The Media Research Center’s final shot at trying to besmirch the House committee that looked into the Capitol riot and the witnesses who testified — coming after its main attack on the final report — came in a Dec. 21 post by P.J. Gladnick:
One can get an idea of just how weak the summary report released by the January 6 Committee is when even Bloomberg and Axios are throwing shade on the “star witness” of the hearings, Cassidy Hutchinson. Here is Bloomberg’s very downbeat view on Tuesday on the credibility of Hutchinson as sadly written by Billy House in “Mystery of Trump’s Alleged Outburst on Jan. 6 Unsolved in Report.”
[…]So very weak second hand hearsay sauce from the “star witness” that runs counter to first hand testimony from two witnesses. You don’t have to be a legal genius to figure out which account will have much more weight in court. Yet, the J6 Committee is still desperately clinging to the Hutchinson hearsay.
But the panel asserted in the summary of its 17-month investigation that it has “has significant concerns about the credibility” of Ornato’s testimony.
Again, corroborated by another witness so good luck of hanging your J6 hopes on the “star witness.”
Gladnick is completely glossing over the role of Ornato here. As we documented, Hutchinson’s account was relayed to her by Ornato — but after first immediately vowing to testify before the committee, he and other Secret Service officials lawyered up and clammed up for a while. When Ornato did finally testify, he declared that he couldn’t recall saying that. But Gladnick also hid the fact that the Bloomberg article also reported that the committee stated two other witnesses said Ornato told similar stories to them.
Gladnick also cited an Axios article and made a big deal about it stating that other witnesses “don’t appear to corroborate the claim of a physical altercation,” though he did quote Axios stating that the committee thought Ornato was “particularly unreliable.” And he failed to note that Axios also reported that transcripts would be forthcoming to flesh out the report.
Nevertheless, Gladnick worked to portray Hutchinson, not Ornato, as the real liar: ‘And, poof, the J6 Committee hopes for their ‘star witness’ appears to have gone up in smoke when even sympathetic journals such as Bloomberg and Axios see nothing there. … It was testimony for the ages until soon afterwards when the ‘star witness’ credibility sank beneath the icy waves.”
Meanwhile, the released transcripts showed not only that Ornato’s memory of events repeatedly failed him, but also that Hutchinson was being pressured by Trump-linked lawyers she had been supplied to testify to having a similarly faulty memory and they were going to “take care” of her if she did (she eventually found non-Trump-linked legal representation and told the committee the truth).
Neither Gladnick nor anyone else at the MRC has referenced Hutchinson or her transcript since. Looks like we know whose credibility is actually sinking.