is going to run a story identifying [him] as a criminal, and you are in possession of … exculpatory documents, you have an obligation to run that.”

The reporter responded by saying, “That’s not newsworthy,” Passantino said.

CNN did not give The Federalist a response when asked about this interaction.

Passantino also claimed during the interview that CNN told him the outlet was, prior to running the story, in possession of a September 14 transcript in which Hutchinson allegedly identified Passantino as “the person who told her to lie” about what she remembered.

Passantino went on to face a pair of bar complaints threatening his law license in Washington, D.C., and Georgia. Legal watchdogs in both jurisdictions dismissed the allegations of misconduct from Passantino in March this year following thorough investigations.

In October of this year, Passantino filed bar complaints of his own through America First Legal against Cheney and the director of the 65 Project, the group that orchestrated the complaint in Georgia. In September, a federal judge also denied a motion to dismiss Passantino’s defamation lawsuit against a legal pundit for MSNBC for peddling CNN’s claims he coached Hutchinson to lie.

Tristan Justice is a national correspondent for The Federalist and the co-author of “Fat and Unhappy: How ‘Body Positivity’ Is Killing Us (and How to Save Yourself).” He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at [email protected]. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here. Buy “Fat and Unhappy” here.