The Justice Department has assigned its civil rights division to investigate Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide who outraged President Trump four years ago after her testimony before Congress implicated him in the violence that erupted at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to four people familiar with the matter.
The move was a highly unusual one by Justice Department leadership, directing a criminal case that appears to involve accusations of lying to Congress to a specialized unit that normally focuses on systemic civil rights abuses like police misconduct and racial discrimination.
And yet the decision was in keeping with the administration’s bid to find new ways to use the powers of the federal government to target Mr. Trump’s political opponents. Those efforts persist even though the department has struggled to carry out the president’s demands for retribution and has increasingly hit roadblocks from judges, grand juries and even some of its own prosecutors.
Some Justice Department officials have been skeptical from the outset about whether there is a viable criminal case to be made against Ms. Hutchinson, who once worked for Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s last chief of staff during his first term in the White House.
Nonetheless, the inquiry into her was opened in recent weeks as the former attorney general, Pam Bondi, was trying to shore up her shaky standing with the president, according to two other people briefed on the effort. Ms. Bondi sought to move aggressively against Ms. Hutchinson and other investigative targets singled out by Mr. Trump in an effort to placate him.
Mr. Trump fired Ms. Bondi last week in part because she failed to push his increasingly unreasonable demands for revenge against his adversaries through the courts. He named Todd Blanche, her former deputy, as the acting attorney general, although Mr. Blanche will probably face similar problems in satisfying the president’s instructions to bring criminal charges against political targets with little to no evidence or legal justification.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Mr. Blanche shrugged off those concerns, saying that Mr. Trump had “the right,” even “the duty,” as president to call for investigations of anyone he believed deserved them. That position put Mr. Blanche at odds with most Justice Department leaders of the past 50 years, who have maintained at least the semblance of independence from the White House.
Typically, an investigation into perjury in front of Congress would be handled by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, which is run by Jeanine Pirro, a longtime ally of Mr. Trump. In recent months, however, Ms. Pirro and her subordinates have suffered a series of setbacks in trying to push criminal cases against the president’s foes past judges and grand juries in the local federal courthouse.
In an unorthodox move, leaders at the Justice Department did not offer Ms. Pirro a chance to open an investigation into Ms. Hutchinson, but instead gave the case directly to Harmeet Dhillon, who runs the civil rights division, according to three of the people familiar with the matter. Ms. Dhillon, another Trump loyalist, has emerged as an effective advocate for the administration’s agenda, particularly as the department has targeted higher education institutions that the White House perceives as being “too woke.”
A spokesman for Ms. Pirro declined to comment on the inquiry. A Justice Department spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.
The investigation into Ms. Hutchinson began some weeks ago after the Justice Department received a referral from a Trump ally in Congress who accused Ms. Hutchinson of lying to the special House committee that investigated the events of Jan. 6. During explosive televised testimony in June 2022, Ms. Hutchinson, now 29, said that Mr. Trump had encouraged the crowd that gathered to hear him speak near the White House on Jan. 6 to march to the Capitol even though he knew it was armed and could turn violent.
She also claimed that she had heard that Mr. Trump lunged at one of his Secret Service agents in a presidential limo when he was told he could not join his supporters on Capitol Hill. Other testimony later contradicted that assertion.
Among the U.S. attorneys who have been pushed to prosecute Mr. Trump’s political opponents, Ms. Pirro has arguably had the most challenging time following through on the president’s demands. Some of her subordinates have in fact worried that it could be difficult to force any more cases against Mr. Trump’s adversaries through the courts in Washington.
In February, prosecutors serving under Ms. Pirro failed to secure an indictment against six Democratic lawmakers who made a video last year reminding military and intelligence personnel about their obligations to disobey illegal orders. Around the same, they stalled in their efforts to build a case against former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and aides over allegations that they had broken the law by signing presidential documents with the autopen.
Last month, Judge James E. Boasberg, the chief federal judge in Washington, threw a major roadblock into an investigation of Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, over claims that there were overruns in the central bank’s renovations of its headquarters.
Judge Boasberg determined that prosecutors had issued subpoenas to the Fed for no other reason than to harass Mr. Powell, who had long run afoul of Mr. Trump for not swiftly dropping interest rates, more or less at the president’s request.
Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.
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