The apparent fact that Rep. Scott Perry met with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows after the 2020 election was itself controversial. By all accounts, the Republicans spoke behind closed doors as part of a larger exploration of how to keep Donald Trump in power despite his defeat.
But just as notable as their conversation was what happened after the Pennsylvania congressman left the West Wing. Politico reported in May 2022 that Meadows, after meeting with the chair of the House Freedom Caucus, discarded papers in a White House fireplace. In other words, as Trump supporters discussed a plot to undermine democracy, the then-White House chief of staff allegedly took relevant materials and literally set them on fire.
Rachel Maddow will sit down with former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson for her first live interview since the Jan. 6 hearings. Tune in Monday at 9 p.m. ET on MSNBC.
The revelations came by way of Cassidy Hutchinson, the chief of staff’s top aide.
That, of course, was what we learned last year. This year, Hutchinson has a new book coming out and, as The New York Times reported, the former White House aide has some additional insights on this part of her experiences:
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 Rachel Maddow Show has confirmed the Times’ reporting about the book’s contents.
There is a degree of irony to the circumstances. 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. 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!”
More recently, Trump appeared on “Meet the Press” and told NBC News’ Kristen Welker, in reference to the Jan. 6 investigation, “They burned all the evidence. Okay? They burned all the evidence.”
As it happens, there’s reason to believe someone burned evidence, but it wasn’t Jan. 6 investigators.
As for the larger context, revisiting our earlier coverage, Team Trump has proved to have a document deletion problem, as evidenced by erased text messages. It also has proved to have a document mishandling problem, as evidenced by the classified materials the Republican stored at Mar-a-Lago.
But let’s not overlook the third category: Team Trump’s apparent document destruction problem, as evidenced by the alleged misuse of fireplaces and toilets.
The documents we’ve already seen from the Republican White House are some of the most damning in American history. It’s hard not to wonder what might have been in the materials Meadows chose to incinerate.
As for Hutchinson, she’s scheduled to appear Monday on “The Rachel Maddow Show.”
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
