(WASHINGTON) — Republican Rep. Liz Cheney told This Week co-anchor Jonathan Karl in an exclusive interview that she has full faith and confidence in the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, the 26-year-old former Trump White House aide who delivered explosive testimony about the Capitol riot during a highly publicized hearing this week.
“As you know, there’s an active campaign underway to destroy her credibility. Do you have any doubt at all in anything that she said to you?” Karl asked Cheney.
“I am absolutely confident in her credibility. I’m confident in her testimony,” Cheney told Karl in a wide-ranging interview set to air in full on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday.
“I think that what Cassidy Hutchinson did was an unbelievable example of bravery and of courage and patriotism in the face of real pressure,” said Cheney, who is vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee.
The witness, Hutchinson, a former top adviser to then-President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, spent some two hours divulging extraordinary details about what she said went on behind the scenes leading up to, during and after the attack.
Hutchinson sat for multiple closed-door transcribed interviews with the committee during its year-long inquiry but on Tuesday, she spoke publicly for the first time during the committee’s sixth publicized hearing.
She described in detail how she was told about Trump’s desire to go to the Capitol on Jan. 6 after he spoke at a rally near the White House — and how Trump became furious when he was told it wasn’t safe or advisable for him to be there.
Republicans loyal to Trump, including Trump himself, immediately sought to discredit her testimony.
Trump on Tuesday dismissed Hutchinson’s testimony, posting on social media that “I hardly know who this person … is, other than I heard very negative things about her (a total phony and ‘leaker’).”
“She is bad news!” he added.
“We have real confidence as a committee that she testified honestly, and in her credibility, and I think the world saw that — she testified under oath, and her credibility is there for the world to judge,” Cheney said in her interview with Karl.
“She’s an incredibly brave young woman,” Cheney added. “The committee is not going to stand by and watch her character be assassinated by anonymous sources and by men who are claiming executive privilege.”
On Wednesday, Hutchinson’s lawyers released a new statement amid pushback on her testimony.
“Ms. Hutchinson stands by all of the testimony she provided yesterday, under oath, to the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol,” Hutchinson’s counsel, Jody Hunt and William Jordan, said in the statement to ABC News.
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