Former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson says in a new book that former chief of staff Mark Meadows’s suits smelled “like a bonfire” from burning documents so often after the 2020 election.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of Hutchinson’s book, “Enough,” ahead of its release Tuesday in which she described the burning of papers. Hutchinson, who worked for Meadows in the Trump administration, was one of the key witnesses who testified for two hours before a House panel about events in the White House leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021 attacks on the Capitol.
Hutchinson wrote in her new book that Meadows wanted a fire burning in his office every morning starting mid-December of 2020. She added that when she would bring him a package or lunch, she “would sometimes find him leaning over the fire, feeding papers into it, watching to make sure they burned.”
Hutchinson also wrote that former Republican Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.) asked her to open the windows in Meadows’s office one time because it was smoky when Nunes went to meet with Meadows. She said that she also warned Meadows he may set off the fire alarm.
Hutchinson has previously described the burning of documents in the White House. During her testimony to the Jan. 6 House Committee, she said that Meadows had burned documents “maybe just over a dozen” times.
“The Presidential Records Act only asks that you keep the original copy of a document. So, yes,” Hutchinson said when asked during her testimony last yea if she saw Meadows use a fireplace to burn documents.
“However, I don’t know if they were the first or original copies of anything,” she continued. “It’s entirely possible that he had put things in his fireplace that he also would have put into a burn bag that there were duplicates of or that there was an electronic copy of.”
Former President Trump and Meadows attempted to challenge the former president’s election loss in multiple states after the 2020 election and are both now under indictment in Georgia in connection with efforts to overturn the state’s presidential election results.
The Hill has requested comment from Meadows’s lawyers on the allegations in Hutchinson’s book.