The January 6 committee has a new credibility issue with its star witness — and itself. Information gathered by Business Insider from a new FOIA demand shows that Cassidy Hutchinson continued to work for Trump long after the riot despite her testimony of having been “disgusted” by the “unpatriotic” and “un-American” actions that unfolded:

Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Trump White House aide who emerged as a star witness for the US House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, continued working on the former president’s behalf for nine weeks after he left office, according to government records exclusively obtained by Insider.

Hutchinson served as a “coordinator” for Trump’s official, taxpayer-funded post-presidential office from about January 20, 2021, to April 1, 2021, earning an annualized salary of $90,000, the General Services Administration documents state.

The documents establish that Hutchinson continued to earn a government paycheck for work in support of Trump for weeks after she witnessed his actions — and lack of action — on January 6, even as other colleagues resigned soon thereafter.

Ahem. That certainly doesn’t sound like someone “disgusted” with her boss, at least not in the moment, or even more than two months later. At the very least, this goes to credibility, and it also should have prompted an explanation of her decision to stay on rather than resign and find another job.

It’s not as if Hutchinson’s post-January 6 activities were not a topic of conversation, if not investigation:

Hutchinson’s whereabouts immediately after January 6 has been the subject of considerable scrutiny and uncertainty. Bloomberg reported days after the attack that Hutchinson might join Trump in Florida, but Trump has stated he hardly knew her and turned her down. The Washington Post in June reported that Hutchinson did not have a full-time job after her White House tenure ended.

It seems now that she did have a full-time job, or at least was getting paid to work full time, for almost a full three months. And it was a job in support of Trump. That doesn’t necessarily mean Hutchinson’s lying in her committee testimony, but the fact that this information didn’t get introduced along with her testimony makes all of it suspect. It goes straight to credibility. Again.

Assuming this is accurate — and it’s apparently coming straight from the GSA data — did the committee know this and cover it up? If they didn’t know, how did the committee miss this piece of information? Once again, this shows the problem of a non-adversarial process in congressional hearings and investigations. Regardless of whom one blames for this one-sided setup — and there is plenty of blame to go around — this is precisely why this probe keeps fumbling. This is the kind of information that an adversarial process would have discovered about a supposed star witness at some point, rather than have it come out via a FOIA demand from a media outlet. Did anyone on the committee even bother to ask Hutchinson when she stopped working for Trump, or at least when she stopped drawing a paycheck for work on his behalf?

And if they did know about this and kept it quiet … hoo boy. It’s one thing to be incompetent, and another entirely to withhold relevant evidence while putting on prime-time hearings. Regardless of whether the answer is incompetence or malevolence — and I’d guess incompetence tinged with malevolence — the committee is torpedoing its credibility to conduct a search for truth in this matter.