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Former Donald Trump aide Alyssa Farah Griffin said her one-time colleague, the then-White House Press Secretary and current Fox News personality Kayleigh McEnany, was a “liar” who peddled election lies because she knew it would enrich her career post-Trump.
A trove of deposition transcripts were made available by the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol riot, including statements coming from Ms Farah Griffin.
During her time in the White House Ms Farah Griffin served as Mr Trump’s communications director, and her experiences interacting with Ms McEnany reportedly left her with the impression that the former press secretary was more interested in self enrichment than serving the public.
“I am a Christian woman, so I will say this; Kayleigh is a liar and an opportunist,” Ms Farah Griffin told the House Select Committee. “I wish her the best, but she made — she’s a smart woman. She’s a Harvard law grad. This is not an idiot.”
Ms Farah Griffin claims the former press secretary knew and understood that Mr Trump lost the 2020 election, but continued peddling his election conspiracy theories because she did not want to lose his favour once she left the White House.
“She knew we lost the election, but she made a calculation that she wanted to have a certain life post-Trump that required staying in his good graces,” she said. “And that was more important to her than telling the truth to the American public.”
In the deposition, a representative from the committee asks Ms Farah Griffin if she means to suggest that Ms McEnany knew that what she was reporting was inaccurate when she made the statements.
“That is my assessment, yes,” Ms Farah Griffin said. “I never confronted her on it, because I don’t think it would have been constructive.”
Ms Farah Griffin claims Ms McEnany saw the opportunity to show her loyalty to Mr Trump and viewed it as a ticket to a lucrative career once she left the White House.
“She’s actually a very smart person, and I think she saw [the post-election] as a moment to kind of, like, ‘if I do this one last public-facing stand for Trump, I’m going to be set. This is going to work for me,’” she said. “And I mean, it did. She got her Fox News gig. She — it worked out how she’d always planned for it to, but she knew better.”
Ms McEnany left the White House a few days before the end of the Trump administration in January 2021, and joined Fox News a little more than a month later.
