Cassidy Hutchinson had implicated Donald Trump in US Capitol attack during testimony before House committee

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 Donald Trump before a House committee investigating the 6 January 2021 US Capitol insurrection, according to two people familiar with the matter.

A grand jury in Washington rejected prosecutors’ request to return an indictment charging 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 charge perceived adversaries of the Republican president.

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 January 6, when a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol to halt the congressional certification of his election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.