Cassidy Hutchinson's Whole Truth, part 3
December 18 and Jan. 6 may have doomed her chances to stay on Trump's payroll...but that will be good.
Ed. note: Her story lives on, evidenced by tonight’s appearance on The Beat with Ari Melber and Hutchinson’s book Enough retaining its number one position on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list. The Resistant Grandmother’s (TRG’s) commitment to tell her story has now extended to four parts, because there’s so much to learn from her experience. We witness the dysfunction of the Trump White House and Republican refusal to do anything about it. But her story also introduces us to (a few) good Republicans who stood firm in the final days and both helped her muster the courage to blow the whistle on Trump’s criminality and navigate her escape from the former president’s grip.
With next year’s election looming, her story becomes instructive. If you want to save time taking it all in, I invite your to use my condensed, multi-part series, with part 3, below, and its part 4 conclusion slated for Thursday, Oct. 26.
— trg
Cassidy Hutchinson’s ground-breaking testimony on June 28, 2022 shone a light on the criminality of Donald Trump and his White House. But it is remarkable for another reason: it may not have happened at all — or least, in the honest way it did.
She was the first witness to fully capture the nation’s attention on the Jan. 6 issue. The others were presented in recorded videos or live appearances but always with highly paid attorneys sitting next to them, ready to parse every word for trouble and keep their clients safe.
Hutchinson was different – she was alone at a table with no lawyer at her side counseling her whether or how to answer a question. Only the bottle of water to her right could offer a momentary excuse to gather her thoughts.
American tradition
Lawrence O’Donnell, who with Rachel Maddow, was one of the two MSNBC prime time hosts to interview Hutchinson within days of the debut of her book Enough, called Hutchinson, “the best part of the American tradition.” She was a “solid witness” in the mold of Alexander Butterfield, also an assistant Chief of Staff but under Richard Nixon. On July 16, 1973 it was Butterfield who blew wide open a probe into an earlier Republican president, revealing an Oval Office recording system that would yield the damning Watergate tapes.
Like Butterfield, Hutchinson’s candid sincerity stood in stark contrast to a lying former American president, who in Trump’s case was stealing an election, making Nixon’s Watergate sins pale in comparison. It made great television and inspired a sober assessment of the Trump White House for those watching, making a difference in the midterms, judging from the absence of the predicted “red wave” in 2022.
Treacherous waters
But Hutchinson’s being there at all was its own minor miracle. She was out of work, down on her luck, and could not afford the kind of legal representation to navigate the treacherous waters of testifying against a former president. And then there was her own potential culpability from being close by as Trump and his enablers plotted criminal acts against the U.S.
Piloting through dangerous shoals required a good lawyer, which would cost hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars for such a high-profile case.
If Hutchinson were gainfully employed with, say, the kind of six-figure salary that greeted other White House employees after working in previous administrations, a loan with reasonable-to-hefty pay back options might have been possible.
But Hutchinson had a resume whose work experience involved Donald Trump. Trump had doomed other departing staffers with less of a connection than she had. Skittish private sector CEOs were loath to take on anyone with even the remotest connection to the man and his attempted Jan. 6 coup (Politico 22 jan. 2021).
Her other problem: Trump himself, the paranoid president who thwarted Hutchinson’s job prospects on the way out of the White House for being “a leaker.” She had not been, but such niceties made little difference to Donald Trump.
Trajectory
It was a far cry from March 2020 when she joined on as Chief of Staff Mark Meadow’s key assistant. Her fall from grace and rise from the ashes from Trump World reads as both a cautionary tale and inspiring journey-story of a young woman coming into
her own.
A rising luminary in Trump’s White House from March to November 2020 due to Hutchinson’s strong organizational skills and enthusiasm for MAGA politics, her star would dim and dip from November 2020 to January 2021. It was then that Hutchinson thwarted Trump’s worst instincts in ways her boss Chief of Staff Meadows did not.
It looks like two dates may have doomed Hutchinson’s desire to stay on with the president, which Hutchinson still wanted to do despite his failings – Dec. 18, 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021. Trump’s cooling toward the young staffer would set her up for the descent into a wilderness of personal change, fear, and poverty where she struggled to survive.
Fateful day #1
By December 18 Trump’s fiction of a stolen election had set in, both to save face with his followers on why he lost and provide a framework to save his job. White House staffers who believed he lost fair and square gave him a few weeks to grapple with his loss and move on. But his failure to do that and Trump’s requirement they take part in the manufactured legitimacy of the “Stop the Steal!” movement became a bridge too far for some (Ch. 14).
One was Trump director of strategic communications Alyssa Farah (now Farah Griffin), who would eventually go on to become a“The View” co-host. Another was Attorney General Bill Barr, in more halcyon days one of the president’s biggest enablers. But Barr resigned on Dec. 20 after reporting an FBI investigation had found no discernible proof of fraud. Assuming firing was imminent, Barr resigned, leaving the DOJ in the hands of an acting Attorney General and the government more vulnerable in holding firm against Trump’s schemes.
Illicit hopefuls
Replacing those who left either on their own or otherwise were a growing cadre of illicit hopefuls and hangers-on hoping to get a job in Trump’s White House if the “stolen election” scam worked out.
These included disgraced former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn; lawyer Sidney Powell, Flynn’s lawyer late in the Mueller Investigation; perennial gadfly and Trump enabler Rudy Giuliani, and Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne. On the night of Dec. 18, Flynn, Powell, Giuliani, and Byrne infiltrated the Oval Office helped by a low-level aide who lacked authorization to do so. There, talk turned to insurrection via “martial law” and “seizing voting machines” to keep Trump in power.
Of raised voices and f-bombs
Earlier that day, Chief of Staff Meadows told Hutchinson to have his security detail take him home early; he wanted to get some sleep.
Walking around the West Wing, Hutchinson noticed the Oval Office door ajar, seeing the notorious Flynn and Powell in attendance with the president. In a few minutes White House counsels Pat Cipollone and Eric Herschmann barreled down the corridor and into the Oval to head off whatever was brewing. As raised voices,
f-bombs, and other curses filled Trump’s office and spilled over outside, Trump’s secretary asked Hutchinson, “Can you call Mark?”
“Get back asap!”
Multiple calls and texts went unanswered, so Hutchinson reached out to Deputy Chief of Staff and head of Trump’s security detail Tony Ornato: “He’s in the Oval talking about martial law!” she texted.
Ornato responded, “Get Meadows back asap! The Chief (of Staff) needs to be here!”
Bypassing Meadows’ unresponsive phone, Hutchinson texted his Secret Service detail, directing them to wake him up immediately. Newly awakened, Meadows said he’d be there soon, while adding, “I’m not going to lose my job because of these guys. We’ve got to fix this!” -- recasting national security into purely personal terms.
Hutchinson’s ignoring Meadows’ decision and going to Ornato showed a loyalty to the country superseding a loyalty to Meadows, as his presence added numbers and weight in exiting the two lawyers, former general, and Trump donor off White House grounds. But Hutchinson’s sound choices may have put her at odds both with her boss and the president – a trajectory that Jan. 6 would compound.
After Dec. 18 Trump would drop his martial law and voting machine scheme and focus on subverting the traditionally ceremonial task of certifying state vote tallies on Jan. 6 in the Capitol. On Dec. 20, Trump invited his militant followers by Tweet to join a “big protest in D.C. on Jan. 6th. Will be wild!”
“If I can keep him in office”
By then, Meadows had evolved too, from fearing he would lose his job -- confiding earlier that Trump was “angry at me all the time” for not doing enough to support his schemes. Now, he told Hutchinson: “I’ll be the best chief of staff if I can keep him in office. If that’s what he wants, that’s what I want.”
“Just one more than we have”
In that spirit, Meadows joined Trump’s call to Georgia election officials asking for 11,780 votes, “or one more than we have,” to hand over that state’s electoral votes to Trump from Biden. It was an act Meadows would pay for two years later with a Fulton Country, Ga. indictment charging him, Trump, and 17 others for conspiracy to defraud Georgia voters of their rights.
Fateful day #2
Getting up late on Jan. 6, of all days, Hutchinson rushed to pick up a friend as they then picked their way through the already-congested traffic. Before that day that amiable and otherwise sentient colleague believed the Trump World talking point that the militants flooding the capital wrapped in “Trump 2020” flags were Antifa, not Trump’s militant followers. But no more, seeing them up close on the drive in.
But bad judgment would not just be the province of Hutchinson’s car-mate.
Days before that infamous day Chief of Staff Meadows erred by asking both House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and Secret Service agent Ornato to figure out how Trump could join his followers once they got into the Capitol. Against Secret Service advice, Meadows continued to support the plan of Trump’s joining the rioters there and pressured the Secret Service to make it happen, not imagining the rioters’ capabilities for committing violence and doing anything Trump said (Ch. 16).
You might think, as Chief of Staff, Meadows would also have been aware that on Jan. 3, 1925 Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini officially launched his fascist overthrow of the Italian government in a belligerent speech to the Italian Parliament (“How Mussolini Seized Power in Italy and Turned It Into a Fascist State” 11 april History.com). Showing more wisdom than the president’s key adviser, both McCarthy and Ornato nixed the Chief of Staff’s request.
Jan. 6 saw the White House in full tilt mode in support of Trump’s newest plan to stay in office. By then, the White House was hollowed out of nay-sayers, leaving only White House Counsel Cipollone and his team to fill the breach.
Joining as low points the unseemly sexual advances Hutchinson endured from Rudy Giuliani and the leering approval of coup-architect John Eastman was the president’s rage-filled screed on the Elipse, including: “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore!” Trump went on to smear the media “our single biggest problem,” defame “big tech” for “rigging the election,” and accuse “radical-left Democrats" of doing the same.
Hutchinson joined secret Service Agent Ornato in now believing a coup was imminent.
But her still-strong trust in Trump made it impossible to imagine people would die that day, a belief defying the number of militant Trump supporters carrying weapons and having access to even more guns, bear spray, knives, and flagpoles shaped into spears in caches nearby. Ornato’s saying, “Big Guy knows about it” --“it” being the proliferation of weaponry around the Capitol -- reassured Hutchinson for the moment that he would do everything to keep people safe.
Of trust, poopoo, and ignored pleas
But Trump soon disabused his young staffer's trust, saying: “Look at those people (up in trees with guns). They want to come in (the Capitol). Let them in! Let my people in!
In a final blow to Hutchinson’s naivete, Trump called for security to remove the metal detectors in front of the Capitol, saying: “Take the f-ing mags (magnetometers) away. They’re not here to hurt me!”
With the Secret Service’s refusal to drive Trump to join the rioters – the dramatic specifics involving clutched clavicles and steering wheels that transfixed listeners of her testimony on June 28 – Trump sequestered himself in the White House. Ensconced in the Oval Office dining room watching television and eating, Trump reveled in the violence, the desecration of the building with “poopoo,” as Speaker Nancy Pelosi delicately described it, and ignored pleas to call off the mob even if it could save the life of Vice President Mike Pence.
Like others, Hutchinson implored Meadows to do something, while Meadows remained “a stone” on his office couch scrolling through emails and texts. It was not until White House counsels Cipollone and Pat Philbin barged in, having heard a swelling chorus chanting “Hang Mike Pence!”, did Meadows leave with the lawyers to see Trump in the executive dining room. Cipollone’s own taunt to Meadows “You’ll have blood on your hands” led the way.
Hutchinson v. Meadows
As on Dec. 18, January 6 saw Hutchinson and Meadows (and by extension, Trump) on different sides. While Meadows supported by his actions Trump’s joining the rioters in the Capitol, Hutchinson worked with Secret Service to thwart it. Where Hutchinson feared the immediate danger to Mike Pence and worked with White House counsel to persuade Trump to call off the mob, Meadows had to be pushed by Hutchinson, Cipollone and Philbin to make it happen. And, where Trump and his followers continued to push the “Antifa did it” fiction, Hutchinson never bought in.
In the fevered mind of an unhinged, paranoid president who might hear of such differences, it could have been enough to label her “a leaker” a.k.a. “disloyal,” and get her out of his hair for good.
--trg
Stay tuned for Thursday’s Part 4 conclusion of the Cassidy Hutchinson story, as Hutchinson ekes out a way to survive her past.
Who I write for…
