According to The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell, former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham told the House Select committee that the former President held secret meetings in the days just before the deadly January 6 insurrection. Grisham, who also authored the book, “I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House,” also told the panel that the Secret Service has documents revealing whether the twice-impeached one-term President planned to march to the Capitol with his supporters or not.
Grisham, Melania Trump’s chief of staff and spokeswoman, resigned from her role on the day of the attack. According to the outlet, Grisham’s interview was more significant than expected, giving the committee new details about the Trump White House and what the former President was doing before the Capitol attack.
“Grisham gave House investigators an overview of the chaotic final weeks in the Trump White House in the days leading up to the Capitol attack, recalling how the former president held off-the-books meetings in the White House residence, the sources said,” the report continues.
“The secret meetings were apparently known by only a small number of aides, the sources said,” the outlet reports. “Grisham recounted that they were mostly scheduled by Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows and that the former chief usher, Timothy Harleth, would wave participants upstairs, the sources said.”
Stay up-to-date with the latest news!
Subscribe and start recieving our daily emails.
Meadows has refused to cooperate with the investigation for some reason.
Grisham told the panel that she was unsure who Trump met with in the White House residence. Still, she provided Harleth’s name — he was once one of the former first family’s most trusted employees — and the identities of other Trump aides in the usher’s office who might know of the meetings, sources told the outlet.
The Guardian previously reported that Trump made several phone calls from the Yellow Oval Room and elsewhere in the White House residence to lieutenants at the Willard Hotel in Washington the night before the Capitol attack, telling them to stop Joe Biden’s certification.
As we reported yesterday, the House Select Committee issued subpoenas to the individuals involved in Trump’s Willard Hotel “Command Center” just ahead of the Capitol attack — including former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, attornies Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell, and former Trump campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn.
A video shows Trump ally Roger Stone flanked by members of the Oath Keepers militia group on January 5 just outside the Willard Hotel. The leader of that group, Stewart Rhodes, has recently been charged with seditious conspiracy, among other things.
Featured image via Michael Vadon/Flickr, under Creative Commons license 2.0
