Former White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin said Wednesday that the Trump administration knew Rudy Giuliani was “a liability,” a comment that comes as Giuliani faces new allegations that he groped ex-Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson.
Farah Griffin, who served in the White House in 2020, said on CNN’s “The Lead” that she “absolutely” believes Hutchinson’s claims that she was groped by Giuliani while they were backstage at former President Trump’s rally on Jan. 6, 2021. She said she is not surprised by Giuliani, who served as Trump’s personal attorney, saying this accusation “tracks with things” the former New York City mayor has done before.
“And I want to be careful in saying this, but it was a known fact within the Trump White House that Rudy Giuliani was a liability,” she told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “There was often a worry that he would show up to the White House complex, perhaps inebriated, to the point where I was actually given a directive from the president to make sure that he wasn’t trying to do stand-ups on television on the White House lawn because you just weren’t sure what he was going to do, what he was going to say.”
She noted Hutchinson told her of the incident before but with less detail than she included in her book, titled “Enough.”
“I absolutely believe her account, and it doesn’t in any way shock me that this happened and no one in the Trump White House hierarchy did anything about it at the time,” Farah Griffin said.
“The whole thing is a mess. It shouldn’t be really a surprise to anyone. But it’s still stunning in this day and age that a White House staffer would experience that on the Ellipse of the White House and you know, we wouldn’t even know about it till she has to write about it in her book,” she added later on.
Hutchinson accused Giuliani of moving his hand “under my blazer, then my skirt,” in an excerpt of her new book The Guardian reviewed and reported about Wednesday.
“I feel his frozen fingers trail up my thigh,” Hutchinson writes in the book. “He tilts his chin up. The whites of his eyes look jaundiced. My eyes dart to John Eastman, who flashes a leering grin. I fight against the tension in my muscles and recoil from Rudy’s grip … filled with rage, I storm through the tent, on yet another quest for Mark [Meadows].”
Giuliani, who is also facing a $10 million sexual assault lawsuit among a myriad of other legal troubles, has refuted the allegations, with a spokesman for him calling them a “disgusting lie.”
“It’s fair to ask Cassidy Hutchinson why she is just now coming out with these allegations from two and a half years ago, as part of the marketing campaign for her upcoming book release,” spokesman Ted Goodman said in a statement.