From today's decision by Judge Loren AliKhan (D.D.C.) in Passantino v. Weissmann (for an earlier decision in the case, see here):
Plaintiff Stefan Passantino brings this action against Defendant Andrew Weissmann, alleging defamation stemming from a September 2023 social media post. In the post, Mr. Weissmann referred to Mr. Passantino—a lawyer—as someone "who coached [a witness appearing before Congress] to lie." …
In 2021, the House of Representatives established a Select Committee to investigate the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. As part of its investigation, the Select Committee interviewed numerous witnesses, including Cassidy Hutchinson, a former special assistant to President Trump who had been serving under the direction of White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on January 6, 2021.
Mr. Passantino [a former Trump administration senior lawyer] represented Ms. Hutchinson at her first three closed-door Select Committee depositions on February 23, March 7, and May 17, 2022. In early June 2022, after the third deposition, Ms. Hutchinson fired Mr. Passantino and retained new counsel. She subsequently gave a fourth, televised deposition on June 28, which received substantial media coverage.
After her fourth deposition, Ms. Hutchinson sent a letter to the Select Committee stating that she intended to "waive [her] attorney-client privilege [with Mr. Passantino] in order to share information with the [C]ommittee that[] [was] relevant to [her] prior testimony." The Select Committee scheduled her for a fifth, closed-door deposition for September 14, 2022. According to Ms. Hutchinson, she had asked a friend to "back channel to the committee and say that there [were] a few things that [she] want[ed] to talk about." … [She also said] that she did "not [want to] let Stefan [Passantino] know that [she was] back channeling for this interview" ….
At her fifth deposition, Ms. Hutchinson testified about the preparation she and Mr. Passantino had conducted ahead of her first Select Committee deposition. Specifically, she told the Committee that she and Mr. Passantino had met "for a couple hours" on February 16, 2022 to discuss her upcoming testimony. When Ms. Hutchinson suggested printing out a calendar so that she could "get[] the dates right" with respect to timelines of events, Mr. Passantino said "No, no, no." He told her: "We're going to downplay your role" and "the less you remember, the better." When Ms. Hutchinson brought up an incident that occurred inside the presidential limousine on January 6 (about which she had been told by a colleague), Mr. Passantino said "No, no, no, no, no. We don't want to go there. We don't want to talk about that."
Mr. Passantino told Ms. Hutchinson: "If you don't 100 percent recall something, even if you don't recall a date or somebody who may or may not have been in the room, ['I don't recall' is] an entirely fine answer, and we want you to use that response as much as you deem necessary." Ms. Hutchinson then asked, "if I do recall something but not every little detail, … can I still say I don't recall?" to which Mr. Passantino replied, "Yes." The morning of the first deposition, Mr. Passantino reminded Ms. Hutchinson to "[j]ust downplay [her] position," telling her that her "go-to [response was] 'I don't recall.'"
Ms. Hutchinson also discussed a line of questioning from her first deposition about the January 6 incident in the presidential limousine. She explained that, during a break after facing repeated questions on the topic, she had told Mr. Passantino in private, "I'm f[*****]. I just lied." Mr. Passantino responded, "You didn't lie…. They don't know what you know, Cassidy. They don't know that you can recall some of these things. So you saying 'I don't recall' is an entirely acceptable response to this." He concluded, "You're doing exactly what you should be doing." Ms. Hutchinson explained that, in the moment, she "[felt] like [she] couldn't be forthcoming when [she] wanted to be." Id. 56:3-4.
Ms. Hutchinson did, however, state: "I want to make this clear to [the Select Committee]: Stefan [Passantino] never told me to lie." She recalled him saying to her: "I don't want you to perjure yourself, but 'I don't recall' isn't perjury. They don't know what you can and can't recall." Ms. Hutchinson then reiterated to the Select Committee, "[H]e didn't tell me to lie. He told me not to lie." Mr. Passantino acknowledges that the deposition transcript accurately reflects Ms. Hutchinson's statements at her fifth deposition, although he disputes the veracity of her account except to the extent Ms. Hutchinson testified that he instructed her not to lie.
At the Committee's final public session on December 19, 2022, Representative Zoe Lofgren stated that the Committee had "obtained evidence" that "one lawyer told a witness the witness could in certain circumstances tell the Committee that she didn't recall facts when she actually did recall them."
After the Committee released the transcripts of Ms. Hutchinson's closed-door depositions, multiple news outlets identified Mr. Passantino as the "lawyer" that Representative Lofgren had referenced.
Nine months later, Mr. Weissmann—a former prosecutor who now serves as a "political pundit" for MSNBC—posted the following on Twitter (now known as X):
Mr. Weissmann made the post in response to an alert that Mr. Hunt had received a subpoena in an unrelated case. Mr. Weissmann had approximately 320,000 followers on X at the time….
