The real housewives of the anti-Trump resistance

It wasn’t easy being a Trump administration staffer in January 2021 as the flock of political appointees were left with a difficult decision to make.

They could stay loyal to the president despite the establishment outcry over his repeated claims of massive electoral fraud in the 2020 election and the events of the January 6 Capitol riot. This came at a huge risk, as multiple former Trump staffers over the years have described to me the difficulties of finding a job outside of Trumpworld at that time. Some opted to continue to work for the president in the hope that his political brand would recover — a gamble that would eventually pay off.

Others chose a much different path: resign and publicly denounce the president, flagging him as responsible for the events on January 6 — or at least irresponsible in his response to them — and labeling him a threat to democracy.

Out of this second group emerged a small circle of Republican women who became bona fide celebrities of the anti-Trump resistance.

They were applauded and elevated by NeverTrumpers, former Republicans and some Democrats who heralded them for their moral stand against their former boss. Pro-Trump conservatives accused them of a more sinister motive, arguing that these women were cynically trying to protect their careers by doing what was politically popular at the time: throwing Trump under the bus, whether their allegations were true or not.

All of them, at least for a time, did reap the benefits of being against Trump at a time when his fortunes seemed lowest. They received adoring coverage from mainstream media sources, lucrative book deals, their own high-profile media gigs and speaking slots at 2024’s Democratic National Convention.

But former Trump officials still feel burned by the exodus of friends and colleagues after the 2020 election and continue to cast doubt on the sincerity of the opposition and the validity of their accusations. These ex-staffers also wonder, at the beginning of Trump’s second term, with a now-unified Republican Congress, if their former officemates feel they made a big miscalculation in taking the easy way out.

Cassidy Hutchinson, a former low-level White House aide, was elevated into the spotlight in June 2022 as she gave bombastic public testimony to the House January 6 Committee about Trump’s alleged misconduct and erratic behavior that day. One of her most sensational claims was that Trump lunged over the seats and tried to grab the wheel of “the Beast” — a nickname for the presidential limo — to force his handlers to take him to the Capitol building to be with his supporters. She also alleged that top White House officials warned that Trump’s plan to go to the Capitol would put him in legal jeopardy and that some of them had told her that Trump knew he had actually lost the 2020 election. In 2023, Hutchinson wrote a book about her time working in the White House and subsequent experiences, Enough. The book was a #1 New York Times bestseller and Hutchinson has clocked a number of appearances on major news outlets, including an MSNBC primetime spot in October 2024 where she revealed she would be voting for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.

Former Trump administration officials, though, raise significant doubts about Hutchinson’s story. Multiple first-hand sources later denied the incident in the Beast ever happened, including the driver of the vehicle. Trump said in a social media post after her testimony that she still sought to work for him after January 6, writing, “When she requested to go with certain others of the team to Florida after my having served a full term in office, I personally turned her request down. Why did she want to go with us if she felt we were so terrible?” Hutchinson confirms in her memoir that she still planned to follow Trump to Florida after he left office, but says Mark Meadows cautioned her there were concerns about her “loyalty” to the president.

Three sources familiar with Hutchinson’s post-election plans told The Spectator that it is true Hutchinson never expressed any misgivings to them about what happened with the Capitol riot. Hutchinson was all set to fly to Florida after Biden’s inauguration, with family members prepared to assist her with the move. One source even described a U-Haul truck packed up with her belongings. Hutchinson was supposedly very excited about continuing with the team and was invited to meet up with a group of close friends consisting of other female administration staffers. However, just a few days prior to her move, she was terminated for leaking information about the transition to reporters, according to former administration officials. Her friends in the administration stopped hearing from her.

It wasn’t until later in the year that Hutchinson was approached by the January 6 Committee to appear for a deposition. At this point, sources say Hutchinson was still hoping for a future in Trumpworld. Hutchinson would testify in June 2022 that she was pressured by Trump staff to avoid saying anything bad about the president, propping up the claims with the assistance of a text from an anonymous former White House official that read, “He [Meadows] told me you have your deposition tomorrow. He knows you’re loyal, and you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition.” Ben Williamson, a former senior advisor to Mark Meadows, revealed in December 2024 that he was the source of the text message and told a different version of events in a thread on X.

“Almost three years ago, in early 2022, I got a phone call from Cassidy telling me her closed-door deposition with the J6 Committee (under subpoena) was approaching,” he wrote. “Cassidy claimed to be worried that our old Trump WH colleagues, including our boss Mark Meadows, might think she was ‘disloyal’ for following a subpoena and showing up to the deposition.

“I cut her off mid-convo and responded: ‘No one will think you’re disloyal just for following a subpoena. And Mark would never, ever ask you to do anything other than the right thing and tell the truth. He wouldn’t think you’re disloyal.’”

Hutchinson’s then-lawyer, Stefan Passantino, who served as deputy White House counsel to Trump, also denied that he ever coached Hutchinson to lie in her depositions.

Williamson added, “Months later, Cassidy appeared out of nowhere at her now infamous public J6 hearing, making completely outlandish claims untethered from reality.”

Former Trump officials told The Spectator that they similarly felt betrayed by Hutchinson’s testimony, describing it as completely untrue and an attempt by Hutchinson to revive her career post-Trump by tethering herself to the “resistance.” Some wondered at the time if someone had gotten to her. A December 2024 report on the January 6 Committee’s actions, released by Representative Barry Loudermilk of the House Oversight Committee, suggested Hutchinson had been the subject of witness-tampering by Representative Liz Cheney, one of two Republicans on the January 6 Committee and a vocal Trump critic. Text messages and call logs between Hutchinson and Cheney revealed they spoke privately multiple times without Hutchinson’s lawyer present prior to her testimony, that Hutchinson was sharing her lawyer’s private communications with the congresswoman and that Cheney offered her new representation pro bono. It wasn’t until Hutchinson had her fourth interview, after she had switched lawyers, that she suddenly recalled being told that Trump had lunged at the wheel of the Beast.

Hutchinson did not return a request for comment. It is unclear what she is currently doing professionally.

Also revealed in the text messages released by the House Oversight Committee was that Alyssa Farah Griffin, another former Meadows aide who resigned from the Trump administration after the election but before January 6, served as a sort of go-between for Hutchinson and Cheney. In one message, Farah Griffin writes, “So I reached out to Liz. She agreed to keep our convo totally confidential… Her one concern was that as long [as] you have counsel, she can’t really talk to you ethically without him.” Cheney and Hutchinson spoke without her lawyer anyway.

Farah Griffin resigned from the Trump administration publicly on December 4, 2020 but said she was leaving in order to explore other “opportunities.” In a statement, she wrote, “It’s been the honor of a lifetime to serve in the Trump administration over the last three and a half years.” After the events of January 6, during which she demanded Trump condemn the actions of his supporters, she claimed in an interview with Politico that she left because she “saw where this was headed.” Individuals familiar with the conversations surrounding her departure, however, describe her motivations for resigning as more related to a cynical career assessment than any righteous stand against election lies. The Washington Post reported that a “person familiar with the matter” said Farah Griffin originally planned to leave prior to the election.

One source noted to The Spectator that Farah Griffin did say she was uncomfortable with what Trump was saying about the 2020 election in her exit talks in early December, but that the larger reason given for her resignation was that she wanted to explore other opportunities and focus on planning her wedding. Farah Griffin later mulled joining a GOP consulting firm or starting a conservative podcast in the right-wing media space, according to messages reviewed by The Spectator.

A separate source close to the matter confirmed Farah Griffin explored multiple media opportunities after leaving the administration, but said that these went beyond conservative media and that she had turned down an offer from one such outlet. This source also denied that Farah Griffin ever changed the reason for her departure from the Trump administration, telling The Spectator that Farah Griffin left because of her discomfort with election lies and encouraged other staff to find new opportunities.

In 2021, Farah Griffin joined CNN as a political commentator and in 2022 became the permanent Republican co-host of ABC’s The View, where she has been a frequent critic of Trump. In June 2024, Farah Griffin ignited the ire of Trump campaign staff by alleging that he had mulled executing staffers who leaked stories to the media. Trump communications director Steven Cheung responded to Farah Griffin’s comments in a statement, saying cryptically, “She should be answering questions about her role at the infamous Bombay Club debacle instead.”

The “Bombay Club debacle” is well known among Washington reporters, though details vary, ranging from bombastic outbursts and shouting to a more mundane telling. The tame version is that Farah Griffin had an off-the-record dinner in early December 2020 with a handful of reporters during which she indicated, perhaps after a few drinks, that she was resigning from the administration to get a jump on the crowd of staffers seeking post-Trump opportunities.

There is no doubt that what happened that night reverberated in the White House and beyond. Outside reporters heard of Farah Griffin’s plans to leave and called Trump officials the following morning to confirm the news. Her dinner partners received similar frantic inquiries. A source who was present for Farah Griffin’s departure talks claims she was originally slated to stay on for two weeks after putting in her notice, but her resignation was moved up to December 4, the day after her appearance at the Bombay Club, to prevent reporters from scooping her departure.

“She told Meadows she was resigning two weeks after the fact and then called me the next morning to move it up because of the Bombay Club incident. She claimed reporters had gotten wind of her plans. By that point [a reporter] had already called me to tell me what happened,” the source said.

Another firsthand source claims Farah Griffin always intended to leave on December 4. But like Hutchinson’s, the story of Farah Griffin’s departure from the White House has never quite made sense to former friends and colleagues. They have little doubt that she was taking advantage of a ripe media market for NeverTrump Republicans and were “incredibly hurt” by the series of events that led her to the right-most chair on ABC’s daytime political talk show.

Farah Griffin has been unapologetic in her criticisms of Trump as a threat to democracy and insists her opposition is sincere.

“Fundamentally a second Trump term could mean the end of American democracy as we know it,” she said during a joint interview on ABC News with fellow former White House officials who turned against Trump, including Hutchinson and Sarah Matthews.

Matthews resigned from her post as deputy press secretary after the Capitol riot and testified to the January 6 Committee that she knew she had to leave because she could not, in good conscience, defend Trump’s actions on that day. After leaving the Trump administration, Matthews joined the Republican staff of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis and then went to a business management consulting firm. She has made several high-profile media appearances since her testimony but has generally been less public than other former Trump staffers such as Hutchinson, Farah Griffin and Stephanie Grisham, the former press secretary who infamously never held a press briefing.

Grisham’s tell-all, I’ll Take Your Questions Now, sold just under 40,000 copies and she was given a prime speaking slot at 2024’s Democratic National Convention in which she endorsed Harris. She spoke one day before Olivia Troye, a former counterterrorism advisor to Vice President Mike Pence and member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, who says her August 2020 resignation was due to Trump’s handling of the pandemic. Retired General Keith Kellogg, Pence’s national security advisor, has said Troye was fired.

A month before the 2024 election, it was reported that Liz Cheney and three former Trump aides, Alyssa Farah Griffin, Cassidy Hutchinson and Sarah Matthews, were again joining forces to campaign against Trump in Pennsylvania.

Trump, of course, went on to sweep every battleground state and delivered improved margins in nearly every county and with almost every major demographic voting bloc.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s February 2025 World edition.