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I stepped into the room and immediately saw a shattered plate to my right, and Heinz ketchup smeared on the fireplace mantel.
The legal challenges had been disorganized and unserious and had only succeeded in embarrassing the president.
“I don’t want people to know we lost, Mark. This is embarrassing,”
Eventually, we persuaded the president that canceling the trip would make him look weak—his greatest kryptonite.
I do not know precisely what papers Mark was burning, but his actions raised alarms. The Presidential Records Act requires staff to keep original documents and send them to the National Archives. All copies and personal papers were supposed to go into burn bags to be properly disposed of. Mark knew these procedures.
Matt Gaetz started dropping by more frequently. He had asked me several times if I thought the president would issue him a pardon. I tried to dismiss Matt’s antics but began wondering why he was pushing so hard for a pardon.
Somebody needed to give the president good advice, and I worried that he was surrounded by too many people who were misleading him. But at the same time, I knew that it was the president—not his advisors—that was not only enabling, but encouraging this to happen. He was in control.
Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” Wild.
needed to correct course with Mark before we let things completely spiral out of control—before it was too late. In the recesses of my mind, I wondered if we had already reached that point, and I was just too naive to see it.
Coincidentally, after this meeting, the White House began filtering several “preemptive pardon” requests from members of Congress. A preemptive pardon, they argued, would prevent a potential Biden administration from prosecuting them in a political witch hunt for their efforts to save democracy.
To me, “saving democracy” should not require a presidential pardon.
The country was best served if we could all move forward.
Things might get real, real bad on January 6.”
“We wouldn’t need them today if the boss had any shred of dignity left.”
“Liz, this is not antifa,” I caution, slowly easing my foot back on the gas pedal after they pass. For days, our colleagues were preemptively blaming antifa for violence that could break out today. A few days ago, Mark told me the president agreed. “Well, no shit, Cassidy. They’re our people.”
“Is that ‘My Heart Will Go On’? Playing at the Ellipse?” Liz erupts with laughter. “Yes, yes, it is. How fucking appropriate. The ship is sinking. The ship—” “The ship is the White House.” “And we’re in steerage. Nobody cares about us. We’re the first to go down.”
“One of these motherfuckers fastened a spear to the end of a flagpole. It’s fucking nuts.”
The van bumps onto the lawn. Oh God, I hope the president’s driver went over that bump slowly. He hates being jostled in the car. The president is going to lose his mind if he didn’t.
I find Rudy in the back of the tent with, among others, John Eastman. The corners of his mouth split into a Cheshire cat smile. Waving a stack of documents, he moves toward me, like a wolf closing in on its prey. “We have the evidence. It’s all here. We’re going to pull this off.” Rudy wraps one arm around my body, closing the space that was separating us. I feel his stack of documents press into the small of my back. I lower my eyes and watch his free hand reach for the hem of my blazer. “By the way,” he says, fingering the fabric, “I’m loving this leather jacket on you.” His hand slips under
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I fight against the tension in my muscles and recoil from Rudy’s grip.
He doesn’t look tired. He looks energized. I can tell he wants to keep going, keep playing to his crowd.
Tony describes Trump grabbing for the steering wheel, and then for Bobby’s neck.
Back at my desk, I hear the news break. The first rioters have breached the Capitol. They’re inside. I’m registering the development as Pat Cipollone and Pat Philbin barrel past me and barge into Mark’s office. “The rioters are in the Capitol, Mark. We need to go down and see the president—now,” Cipollone insists. Mark is a statue on his couch. “He doesn’t want to do anything, Pat.” Pat calmly gives Mark direction. “Mark, something needs to be done. People are going to die, and the blood is going to be on your hands. This is getting out of hand. I’m going down there.”
They’re calling for the vice president to be hanged. The president is okay with it.
“We killed Herman Cain.”
My soul feels broken. Washington looks like a war zone. Because of us.
Unlike with the first impeachment inquiry, I was resigned to this one. I didn’t have the will to fight an action I believed was justified.
Mark gave the hit list to the president, who kept it on the Resolute Desk.
Matt Gaetz made an unannounced visit to our office to lobby Mark for a personal pardon but didn’t receive one.
No one was doing the right thing, including me.
was disheartened at how political expediency took precedence over accountability and principles.
Stipulations were currency in Trump World—but
not to read anything that might jog my memory.
Several months later, I would tell Liz Cheney that I had felt that day as if Donald Trump were looking over my shoulder. Stefan had planted the seeds of old allegiances with his reference to my loyalty: We know you’re loyal. We know you’re on Team Trump. We know you’re going to do the right thing. We’re going to take care of you. Phrases I heard throughout my tenure in the White House, phrases I had spent a year trying to separate myself from. And now here I was back in their grip, taking care to protect the president, with a lawyer from Trump World.
My objective was to be honest and helpful, but I felt like my objective clashed with that of my counsel, which I understood was to say as little as possible. I tried to balance saying “I don’t know” responses while giving the committee threads to tug on that might help them in their investigation. I wanted the truth to come out.
didn’t feel good about it. Deep down, I knew my loyalties should have been to the country, to the truth, and not to the former president, who had made himself a threat to both.
could not find the words to tell her that the committee was giving me one of the greatest gifts I could have received: hope.
realized now that what I wanted most was to hold accountable people who had selfishly risked the country’s welfare. They needed to answer for what they had done and what they had failed to do.
breaking the code of silence felt like deviant behavior.
Stephen says that what I’m going to do the next day will be more important to the country than anything I had done in the White House. I thank him, but the assurance doesn’t do much to reduce my anxiety.
January 6 was a dark day—traumatizing—a genuine threat to the health of the world’s greatest democracy.
Once she says the last part, I understand. The country needs to see someone from the Trump administration put the country’s interests before politics and self.
I watch an old video on YouTube demonstrating the proper seated posture for women.
They know how Trump World is going to attack my credibility. So do I. I’ve participated in attacks like it, especially during the first impeachment.
Trump will hate this, I think. He hates when women wear ill-fitting clothes.
The portrait my answers paint of the president is damning: an unhinged chief executive, willing to overturn the will of the people and plunge the country into chaos and violence on the advice of crazy people. For what? To avoid the embarrassment of conceding an election he knew he had lost?
“As a staffer that worked to always represent the administration to the best of my ability and to showcase the good things that he had done for the country,” I begin, “I remember feeling frustrated and disappointed, and really it felt personal. I was really sad. As an American, I was disgusted. It was unpatriotic. It was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie, and it was something that was really hard in that moment to digest, knowing what I’ve been hearing down the hall and the conversations that were happening. Seeing that tweet come up and knowing what was
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The pushback from Trump defenders is picking up speed, the attacks led by Trump himself, whose insults are getting cruder. I tried to mentally prepare for breaking with Trump World. I know how they curate vile attacks on their detractors. I was once part of that process.
Trump doesn’t care if you dispute him or call him a liar. Only silence bothers him. Being ignored drives him mad.
I learn that one of the officers in my car is assigned to Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and another is from Liz Cheney’s detail. I learn, too, that I’m the first nonelected official under Capitol Police protection.
