As reported earlier, two former White House aides are expected to join Cassidy Hutchinson, a former assistant to Trump’s last chief of staff Mark Meadows, in testifying publicly in the proceedings.
Former deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger and press aide Sarah Matthews, who both resigned in the aftermath of the riots, are expected to front the committee and give live testimony.
Any details on what Pottinger and Matthews will share have been kept under wraps, but the hearing is expected to focus on what Trump did and didn’t do as his supporters swarmed the Capitol.
Matt Pottinger.Credit:AP
Matthews began working for Republicans on Capitol Hill as an intern while she was still a student at Kent State University in Ohio. She was hired as a deputy press secretary for Trump’s re-election campaign and was brought over to the White House by press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
She worked in the area of the West Wing known as ‘upper press’, placing her in closer proximity to the Oval Office than others in her office. Sometimes she joined Trump for media interviews, but mostly she fielded questions from reporters and helped prepare for White House briefings.
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When Matthews resigned on January 6, 2021, she issued a statement saying she was “deeply disturbed by what I saw today.” On the anniversary of the attack, she called it “one of the darkest days in American history”.
“Make no mistake, the events on the 6th were a coup attempt, a term we’d use had they happened in any other country, and former president Trump failed to meet the moment,” she tweeted.
Pottinger found his way to the White House through US army lieutenant general Michael Flynn. Pottinger, who studied China in college and moved to the country to work as a reporter for Reuters and The Wall Street Journal, joined the Marines in 2005 and deployed to Iraq as an intelligence officer. He later worked in Afghanistan where he met Flynn.
Flynn invited Pottinger to join the National Security Council following Trump’s victory in 2016. Pottinger, whose father John Stanley Pottinger served as assistant attorney-general under president Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, was promoted to deputy national security adviser in 2019.
With AP
