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- Former top Trump aide Stephanie Grisham says Trump is likely furious with Mark Meadows.
- Meadows initially cooperated with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
- The records Meadows turned over shed new light on his integral role in Trump efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Since publishing a scathing tell-all memoir detailing her years as one of Donald and Melania Trump’s closest aides, Stephanie Grisham has used her platform to publicly condemn the former president and his allies and offer insight into their thought processes and motivations.
On Monday night, she tweeted that Trump is likely furious with his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, for initially cooperating with the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot. Meadows produced more than 9,000 documents to the Committee shedding new light on his integral role in Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Last week, Meadows reversed course and defied the Committee’s demand that he sit for a deposition.
Rep. Liz Cheney, a Republican on the bipartisan panel, on Monday night read out text messages Meadows received on Jan. 6 from Donald Trump Jr. and several Fox News hosts urging the then-chief of staff to get Trump to condemn the rioters and call for peace amid the Capitol breach.
Grisham, who quit her job as Melania’s chief of staff on Jan. 6, tweeted that newly-revealed messages made her “stomach turn” and that she’s hoping for “substantial punishment for all involved.”
“Trump’s anger level has got to be through the roof right now,” Grisham wrote, adding three fire emojis, “Not that it matters AT ALL, but I can absolutely picture his reaction & I promise it’s not pretty.”
Grisham declined Insider’s request to comment on the record.
In one text, Trump Jr. wrote to Meadows, “He’s got to condemn this shit ASAP.” In another the president’s son told Meadows that his father “has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand.”
The Select Committee voted unanimously on Monday to recommend that Meadows be charged with criminal contempt of Congress for defying its subpoena.
Reports emerged last month that Trump was angry with Meadows after he revealed in his new memoir that Trump tested positive, and later negative, for COVID-19 prior to his first in-person debate with Joe Biden in September 2020. The bombshell news undermined Trump’s claim that he only tested positive for the virus three days after the debate and suggests that the former president recklessly endangered hundreds of people, including Biden, by potentially exposing them to the deadly virus.
After Meadows announced he would no longer cooperate with the Committee earlier this month, Grisham tweeted, “Translation: Trump is pissed about his book, so now Meadows is doing all he can to get back in his good graces.”
Starting as a press aide on the Trump campaign in 2016, Grisham steadily rose through the ranks in Trump world, ultimately serving as White House press secretary and a top aide to the first lady. In her memoir, “I’ll Take Your Questions Now,” she describes the Trump White House as deeply chaotic and incompetent and writes that she and other staffers “got heady with power” and “didn’t think about serving the country.” She quit says she’s “terrified” of a second term of Trump.
Both the former president and first lady have denounced Grisham, calling her incompetent, “deceitful,” and “troubled,” in recent months.
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