Thread by @lawofruby

THREAD: Since I'm all about the women, I'm turning to Alyssa Farah Griffin next. Griffin, a friend to Cassidy Hutchinson and Sarah Matthews, helped both communicate with the committee and was represented by John Bolton's lawyer Chuck Cooper. 1/

Before getting into her testimony, let's remember who Alyssa Farah was *before* joining Team Trump: an experienced flak for ultra-conservatives, including Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, and VP Pence. It was her old boss Meadows who brought her back to the WH from the Pentagon. 2/

Still, Griffin says she "intentionally" had not worked directly for Trump before because she preferred hierarchy and structure. And the Trump Admin was the "wild west," a place where senior staff did not even understand "basic levers of how government works." 3/

Griffin, like many before her, thought she could bring order to chaos. But she came to understand "you could do, you know, the most exceptional policy rollout or surrogates operation, but if he’s talking about God knows what over here, that’s just going to derail everything.” 4/

It was also a place, said Griffin, where the effective gatekeepers -- Meadows & Kushner -- chose their battles and/or disappeared, resulting in the "flattest organization" Griffin had worked in. She would see junior staff in the Oval and not understand how they got there. 5/

Griffin says she tried to minimize her contact with Trump directly except for when she needed him to walk things back. One critical example? The post-George Floyd killing "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" tweet, which she says came out *exactly* as Trump intended. 6/

Schiff asks Griffin if that episode was reflective of Trump's overall attitude about the use of violence. And she says yes, he felt law enforcement had a right to react with violence and that he often wanted to see "shows of strength" in the street. 7/

What sticks out here is how Schiff elicits the dots & connects them. The guy who said leakers inside his WH should be executed & gleefully retweeted video of police beating a 75-year-old is also the guy who called on rally attendees to "fight like hell" on 1/6. 8/

And as for the idea that either Ivanka or Hope Hicks were his better angels? Griffin dismisses this as myth and notes Hope, Jared, and Ivanka were behind the Lafayette Square incident of summer 2020, another gross display of WH-sanctioned violence. 9/

Griffin was not heavily involved in the campaign, nor did the campaign lean much on Griffin or McEnany to focus on specific messaging. But Jason Miller once called to ask that she encourage Trump to stop knocking mail-in voting as inherently bad. Why? Trump needed it to win. 10/

At the time Griffin testified, the Mar-a-Lago records investigation was just beginning. But her testimony about records compliance training during her time with Pence versus her 2020 stint with Trump is intriguing. 11/

She was also "stunned coming from the defense background that there were no briefings on how to deal with classified information and that it was actually very cavalierly discussed in nonclassified settings." (Less stunned? People in present-day America watching the MAL case.) 12/

And after recalling that Trump routinely tore papers up, Griffin learned the committee had received materials from the Archives that had been taped back together. She was "surprised somebody had the sense to go back and get those things." 13/

If Trump is indicted on 1/6-related charges, DOJ would need to show Trump knew he lost. Griffin could be key: About a week after the election was called, she found Trump watching TV in the Oval, & as he saw Biden's image, he asked, "Can you believe I lost to this effing guy?" 14/

But let's rewind to Election Night itself: Griffin peeked into the Map Room after Arizona was called, saw Trump yelling amidst total "chaos," and quickly fled. 15/

Griffin said she had zero involvement with Trump's post-Election Night speech or related messaging because by then, she had long been "boxed out" in favor of Meadows, the kids, Rudy, Hope, and the "core campaign team." And she wasn't even on speaking terms with McEnany. 16/

The next day, Griffin was scheduled to appear on Harris Faulkner's show on Fox when Hope Hicks called to say, "Stand down. We have a whole comms plan in place. We have a whole strategy... don't say anything about the election." Griffin did press for the WH again. 17/

Griffin resigned from the White House in early December after realizing neither Trump nor Meadows would accept the loss. She then heard that Trump and Meadows tried to install Kash Patel as CIA Director, only to be foiled by Gina Haspel's "suicide pact" with the entire IC.

Griffin then scathingly assesses Meadows, who was her boss on two prior occasions before the WH: "If there’s one observation I have of Mark Meadows it’s that he never appreciated the significance of the role he had, but he loved the levers of power that came with it.” 19/

She doesn't hold back on Kayleigh McEnany either, deeming her a "smart woman" who is also "a liar and an opportunist." 20/

After she leaves the WH in early Dec. '20, Griffin quickly signs the GA GOP as a client leading up to the two Senate seat runoffs. She wanted Trump to stay away. Instead, he flew in at the end & insisted, "Your vote doesn't count, it's all rigged. And then we lost." 21/

On 1/6, Griffin watched Fox at her in-laws' FL home & is horrified both by Trump's speech & its aftermath. She tries to reach Meadows by phone & text, but knowing how long it takes to negotiate a Trump tweet, she aims higher. She tweets to get his attention. 22/

Toward the end of Griffin's interview, she and Schiff have a poignant exchange about a through line of Trump's presidency: his propensity to "condone violence in support of his cause or view." 23/

And that propensity is one Griffin, like the committee members, ultimately sees in personal terms through the "very specific, very violent" death threats aimed at her, often in direct response to Trump's rhetorical attacks. FIN