Grand jury refuses to indict former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, AP sources say

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department on Tuesday failed to secure a grand jury indictment against a former White House staffer who provided dramatic but disputed testimony against President Donald Trump before a House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol insurrection, according to two people familiar with the matter.

A grand jury in Washington rejected prosecutors’ request to return an indictment against Cassidy Hutchinson, said the people, who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the case. It’s the latest setback in the Justice Department's efforts to persuade grand jurors in the nation's capital to bring politically sensitive cases.

Details of prosecutors’ allegations against Hutchinson were not immediately clear, but Republican lawmakers had accused her of lying under oath in her explosive testimony in 2022 about Trump’s behavior on Jan. 6, when a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol to halt the congressional certification of his election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

The effort to indict Hutchinson was hardly isolated. It is part of a surge in politically sensitive actions by the Justice Department in the run-up to next week’s midterm elections targeting perceived adversaries of the president, including a new attempt to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and a search by federal agents of the home of outspoken Trump critic and Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

It's highly unusual for grand juries to decline to return indictments, but the Justice Department under Trump has been rebuked by citizens in the nation's capital in a number of high-profile cases. A grand jury in Washington earlier this year declined to indict Democratic lawmakers in connection with a video they recorded urging U.S. service members to follow established military protocols and reject orders they believe to be unlawful.

Hutchinson declined to comment through her lawyer on Tuesday.

Hutchinson's testimony, at a surprise hearing announced just 24 hours earlier, was seen at the time as particularly compelling given her proximity to power as special assistant to Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff.

She described an angry, defiant president who was trying to let armed protesters avoid security screenings at a rally that morning to protest his 2020 election defeat and who later grabbed at the steering wheel of the presidential SUV when the Secret Service refused to let him go to the Capitol. And when the events at the Capitol spiraled toward violence, with the crowd chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” she testified that Trump declined to intervene.

Trump at the time denied on his social media platform, Truth Social, much of what Hutchinson said. He called her a “total phony” and “bad news.”

Hutchinson’s description of the altercation inside the presidential SUV was regarded as particularly explosive, even as she acknowledged during her testimony that she was relaying what she had heard from a White House security official and did not have firsthand knowledge of the episode because she was not there.

Her account was quickly disputed.

In March 2024, House Republicans released a previously undisclosed transcript of the Select Committee’s interview with a Secret Service officer who drove the presidential SUV. That transcript of the presidential limo driver contradicted some of Hutchinson’s testimony but corroborated other aspects of her account, including Trump’s attempt to join the mob scene at the Capitol.

The driver described the president as insistent on going to the Capitol but said he did not see the altercation that Hutchinson described. The driver said Trump “never grabbed the steering wheel" and also said: “I didn’t see him, you know, lunge to try to get into the front seat at all."

Hutchinson has alleged that members of Trump’s inner circle dangled job opportunities and financial assistance while she was cooperating with the committee. She also testified in a closed-door interview released by the committee that a former lawyer of hers — a former ethics counsel in the Trump White House — told her “the less you remember, the better.”

“It feels ridiculous, because in my heart I knew where my loyalties lied, and my loyalties lied with the truth,” she told the committee. “And I never wanted to diverge from that.” The former attorney has disputed that account.

The U.S. House of Representatives impeached Trump in 2021 on allegations that he incited the mob that attacked the Capitol, but he was later acquitted by the Senate. The Justice Department under Biden charged Trump with felony offenses, accusing him of illegally working to overturn his 2020 election loss in the run-up to the Capitol attack, but then-special counsel Jack Smith abandoned the case after Trump’s 2024 presidential victory. Longstanding Justice Department policy says sitting presidents cannot face criminal prosecution.

Hutchinson, a native of Pennington, New Jersey, previously worked in the White House Office of Legislative Affairs and interned for Republicans, including Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at https://apnews.com/hub/capitol-siege.

FILE - Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, testifies before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, at the Capitol in Washington, June 28, 2022. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

FILE - Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, testifies before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, at the Capitol in Washington, June 28, 2022. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

FILE - Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, is sworn in before she testifies before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, at the Capitol in Washington, June 28, 2022. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s broad assertions about Arab contributions to humanity's scientific and literary discoveries at a Republican campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, have drawn criticism just days before midterm elections.

“There's 500 million Arabs in the world and yet they don't produce science," Kennedy said on the campaign trail Monday. “They don’t win the Nobel Prize. They don’t win the Fields Prize. They don’t win the Wolf Prize. They don’t produce literature.”

The health secretary's comments — widely condemned overnight by critics as untrue and racially biased — were made while campaigning in a state with a large Arab American population.

An HHS representative did not immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment.

Arab refers to an ethnic and linguistic identification, while Muslim refers to a religious identity. So while Arabs can be Muslim, Christian, Jewish or of another faith, the vast majority of Muslims worldwide are not Arab.

Here's a closer look at Kennedy's comments.

__Egyptian law scholar Mohamed El Baradei, a diplomat and vice-president of Egypt, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 alongside the International Atomic Energy Agency. Baradei and the IAEA, which he previously chaired, were awarded for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes.

__Tawakkol Karman, a Yemeni journalist, politician, and human rights activist, was a co-recipient of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the first Yemeni and the first Arab woman to win the award.

__Ahmed Zewail, an Egyptian-American scientist, was awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on femtochemistry.

__Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988.

__Jordanian-born Omar M. Yaghi was one of three chemists awarded the Nobel Prize in 2025, and won the 2018 Wolf Prize in Chemistry.

__Sir Michael Atiyah, of Lebanese descent, was a Fields medalist in 1966.

__Yasser Arafat, the former head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, together with former Israeli Prime Ministers Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin “for their efforts to achieve peace in the Middle East.” Arafat died in 2004.

__Former Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat was a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize with then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1978 after they signed the Camp David Accords, which ended Israel's occupation of the Sinai Peninsula.

Kennedy made the comments while campaigning for Michigan Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers, who has accused his opponent, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization.

El-Sayed, who has disavowed the group, has also been accused by President Donald Trump of being a Muslim Brotherhood member. Trump has also made racist comments about El-Sayed.

“Mike Rogers was talking about the Muslim Brotherhood. That’s something I can talk about,” Kennedy said. Kennedy argued that the world’s 500 million Arabs have not contributed to science or the humanities due to the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, after he cited Islamic civilization's contributions to literature in the 13th century.

“All that tradition has been destroyed by the Muslim Brotherhood,” Kennedy said. The U.S. has labeled several Middle Eastern branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations. “They’ve created stagnant societies that do one, two things: hatred and war and victimization," Kennedy said.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 but was banned after Brotherhood-backed President Mohamed Morsi was ousted in 2013. Jordan announced a sweeping ban on the organization last year. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain designated the organization as a terrorist group in 2014.

Protect Our Care president Brad Woodhouse said in a statement that “this wasn’t the first time RFK Jr has trafficked in racism, but it may be his ugliest episode yet.” Woodhouse was referring to Kennedy's comments on the “High Level Conversations” podcast in 2024, where he implied that Black children with ADHD and on medication should be “re-parented.”

Dr. Peter Hotez, founding dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor and Texas Children’s Hospital, posted on social media Monday evening that his former colleague, Nobel Prize winner Zewail, would disagree with Kennedy.

“God rest his soul he didn’t have to endure this, and of course RFK Jr forgets that it was the Arab scientists of the Middle Ages who kept Aristotle, Hippocrates, Galen alive to hand it down in the Renaissance.”

Kennedy is slated to serve as a special guest at the “Make Iowa Healthy Again Rally” in Des Moines on Wednesday.

Find AP Fact Checks at https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks at a campaign rally with President Donald Trump at Alico Arena on the campus of Florida Gulf Coast University, Friday, Oct. 23, 2026, in Fort Myers, Fla. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

President Donald Trump shakes hands with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at a campaign rally at Alico Arena on the campus of Florida Gulf Coast University, Friday, Oct. 23, 2026, in Fort Myers, Fla. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)