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Former Melania aide reveals why she released private text from ex-boss: ‘It just made me think she knew something’

June 30, 2022 | | Print Article

Stephanie Grisham, the turncoat who used to serve as former first lady Melania Trump’s chief of staff, has tacitly accused her former boss of having been in on the Jan. 6th riot.

She posited this bombastic accusation while speaking on CNN early Wednesday about why she’d shared Trump’s private Jan. 6th text message.

As previously reported, after former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified Tuesday, Grisham published a screenshot of a text message exchange she’d had with the then-first lady during the Jan. 6th riot.

In the exchange, Grisham asked Trump whether she wanted “to tweet that peaceful protests are the right of every American, but there is no place for lawlessness & violence?” Trump responded with a simple “No.”

Appearing on CNN’s “New Day,” Grisham was asked “why” releasing the text message was “important” to her.

She responded with a lengthy answer that began with her recounting how she’d come to rely on Trump to always do the right thing when asked.

“For me, it was really important because, over the years working with Melania Trump, I was able to go to her. She was the first person in our entire administration who condemned Charlottesville,” she said.

“And often I would be able to go to her and say this is bad, and she would either pick up the phone and call her husband and talk him down from something, or she would put out a statement well ahead of the West Wing to set a tone saying this is not OK.”

But on Jan. 6th, something changed, Grisham continued, and this change in demeanor, coupled with what she’d learned from Hutchinson’s testimony, had set off alarm bells.

“That day when I sent her that text, the text I wanted her to say wasn’t even political. It was just saying everybody has the right to peaceful protest but there’s no room for violence, and she just said no. And it just made me think she knew something. It made me think she knew that perhaps her husband was going to try to be down there. She knew something ahead of time,” she explained.

“It just — I don’t know this for a fact, but again, knowing her as well as I did at that point, it was so unlike her to not have condemned it. That was the moment it all kind of broke me. That’s what I wrote in the book. And I resigned immediately afterward,” she continued. “So yesterday, hearing Cassidy’s testimony, I just — I felt compelled to show that text because it was a lot of context, I thought.”

Grisham concluded by saying, “And again, knowing Melania like I did, I was so disappointed and discouraged and sickened that she wouldn’t stand up and just say simply there should be no violence.”

Note what she said about Trump’s husband, former President Donald Trump, trying “to be down there” during the riot. That remark referenced Hutchinson’s testimony.

Listen to the testimony below:

Among the bombshell claims made by Hutchinson on Tuesday was that, as the then-president was being driven back to the White House from the Jan. 6th “Stop the Steal” rally by two Secret Service agents, he’d demanded that they turn around and take him to the Capitol. In other words, he’d allegedly wanted to be with his then-rioting supporters.

Note that this wasn’t a firsthand account. It was a second-hand account based on what Hutchinson has alleged she’d been told by another former White House aide, Tony Ornato. Regardless, the agents refused the then-president’s request, and this allegedly infuriated him.

“Tony described him as being ‘irate.’ The president said something to the effect of ‘I’m the f–king president, take me up to the Capitol now,’ to which Bobby [lead Secret Service Robert Engel] responded, ‘Sir, we have to go back to the West Wing,’” Hutchinson testified on Tuesday.

The then-president then allegedly tried to reach for the steering wheel and attacked his own agents.

“The President reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel. Mr. Engel grabbed his arm, said, ‘Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel, we’re going back to the West Wing, we’re not going to the Capitol.’ Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engel, and when Mr. Ornato had recounted this story to me, he had motioned towards his clavicles,” according to Hutchinson.

However, after Hutchinson testified, all three people she’d cited — Ornato, Engel, and the third unnamed agent — cried foul.

Engel and the third agent reportedly said they were willing to testify under oath that neither of them was ever assaulted by the then-president. Ornato, meanwhile, reportedly said that he’d never made such claims to Hutchinson in the first place.

Considering Grisham’s demonstrable respect for Hutchinson, some critics suspect that her own accusation against Trump is also just as fraudulent.

Vivek Saxena
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