Federal prosecutors were rebuffed in their effort to secure an indictment against former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson over her testimony related to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, according to four sources briefed on the grand jury proceedings.

The Justice Department has not yet responded to a request for comment.

The Washington Post first reported that the grand jury declined to indict Hutchinson.

The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division has been handling the Hutchinson investigation, CBS News previously reported, and during a hearing on another matter Tuesday, a litigator with the division, Neville Hedley, told U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui that the grand jury had not concurred on the proposed indictment. Hedley did not say who the defendant was, but multiple sources confirmed it was Hutchinson.

Hutchinson, who was a top aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, angered President Trump's allies and his base when she testified in 2022 before the House select committee investigating the 2021 Capitol attack.

In depositions and congressional testimony, Hutchinson said that Mr. Trump and Meadows were warned on Jan. 6 that some of his supporters were carrying weapons to the Capitol, but Mr. Trump said he didn't care — and he tried to order officials to remove the magnetometers at the rally where he spoke that morning.

She also relayed a story she said had been told to her by then-White House deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato, in which Mr. Trump grew incensed after his lead Secret Service agent would not drive him to the Capitol after the president's speech to supporters. During that address on the White House Ellipse, he had encouraged them to go to the Capitol, where Congress was confirming the Electoral College results from the 2020 election. He told supporters that "after this, we're going to walk down, and I'll be there with you."

Hutchinson testified that Ornato had told her that in the car, Mr. Trump lunged at the steering wheel. Her account was later contradicted by Mr. Trump's driver, who in sworn testimony claimed that the president never tried to grab the steering wheel.

CBS News could not determine precisely which parts of Hutchinson's testimony were being scrutinized by prosecutors. According to media reports, House Republican allies of the president made the referral to the Justice Department.

The 2026 midterm elections are just 7 days away. So where do things stand — nationwide — in the race to control Congress? Which party has a better chance of, you know, winning? To get a sense of that, it helps to geek out over some cold, hard data.

The usual caveats apply, of course. Polls aren't predictions; they're momentary snapshots of public opinion. And they have been wrong before.

Yet time is running out — and the stakes in November couldn't be higher, especially for President Trump, who has enjoyed complete Republican control of Congress for the first half of his second term. Flipping the House would give Democrats the power to block the president's agenda, investigate his administration and even impeach him (again); flipping the Senate would allow them to stymie his Supreme Court nominees too.

The state-by-state midterm landscape is reaching its final form — and some clear polling trends have emerged. Here are the numbers to watch as Election Day nears.

The generic congressional ballot 

Every pollster asks a version of the same question: If an election for U.S. Congress were held today, which party's candidate would you vote for in your district? In fact, this particular polling prompt is so pervasive, it's known as the "generic ballot" (at least among politics nerds).

You obviously can't divine the outcome of an entire midterm election from a single question that flattens 435 House contests into a binary choice between "the Democrat" and "the Republican." But the generic ballot can suggest which direction voters are heading. 

History is helpful here, courtesy of the RealClear Politics polling average:

• At this point in 2022 — after more than a year and a half of Democratic President Joe Biden and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate — Republicans had a small but significant lead (3 percentage points) on the generic ballot. On Election Day, the GOP translated its final polling lead (also 3 points) into nine seats — enough to flip the House.

• At this point in 2018 — with Trump as president and Republican majorities in the House and Senate — Democrats were leading by an average of 7.6 points on the generic ballot. Seven days later, they picked up 41 seats and flipped the House.

• Polarization wasn't as extreme in 2014 and 2010, the two midterms under Democratic President Barack Obama; minds weren't made up quite so early. But with 7 days to go, voters had clearly broken against Democrats. In 2014, a Republican polling lead of 2 points translated into a net gain of 13 seats in the House; in 2010, those numbers were 6.9 points and 63 seats, respectively.

So what does that mean for 2026? Historically speaking, a president's party almost always loses seats when voters return to the polls to judge his first two years in office. Sometimes, the backlash is so pervasive that the president's party loses pretty much every close-ish contest — a phenomenon known as a "wave" election.

Right now, Democrats have a wave-sized lead on the generic ballot — about 9 percentage points, on average — and it has grown over the last month.

Democrats might not reprise 2018 and flip 41 House seats again in November, in part because red-state Republican lawmakers have recently redrawn congressional maps across the South to benefit their party in ways that blue-state Democrats have been unable to keep up with. But they only need to pick up three seats to win back the House.  

Advantage? Democrats.

12 specific Senate races

National dynamics tend to define the composition of the incoming House. But Senate contests are quirkier — more state-specific and personality-driven. Democrats currently hold 47 Senate seats; they'd need 51 to control the chamber. (A 50-50 split would give Vice President JD Vance the tiebreaking vote). Polls suggest that flipping four Republican seats is very possible. In the states where Dems are playing defense — Michigan, Georgia, New Hampshire — their leads are solidifying; meanwhile, red states such as Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and South Carolina seem increasingly competitive. Here are the 12 races to follow:

Maine (Republican seat)

• Republican Susan Collins (incumbent)

• Democrat Troy Jackson

What the latest polls say: Jackson, who replaced Graham Platner, the Democrats' previous scandal-plagued nominee, tends to lead Collins by anywhere from 2 to 7 percentage points. Two new nonpartisan polls also show Jackson ahead; a Republican poll released over the weekend gives Collins a 0.5% edge.

Michigan (Democratic seat)

• Republican Mike Rogers (former member of Congress)

• Democrat Abdul El-Sayed (public-health epidemiologist and former Wayne County, Mich. health director)

What the latest polls say: Ten polls have been conducted in October. Nine of them have shown El-Sayed in the lead, by anywhere from 1 to 7 percentage points. The latest survey (for the Detroit News) puts El-Sayed ahead by 6 points.

Ohio (Republican seat)

• Republican Jon Husted (incumbent)

• Democrat Sherrod Brown (former senator)

What the latest polls say: Brown has edged Husted in nearly every poll conducted since the first week of October, with margins ranging from 2 to 6 percentage points. But a new Echelon Insights poll shows a tie.

Georgia (Democratic seat)