Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified publicly during congressional hearings on the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, squashed claims that she at one point dated Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).
The claim came from Gaetz himself, who told MSNBC in a statement that he “did date Cassidy for a few weeks when we were both single years ago,” adding that they “parted amicably and remained friends thereafter.”
Gaetz also accused her of lying about Jan. 6 and said she was “eager” to continue working for former President Donald Trump in Florida after he left office.
In her public testimony to the congressional committee investigating Jan. 6, Hutchinson detailed Trump’s temper—describing instances in which he had thrown his lunch at the wall in December 2020 and lunged at the Secret Service on Jan. 6, 2021.
She also testified that Trump sought to remove metal detectors by the Ellipse on Jan. 6 because anyone with a firearm wasn’t there to hurt him.
“But when we were in the offstage tent … I was in the vicinity of a conversation where I overheard the president say something to the effect of: ‘You know, I don’t f-ing care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take that f-ing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here. Let the people in. Take the f-ing mags away.”
In her first post-testimony TV interview on Monday with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Cassidy did not respond to Gaetz’s claim that she wanted to continue working for Trump after Jan. 6, but she did rebuff his dating claim.
She acknowledged that the pair “did have an amicable working relationship” and were at one point friends, but went on to describe the Florida Republican as “somebody that I personally do not hold in high regard in terms of trust.”
“And I do not think that Matt Gaetz has the best track record for relationships and condoning his relationships, how he thinks that they might be defined,” Hutchinson continued. “I will say, on behalf of myself, I never dated Matt Gaetz.”
“I have much higher standards in men,” she added. “And Matt, frankly, is a very unserious politician.”
Her interview was timed with the release of her book, titled “Enough,” which describes the final days of the Trump White House in more detail than during her Jan. 6 testimony.
In it, Hutchinson claims Trump turned to ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the wake of the 2020 election, saying: “I don’t want people to know we lost, Mark. This is embarrassing. Figure it out.”
