The Many, Many Tales of Madison Cornbread Are Disintegrating Like Toilet Paper In a Stream of Piss

Tony Ornato, the head of White House security that Madison Cornbread claims told her about Trump's attempt to Commandeer The Beast, says he was "shocked" to hear such a claim and that it simply never happened.

A source close to former Trump Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations Tony Ornato says he did not brief Jan. 6 Committee witness Cassidy Hutchinson on one of the major allegation she made to the committee Tuesday.

...

However, a source close to Ornato told Fox News that Ornato watched the hearing yesterday and was shocked when Cassidy made the allegation about the steering wheel.

Both Bobby Engel, the top agent on Trump's Secret Service detail who was in the car, and Ornato, who was not in the car, testified to the January 6 Committee in private over the past year, the source close to Ornato said.

Engel and Ornato never brought up part about steering wheel, according to that source. Both want to testify on the record again and refute the part about Trump grabbing or trying to grab the wheel. The driver of the SUV, who is unnamed, will also cooperate with the committee.

So everyone involved in this story -- according to Madison Cornbread -- is willing to testify that it didn't happen, but the committee won't call them to testify.

Meanwhile, Madison Cornbread allegedly made up her claim that Trump's lawyer spoke to her on January 6th. He wasn't even there, sources say. And the January 6 committee refuses to address questions about this.

Jack Posobiec @JackPosobiec

BREAKING: Multiple sources including one who was at the WH on Jan 6 tell me Cipollone was not there in the am when Hutchinson testified she spoke with him. J6 Cmtes is aware of this discrepancy & are ignoring media inquiries about it. Seems she made up the entire conversation

Mark Meadows: Madison Cornbread is lying about me seeking a pardon from Trump.

Ali Vitali @alivitali

More pushback on Hutchinson testimony, this time from a Meadows spox telling
@nbcnews: "Meadows never sought a pardon and never planned to." From my convos, as of now, there seems no change in their posture re: testifying w/ the cmte and privilege claims.

The Hill reports that Republicans are "dismissing" Madison Cornbread's testimony, pointing to mere "factual disputes," as if those are an acceptable reason to dismiss the well-crafted narrative she and Liz Cheney spent all week perfecting!

Republicans dismiss Hutchinson testimony, pointing to factual disputes

Former President Trump's most vocal defenders in the House are working to undercut former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson's explosive testimony at Tuesday's Jan. 6 select committee hearing, calling it "hearsay" and pointing to disputes over statements she made.

Hutchinson, who was an aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, relayed fly-on-the-wall firsthand knowledge of conversations between Trump and top officials.

Those included Trump wanting to get rid of magnetometers outside his Ellipse rally to let in more of the crowd, that potential plans were discussed for Trump to travel to the Capitol on the 6th, and aides saying Trump was aware of "Hang Mike Pence" chants and thought he deserved it.

But there are disputes over other portions of her testimony, most notably the secondhand allegation that Trump lunged for the steering wheel of the car a Secret Service agent was driving away from the Ellipse rally when the Secret Service refused to take him to the Capitol building.

"The sham Committee's star witness is already discredited less than 24 hours after her testimony. It was all hearsay. This is the Russia hoax playbook. Democrats' media allies are simply repeating their outrageous and evidence-free accusations," said Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), who was originally selected to be ranking member on the committee before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) vetoed the choice.

Twitter accounts for the House Republican Conference and House Judiciary Committee Republicans fired off rapid response reactions to the hearing in real time, dismissing it and tearing down Hutchinson's testimony.

"It's literally all hearsay evidence," the House Judiciary GOP account said.

Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) also tweeted live reactions to the hearing and the disputes that followed, alleging that the committee lied.

"I spent nearly 30 years trying cases in an adversarial court system designed to ferret out truth. Liz Cheney knows how it's supposed to work, but she humiliated herself and the rest of this sham committee yesterday out of uncontrollable spite for Trump," Bishop told The Hill in a statement.

NeverTrump has an easy answer to all this: Everyone's lying except Madison Cornbread.

Here's Noted Salon Hot 25 Conservative Blogger AllahPundit, for example.

Consider the possibility -- just a possibility -- that Tony Ornato and the agents are lying, whether because they feel personal loyalty to Trump or because they deem themselves duty-bound as an institutional matter not to embarrass the presidents they serve as Secret Service agents. I emphasize again that Trump, the Republican frontrunner for the 2024 nomination, promoted Ornato to a powerful political position inside his White House by making him deputy chief of staff, something I've never heard happen to a Secret Service agent. Ornato owes Trump. And may yet work for him again.

Remember, if you ever deny a claim made by his friends on the left, he'll call you a "Trump Cultist" and "Reality Denier." But when facts arise that destroy his cherished narrative, he has no problem with claiming, "The Secret Service just employs a lot of Crisis Actors who flood the media with false claims that brave truth-tellers are lying."

You're demanded to believe the left's claims, but the left (including NeverTrump) is under no reciprocal obligation to believe any evidence that damages their own claims. It's a one-sided double-standard, which is only possible for the same reason such obviously unfair schemes ever persist: because the people benefiting from the scheme control almost all of the power (in this case, the media/government power).

And what about those objections that nearly everything that Madison Cornbread attests to is just hearsay -- I heard from someone who heard it from someone else?

Well, Super-Lawyer Andy McCarthy is here to reassure you that.... hearsay is awesome and also, this isn't hearsay.

Now, about that. Some commentators are dismissing her description of what happened in the car as hearsay. That is part irrelevant and part inaccurate.

To begin with, the federal rules of evidence do not apply to congressional proceedings. They also never apply to investigations, which is what the committee says it is conducting. The point of an investigation is to search for reliable, admissible evidence. For that, hearsay is not only allowed but encouraged -- it's often how we find out who has a probative, firsthand account.

Hey you old, decrepit bald woman -- we know who has a firsthand account. Engels and Ornato. But the committee isn't calling them because they're not telling the made-up story that Madison Cornbread is. They are specifically calling the hearsay witness, and not the firsthand knowledge witnesses, because the people with actual knowledge dispute the claims of the hearsay witness.

Is hearsay still a wonderful investigative tool in this case, you nasty old biddy?

Furthermore, I am not even sure Hutchinson's testimony in this regard would be inadmissible as hearsay if the rules of evidence did apply.

As I related in the column, Hutchinson said she was informed about what (allegedly) happened in the car only minutes later by Tony Ornato, who ran security at the White House. Ornato was not speaking idly. He was reporting what happened to a top aide (Hutchinson) of the White House chief of staff (Mark Meadows), Ornato's superior. Most significantly, if Hutchinson's version of events is correct, Engel was with Ornato as he described what happened.

If Engel was present, engaged, and listening to what Ornato said, and the circumstances were such that, if Ornato got details wrong, Engel would naturally be expected to correct him, then Ornato's words were by implication Engel's words, as if he had spoken them himself. It would not be simply a matter of someone telling Hutchinson what that person saw Trump do; it would essentially be Engel telling Hutchinson what Engel did with Trump.

Irrelevant emphasis in the original.

I have no idea what exception to the hearsay rule he thinks is implicated here. I asked a lawyer to rack her brains, and she was also baffled.

Unless a legal moron can put me some information, it sure seems like this rapidly-declining old fuck has invented a brand new exception to the hearsay rule to claim Madison Cornbread's testimony isn't hearsay.

So NeverTrump is having a normal one, as they say.

I am officially calling for the next president to conduct a searching and unflinching review of all convictions secured by Andrew McCarthy, to find out if any innocent men were railroaded by this Government-Is-God True Believer hack.

DURING PRIDE MONTH? Posted by: nurse ratched, just call me Pollyanna

It's the seriousness of the charge. Posted by: NeverTrump dusting off a classic

I am a trial attorney, and regularly deal with, argue about, have had many, many rulings on hearsay and related. Andy McCarthy's obfuscation bears no relation to any known hearsay exception.

And his "ackshually" explanation about Congressional hearings not being "bound by" hearsay rules of course misses the giant point that, at times, hearsay can be the introduction to a trail leading to some evidence, but it is never, ever, in any court, tribunal or other judicial proceeding regarded as the capstone, and is always regarded as inferior to any available, first-hand witness testimony.

At best, you might "allow" some inadmissible hearsay for the context of some testimony, but subject-to-connection in a plan to call the firsthand testimony later.

It goes not only against "law" but the whole foundation of evidentiary jurisprudence to allow "naked hearsay" (particularly double hearsay) as purported truth of the facts of what happened (as opposed to proving some emotional state for its own sake).

IOW: Andy McCarthy is an idiot. Or a liar. Or both.
Posted by: Zek

posted by Ace at 12:23 PM

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