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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.
“Between you and me,” Mark said, “DOJ may be looking into something about Matt. Best to stay away from him. Can you do that for me?” I nodded and promised I would.
evening of December 18, Mark returned from a meeting in the Oval Office and abruptly asked if I could tell his detail he wanted to go home, as if there was an emergency there.
president was meeting with General Michael Flynn, the former national security advisor who had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his involvement with Russian officials, cutting a cooperation deal in special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry into interference in the 2016 election. Three weeks before today’s meeting, on November 25, Trump had issued Flynn a presidential pardon.
direction. Although the Oval Office was about a ten-second walk from my desk, it was highly unusual to hear any noise coming from there.
Along with the White House lawyers were Mike Flynn, Sidney Powell, and Patrick Byrne, the CEO of Overstock.com. How did all those people get inside the building?
decided to text Tony. “Flynn is still here. And Powell. There’s a brawl.” He responded, “Oh holy hell.” He immediately called and asked if I knew what they were brawling over.
Rudy is on his way as backup for Pat Cipollone. Rudy, for Pat Cipollone. We’re talking about the Insurrection Act, seizing voting machines.” I felt my voice begin to sound desperate. “Please, Mark. You need to come back here.”
I heard the president scream, “I don’t care how you do it, just get it fucking done.” Mark and I exchanged a pained look, and he disappeared into the Yellow Oval.
never heard the president sound so desperate before. 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.
One hour after the meeting broke up, my watch buzzed with a Trump tweet alert. “Peter Navarro releases 36-page report alleging election fraud. ‘More than sufficient’ to swing victory to Trump.
a meeting in the Cabinet Room on December 21 with about a dozen members of Congress. The vice president and Marc Short, his chief of staff and former OLA director, also participated in the meeting. The president and Mark made sporadic appearances. I was in and out of the meeting and understood Rudy was primarily discussing the vice president’s ceremonial role of certifying the election results on January 6, which I would come to associate with John Eastman, a lawyer advising the president on the 2020 election.
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.
hoped the president would return from Florida ready to accept his electoral defeat so we could begin preparing him for his post-presidential life. The country was best served if we could all move forward.
A week earlier, the Secret Service had informed me that Mark had made an unscheduled visit to a Cobb County, Georgia, vote-counting center, which I wrote off as another attempt of Mark’s to placate the boss.
It might have been a good-faith gesture intended to show our appreciation for their hard work, but both the press and skeptical people could see it as an attempted quid pro quo for a favorable count. It took me a few days, but I managed to talk Mark out of sending them.
“Cass, I don’t want you to go to work on January 6th. Are you looking at the news? Crazy people are going to that rally. You have to be careful.”
The news networks were warning that the crowds on January 6 were expected to be large and militant. She kept texting and begging me not to go to work that day, and I kept brushing off her concerns. But her fear gave me pause. Why is she so scared? Should I be more scared than I am?
The president is going to be there. He’s going to look powerful… The chief knows all about it. Talk to the chief about it.”
“We have intel about potential violence at the rally,”
“There’s always the chance that we didn’t win,” Trump replied. “But I think the sixth is going to go well. Do you think it’s going to go well, Chief?” Mark said, “Yes, sir, I think it’s going to go well.”
past several months would finally end—the false hopes, the wild schemes, the futile efforts to keep the president in office after the voters had rendered their verdict. We were finally coming to the end. Until then, we were supposed to act as if the president was going to serve a second term.
turn back toward the tent and finally spot him, on the stage, waving to the crowd, as if it’s his own rally. Oh my God. Moments later, we meet inside the tent.
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.” My eyes are locked on Mark. Get up. Go
As I pull off campus, military vans pour into the city, unloading hundreds of National Guardsmen. Non-scalable metal fencing is already erected around every street. My soul feels broken. Washington looks like a war zone. Because of us.
The rioters, like feral animals, ransacking and vandalizing the beautiful halls of our Capitol. Members of Congress, journalists, and career employees sheltering under furniture, in closets, wherever they could find refuge. They’re all public servants, afraid for
their lives, wondering if they’ll see their families again.
for the spectacular job he had done, but primarily for the resolve he exemplified on January 6. Because of his courage, our democracy was still intact. Bruised, but not broken. That was the last time I saw the vice president.
The president stayed in the Oval Office all day on the nineteenth, writing a letter he would leave in his desk drawer for incoming president Biden, a practice that had become customary in recent years. The endeavor required the assistance of Pat Cipollone, Eric Herschmann, and Mark.
The president and I never said goodbye. Some goodbyes are better left unspoken.
keep you on the transition office payroll until the summer. Is that alright with you?”
watched him climb into the limo, noticing the original Crossfire Hurricane binder tucked under his arm. I didn’t have time to ask what he planned to do with it as he drove away.
what the hell is Mark doing with the unredacted Crossfire Hurricane binder?
The Crossfire Hurricane binders are a complete disaster. They’re still full of classified information,”
Liz Cheney was open to meeting with me one-on-one without lawyers, the press, or Democrats. She encouraged me to accept the offer. She didn’t want to see me shelling out thousands of dollars for an attorney or, even worse, being dragged into relying on Trump World for protection, as many others were. I knew Alyssa was looking out for me. We had talked about our family histories, and she knew I didn’t have people I could rely on financially. I admired Liz,
I asked Alyssa to talk to Liz to see if she’d be willing to agree to not subpoenaing me if I agreed to talk with her confidentially. Alyssa said she would. I did not hear back from Alyssa, nor did I follow up.
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.
described the meeting in the Cabinet Room, on December 21, where the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys were discussed, and the “find me the votes” phone call with Georgia election officials, on January 2. I told the committee that Trump had known that rally-goers had brought sharpened flag poles and other weapons with them, and that he had still wanted to get them into the rally on the Ellipse. I confirmed that the Outer Oval had stopped keeping a log of the president’s meetings and phone calls. I described the January 4 flight from Georgia with Marjorie Taylor Greene, when she bragged about her
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I now understood the gravity of those moments. Trump’s temperament wasn’t rational, but neither was it unfamiliar to me. His outbursts shed light on how his volcanic temper and egotism had lit the match that set his followers’ torches ablaze.
My views of Trump would change as I witnessed his selfish recklessness threatening the country’s constitutional order. My resolve only strengthened when my loyalties to him and my former colleagues were put in direct conflict with my obligations to the country.
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.
I’m troubled by the feeling that I’m about to betray friends and former colleagues, because a higher loyalty to the country demands it.
“The country needs to see you, needs to see your courage. The country needs to hear the truth.”
at a minimum, President Trump’s shocking dereliction of duty. I know it will expose how much he was prepared to hurt the country to assuage his own wounded pride. I know it will reveal him as a reckless, dangerous man. I see that plainly now. January 6 was a dark day—traumatizing—a genuine threat to the health of the world’s greatest democracy.
The country needs this. You can explain things like no one else can, and that makes you an extremely special person to this committee. You’re bringing people into the White House. It makes your testimony powerful. I’m very proud of you, and you need to be proud of yourself.”
I’ve participated in attacks like it, especially during the first impeachment. They will dismiss me as a nobody, a junior staffer no one took seriously or would ever confide in. I’m grateful the committee establishes I was more than that. I had been in effect “chief of staff to the president’s chief of staff.” Mark used to call me his “chief of stuff.” His “principal aide,” Liz describes me.
It’s just Liz and me having a conversation. We aren’t posturing or hiding or dreading anything. Her straightforwardness and steady cadence are comforting. I trust her implicitly. She has asked me to do a difficult thing, and I will do it to the best of my ability. Liz is on the right side of history, and she welcomes me to join her.
hear police officers identifying people carrying AR15s, handguns, and other weapons, their alarm unmistakable in the urgency of the reports. It brings me back to the trauma of that day, the dread and terror I felt as I learned of the multiple warnings of violence. I had felt the catastrophe coming, and witnessed the president of the United States not just failing to stop it but inflaming it.
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?
