Last year, thanks to information shared by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, Politico reported that former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows discarded papers in a White House fireplace after meeting with the chair of the House Freedom Caucus to discuss an alleged plot to undermine the 2020 election.
Now in a new book, Hutchinson is giving some additional insight into that moment.
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"It was, by her 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," The New York Times reported.
Writing for MSNBC, Steven Benen contends that there's "a degree of irony to the circumstances."
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"In the wake of Donald Trump’s criminal indictments, the former president has repeatedly insisted that relevant information related to Jan. 6, in his telling, was set on fire," Benen writes. "Last month, for example, he used his social-media platform to publish a weird, all-caps missive that read, 'The January 6 unselect committee extinguished and destroyed all ‘evidence’ & records. Criminals!'"
Read more at MSNBC.
