The Media Should Save The ‘Star Witness’ Label For People Who Actually Witnessed Things

Kylee GriswoldJune 30, 2022

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The corrupt corporate media haven’t been able to contain their excitement about the testimony from the 25-year-old former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, whom they’ve called the “missing piece” in the sham Jan. 6 show trial. Another word they have for her? “Star witness.”

“How the Jan. 6 panel’s star witness drew a roadmap for Trump’s culpability,” said one Politico headline on an article categorized as “Insurrection Fallout.”

USA Today went with “Jan. 6 star witness Cassidy Hutchinson torches Trump and aides,” calling the testimony “combustible.”

The Media Should Save The ‘Star Witness’ Label For People Who Actually Witnessed Things 1

The Washington Post, Slate, The Daily Beast, and others used the same “star witness” label, with plenty of other very journalistic vocab words thrown into the mix: “dramatic,” “incriminating,” “bombshell” (not to be confused with the far more salacious “genuinely shocking bombshells“), “damning,” and “explosive” (with this hilarious piece from CNN patting itself on the back by praising the “unflinching” journalists covering the “explosive” show trial).

Within Hutchinson’s testimony, one of the most scandalous parts the media have loved most is a story about then-President Donald Trump in his motorcade demanding to be driven to the Capitol after his rally near the White House on Jan. 6, 2021. When Secret Service told him it wasn’t safe, Trump attempted to grab the steering wheel and lunged at the neck of his security detail chief, the story goes.

A genuinely shocking bombshell from the star witness.

The problem is that Hutchinson was a witness to none of this. Her sworn testimony is that Tony Ornato, another White House aide, told her what had happened to the head of Trump’s security detail, Bobby Engel. It appears Ornato was not in the car at the time either, meaning Hutchinson heard the account from Ornato, who heard the account from Engel.

Predictably and within hours after Hutchinson’s third-hand testimony, reporters learned that both Engel and the driver of the presidential vehicle are “are prepared to testify under oath that neither man was assaulted and that Mr. Trump never lunged for the steering wheel.” Her anecdote is so easily blown to smithereens.

The entire spectacle has been one obvious left-wing trick from the start, from the inception of the nonsensical Jan. 6 committee, to the banning of Republican appointments and adversarial questioning, to the allowance of grapevine accounts of easily disproved stories so the corrupt media can run with them with wall-to-wall coverage of a “star witness.”

It’s a joke. Hutchinson didn’t witness anything. Everything she said about Trump’s “very angry” episode was the kind of pure hearsay that would never be admissible in a real trial, but that’s not what this is. The Jan. 6 circus is nothing more than a Soviet-style show trial intended to destroy the lives of Democrats’ political opponents and accrue more power for themselves.

That’s the media’s primary objective too. If it weren’t, they’d reserve the title “star witness” for people who actually witnessed things.

Kylee Griswold is an assistant editor at The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religion, and the media. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.