Mark Meadows burned so many papers in his office fireplace as Donald Trump’s presidency came to its chaotic end that the then White House chief of staff’s wife complained about the cost of dry-cleaning his suits to remove the “bonfire” smell, Cassidy Hutchinson writes in her eagerly awaited memoir.
The New York Times reported the passage about Meadows burning documents, before MSNBC confirmed it.
Hutchinson, a senior aide to Meadows, emerged as a key witness before the House January 6 committee, which investigated the deadly attack on Congress Trump incited in an attempt to stay in power.
Hutchinson’s book, Enough, will be published on Tuesday. Last week, the Guardian first reported Hutchinson’s description of being groped by Rudy Giuliani backstage on January 6. Giuliani denied it.
For the Times, Robert Draper wrote: “It was, by [Hutchinson’s] telling, an administration awash in paranoia, with Mr Meadows and others refusing to dispose of daily litter in ‘burn bags’ for fear that someone from the ‘deep state’ might intercept the contents.
“Instead, she writes, Mr Meadows burned so many documents in his fireplace in the final days of the Trump presidency that his wife complained to Ms Hutchinson about how expensive it had become to dry-clean the ‘bonfire’ aroma from his suits.”
Meadows’ habit of burning documents was previously known. In May last year, the New York Times and Politico reported that Hutchinson had in testimony described Meadows burning papers. Politico said he did so after meeting Scott Perry, a hard-right Pennsylvania Republican congressman involved in attempts to overturn Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden.
Later, transcripts released by the committee showed Hutchinson saying she saw Meadows burn documents around a dozen times between December 2020 and January 2021.
As MSNBC pointed out, ahead of its own interview with Hutchinson on Monday night, Trump himself has without evidence accused the January 6 committee of “destroy[ing] all ‘evidence’ and records”.
Last week, the former US president claimed to NBC the committee “burned all the evidence, OK? They burned all the evidence.”
