As the seventh day of the House Select Committee's public hearings commenced three women who previously worked in Donald Trump's administration sat with CNN's Jake Tapper delivering their own commentary and experiences with the committee as more and more information was revealed.
Alyssa Farah Griffin, Olivia Troye and Stephanie Grisham are only part of a group of women who have been willing to come forward and talk about what they witnessed in the White House. Politico reported that as Cassidy Hutchinson answered questions Griffin was sending text messages to Sarah Matthews, another former Trump staffer who is set to appear next week. She then reached out to Troye, who was in the hearing room on Capitol Hill.
Griffin talked about how nervous she was watching Hutchinson, "But she immediately had such a commanding presence — I was beyond proud to see my friend stand up before the world and tell the truth when so many others were too cowardly to do.”
But what they've all experienced is backlash from MAGA world. Attacks from Republicans call the women traitors while right-wing networks spend segments attacking them personally and professionally. The left questions how they could have ever worked for Trump, to begin with, and why some of them refused to leave sooner.
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“It’s a very unique group that experienced such a specific, critical moment in history together and I think we feel bonded by it and are incredibly protective of one another,” explained Griffin to Politico.
"At the heart of the group’s formation is a belief — especially unique to these circumstances but true in other crisis points for Washington D.C. — that female political operatives carry different burdens than their male colleagues," the report said. "It has been manifested in the death threats and smears they have faced, at times from random social media users."
“U are a f—ing traitor. U need to be raped. We know where you live bitch. Ur a f—ing Rino,” one series of recent Instagram messages said from one of the women.
Death threats are par for the course for many political figures on social media, but women experience far more personal attacks targeting their appearances and sexual references along with the rape threats.
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Newsmax host Greg Kelly claimed, "I think they picked her, in part, because of her looks...they gave her an appointment with the fashion police."
Then there are the attacks by the former president himself. While former male aides draw comments like "he was just the coffee boy," Trump's attacks on women are more specific.
“I was going down to Florida with a group of people,” Trump claimed in a Newsmax interview. “Great group of people, patriots, and her name was thrown out there and they said, ‘stay away from her.’ They said bad things about her.”
He went on to call her a "whack job," "crazy" and question her mental stability. "I won't say why that she's not good, but plenty of reasons," he said.
"This lady yesterday - there's something wrong with her. Is there something wrong?" the former president said. "The woman is living in fantasy land. She's a social climber - if you call that social. I think it's just a shame that this is happening to our country."
The women have formed a small informal group that includes current and former members of Congress, Capitol Hill aides and others who have been exiled from Trump world. Politico revealed that they've worked together to help each other report social media harassment and threats, advice around personal security and safety and "calmed the nerves of each other's family members."
“It is a lonely space to come forward and part of it for me was to make sure that they knew that even though it feels lonely – they bully, they intimidate, they want to make you feel like there’s no one left in the world, that’s kind of the point – for me it was important for them to know I wasn’t going to waver on them and there would be others,” said Troye.
One "member" called it a kind of "small, lonley girls club" and said that it is mostly made up of former aides to Trump who grew increasingly disgusted. They're part of a party that operates under Ronald Reagan's "11th Commandment" demand, "thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican." In the wake of speaking ill of Trump, they've become persona non grata for their professional world.
"There is no central line of communication. But over phone and text, they have regularly kept in touch throughout the course of the Jan. 6 committee hearings," the report continued. "In interviews, they have stressed they aren’t digging for information or trying to influence the committee’s proceedings. Instead, they’re reminding each other constantly that, at one of the most intense moments of their young lives — Hutchinson is 26, Matthews is 27, Griffin is 33, and Troye and Grisham are 45 — they are not alone."
