Stefan Passantino
speaker
273 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Stefan Passantino’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Now, I don't have any recollection of that conversation happening between us, but I can also say if she had raised, oh, I'm very concerned that I heard third hand about a thing that I would have cut her off. I said, look, that's not what you're here for. You're a fact witness. Your job is to testify to the facts that you know. You're not an expert witness. You're not a speculation witness.
You're not... a I'm guessing witness, you talk about the facts, they're going to interview every single person who had anything to do with the January 6th incidents. They're gonna talk to the drivers, talk to Secret Service. It's not your job to go and talk about things that you think might have happened.
Well, here's what we do know. We do know that in real time, immediately after that live testimony, Tony Ornato, who was the Secret Service detailee, I think he was working the chief of staff's office. I think he was like a deputy of operations. He testified immediately, or at least said publicly, that's not true.
And there was another really interesting- And Cassie Hutchinson never claimed that she saw it. Oh, she was never. This was a second or third hand.
Just like I heard that... Yeah, it's not hearsay rules. Okay, you're thinking, it's like, well, you can't talk about an out-of-court statement. The rules are a little more wide open than that. You can talk about hearsay, and I would allow witnesses to describe, I heard Fred say X, Y, Z happened. Well, that's something you heard. You are absolutely entitled to testify to all of those things.
But what happened in this case is... is she testified about, I had heard that this happened. Well, the people who would have told her that said, I didn't talk to Cassidy, and that didn't happen. And I knew I was in trouble. I want to back up a little. When I knew that I had just sort of gone from, this was just another client and just sort of an unusual set of circumstances... I had been fired.
I had been very publicly fired because I was a Trump lawyer and she had put out very publicly, I want to testify. I don't feel comfortable having this Trump lawyer. All fair. I mean, that's perfectly her right to do. And then she had given this very dramatic testimony that had been refuted by people who were physically there.
I was representing another witness, another very junior witness who had been working in the White House on January 6th, who had been very closely interrelating with the operations people. This is in, so you imagine those, that testimony happened in say June that she testified live on TV. In July, a month after this had happened, I'm still representing witnesses before the committee.
One of these witnesses who had been working in the White House had been asking, and we went through an entire deposition. And the deposition ends in a very standard way where the investigator says, hey, have you had any other conversations with any witnesses about your testimony today? Have you ever talked to Trump about your testimony? No, I've never done that.
It's a very standard set of questions. Have you talked to anyone about your witness other than your lawyer? And he says, no, no, no. He says, oh, wait. He says, actually, I did talk to somebody. He says, immediately after Cassidy Hutchinson testified live on TV, Tony Ornato called me and said, this makes no sense to me. I don't understand. Why is she doing this? What have we missed?
He testified, and this is all in the transcript. It's all out there. But I'm sitting there as now the lawyer that the committee knows used to represent Cassidy Hutchinson, was fired because I'm a Trump lawyer, I'm now representing a different witness who is testifying.
I had no knowledge that he was gonna provide that testimony, but he's now testifying that in real time, either while Cassidy was on TV or in the immediate aftermath, The fact witness with knowledge had called this young person and said, this isn't true. Now, you can imagine for me, as I'm sitting representing this witness, all of the eyes in the Zoom come to me.
And that was when I realized I'm in trouble here because I heard my witness say,
give a story that's inconsistent with the star witness she had already testified on tv she was already the star witness for the committee i knew they can't bury that nugget the way they could have buried everything else because i heard it and when i saw all of the eyes on that zoom turned to me was when i knew i am now an inconvenient truth for this because i heard him testify
Coincidence or not, within a month, I received a DOJ subpoena, criminal subpoena. I'm the subject of a criminal investigation. I also received- This is insane. Yes. And I received an email, of course, that I still have, from Dan George again, saying, we're really concerned that you've been sharing information between clients. We think you have a conflict of interest. And I responded to him.
I said- A, lawyers who represent witnesses would have the ability to share information. There's no secret about that. I said, but here, Dan, I'm telling you, I did not tell this young person to say that story. He said that story. I'm telling you it didn't happen. Who is Dan George, exactly? So, Dan George is a lawyer. I think...
I think that he, I mean, he was one of the senior lead investigators. I worked with him on a number of witnesses. The part that was a little shocking to me is- He's a congressional staffer. He's a congressional staffer who then went to the Department of Justice after this. I think he might, I don't know for sure. I think he was working with Jack Smith. I think he might be now in the U.S.
Attorney's Office. He might be an assistant U.S. attorney in Connecticut or somewhere. I don't know. But he was in Department of Justice before. He was then- He sounds dishonest. We had a very good rapport. I was surprised by what was happening. And he and I had worked together on some very sensitive things, and I thought we had something of a level of trust. I just know the things that happened.
I know that right after this young witness gave that testimony that directly contradicted the star witness, that I received a phone call from Dan George back... basically saying they were very concerned that I had been feeding this information. And then I got a confirming email from him saying, we had this conversation, you denied that you've shared it. That's all fair enough.
But that was when I knew that I was in trouble. And then out of the blue, I start getting DOJ criminal subpoenas that I'm suddenly under criminal investigation. I have no idea what for. I clearly had been part of doing a lot of work representing a lot of Trump-aligned committees. I'd done a lot of work for the super PACs. There was a lot of talk of how was money flow happening.
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