In fullness and fairness I must change this post. First, I do not think that psychologists and students of the mind generally would have a "too much detail" concern with Cassidy Hutchinson's memory on the steering-wheel-clavicle-lunge. It is my understanding that the concern applies, usually, to memory over time of a brief, sudden ocular present sense impression or to a lengthy aural event. So: If a witness to a snatch-and-grab describes the robber to the police on the scene as a light-skinned male, 25-30 years of age, medium build, light-colored shirt dark pants, and then at trial says the perp was a white male definitely, had a moustache, longish hair, Converse high-tops, black, it was a t-shirt, white, short-sleeved that he wore, well then your memory seems to have improved with age sir. Or, a cop who takes an hour-long tape-recorded confession from the perp and at deposition is able to rattle off memory every question and answer, well...
Neither illustrative examples are the case with Ms. Hutchinson's steering-wheel-clavicle lunge testimony. She did not witness Trump in the vehicle. The oral account that she was given did not last an hour. Her testimony from the time she began answering Rep. Cheney's question to conclusion was 2:02, two minutes and two seconds, I just timed it, and included the physical motion of the clavicle lunge. She said it all in one breath and never paused or hesitated. The conversation precisely on the point of what she was told Trump said and did in the vehicle would not have taken longer; likely a shorter time with the emotion of the immediate retelling by Tony Ornato. What she was told, again augmented by the physical demonstration, is within the ken of most of us beyond doubt.
I watched Ms. Hutchinson very carefully today. I looked closely at her right hand when she stood to swear the oath. The hand never moved. I have not watched the entirety of her testimony but in those portions I did watch, and rewatch, she never stumbled, stuttered, hesitated, looked sideways, shifted uncomfortably in her seat, or in any manner whatsoever displayed body language of one less certain than she is letting on.
Second, the first, New York Times, account of the Secret Service agents' response to her testimony yesterday afternoon was:
And from the Times today:
The dispute also highlights Mr. Trump’s relationship with his Secret Service detail, which was unlike that of most previous presidents. Agents were seen as more overtly supportive and admiring of Mr. Trump than they had been under any other modern president, according to people who have spent time in the White House during multiple administrations, and Mr. Trump worked to build loyalty among them.
There are four possibilities here:
1) Cassidy Hutchinson lied under oath to the committee.
2) Hutchinson was mistaken in her recollection.
3) Ornato and Engel and/or the Secret Service sources are lying, not under oath.
4) Ornato-Engel-S.S. sources are mistaken.
I would rank order the likelihood as,
1) Ornato-Engel and/or S.S. sources are lying. Very strong.
2) Hutchinson mistaken. Very weak.
3-4) Hutchinson lied, Ornato-Engel-S.S. mistaken. No likelihood. Ornato told Hutchinson what Hutchinson told the committee, all 2:02 of it. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind of that. At. All. She was neither lying nor mistaken. If Ornato-Engel-S.S. sources say differently they are lying and let them do it under oath.
first posted 6/29/22 12:44 pm.
When I read this live-blog entry in the Times yesterday I paused. Was he saying he had a hard time believing it?
It did not. In a stunning two hours of fly-on-the-wall testimony, Ms. Hutchinson, poised and measured at only 26 years of age, described Jan. 6 and the days leading to it in the White House, in a string of scenes and quotations so vivid they could be transcribed almost directly into an HBO docudrama.
There are flies-on-the-wall--Rosemary Woods--people who are so situated that they are nearly omniscient. The Committee demonstrated that Ms. Hutchinson had the propinquity to see and hear much more than almost anyone else. Ben Rhodes, one of President Obama's most senior aides, who saw the president daily, said that even he would not have been in a position to know as much as the equivalent to Cassidy Hutchinson or Rosemary Woods in the Obama White House. After his meetings with the president Rhodes would go back to his office. Ms. Hutchinson's office was right there.
But in her steering-wheel-lunge testimony,
She was "poised and measured"--too much? Like an actor? Something caught my eye and ear as I was watching and listening to her, there was something a little tinny in her tone of voice, it was pretty much toneless. And her demeanor was measured, all the more dramatic.
After she finished, one of the talking heads marveled at the "dazzling detail" in her testimony. It was highly complimentary. The phrase struck me and I repeated it aloud twice and then my (second unfortunate ex-) wife, with whom I was watching, repeated it. But I said it out loud because too much detail in a memory can be a sign to psychologists that the memory is false. Human beings do not have tape recorder memories. Now, there is a real sense in which a witness cannot win here. The fact is we do not have tape recording recall and therefore when we are asked repeatedly to recount a conversation in detail we leave out or insert a word and then some non-human lawyer pounces on us for "changing our story." On the other hand shrinks tell us we don't remember that way. Cassidy Hutchinson remembered that way.
