The other day, WaPo had a follow-up to their story about how Trump hid inside a catering cart, disclosing who else escaped from Old Air Force One to fly from Turkey to the UK on a military jet: Natalie Harp, Walt Nauta, Dan Scavino, and a few other lower level people.
As President Donald Trump secretly left an Air Force One jet on a catering truck last month in response to a potential Iranian assassination threat in Turkey, he was accompanied by some of his most loyal and longest-serving aides but no Cabinet officials.
Other passengers on the truck included Dan Scavino, the White House deputy chief of staff; Natalie Harp, the president’s executive assistant; and Walt Nauta, the director of Oval Office operations, according to a U.S. official familiar with the operation and corroborating material reviewed by The Washington Post. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
A few lower-profile aides also were present, but the group did not include Secretary of State Marco Rubio or other officials at the highest level of the government, according to the official and the material. Together, those aboard the catering truck moved under concealment from the legacy Air Force One aircraft to a smaller Air Force C-32A before flying to Britain separately from the White House press corps and senior officials.
Whiskey Pete Hegseth was already on the military jet that would sneak Trump into the UK, having entered it the normal way, up the stairs.
Among those on the smaller jet was Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who boarded the C-32A using external stairs in a manner that made him look like
The details about who was in that catering cart are useful for more than the detail that Trump took his comfort blonde, Harp, with him but not Stephen Miller (or any other Cabinet official, to include Marco Rubio).
It may explain why Trump went so nutso that any of this leaked.
As CNN reported while NYT was fighting subpoenas, in addition to pursuing NYT, Susie Wiles and Kash Patel started seizing phones almost immediately. They also had to learn who was traveling with Trump — who was in that catering cart.
Chief of staff Susie Wiles, President Donald Trump’s closest aide, and FBI Director Kash Patel helped personally orchestrate a sprawling investigation last week at the White House aimed at determining who in the government leaked information about the security deficiencies of a Qatari-gifted airplane meant to be used as Air Force One – with some officials being asked to turn over their phones to investigators on White House grounds, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
Trump had fumed over disclosures about the new plane, sources said, and his government quickly stood up an intense leak probe that roiled the government. As the investigation unfolded, at least one federal agency emailed employees warning that if they were contacted by outside agencies requesting information and devices, they needed to immediately contact their own agency’s attorneys, one source told CNN.
The sources said Patel — who had been preparing to travel to Chicago — was diverted to the White House on Friday to take a hands-on role in running the probe, which became public early the next morning when the New York Times reported that the Justice Department had issued subpoenas to four of its journalists who reported on security concerns surrounding the new plane.
Patel posted up in an office next to Wiles’ for roughly seven hours, as the two established what one source referred to as a “war room” in the West Wing.
In addition to asking for cell phones, investigators sought information from those who were traveling with Trump or had a role in the trip, including officials across various agencies. Not all officials who were asked to turn over their devices did so, one of the sources told CNN.
It remains unclear why DOJ subpoenaed NYT — and tried to bully them into disclosing sources. I’ve noted a bunch of potential reasons, some of which are quaint at this point:
But they all exist on top of another dynamic: Very few of Trump’s aides were allowed in his military jet. He left some very important people back on Old Air Force One as bait, along with the traveling press corps. And the underlying story, the escape in the catering cart, is pretty fucking humiliating.
Consider the very small circle of potential sources for this story:
Donald Trump doesn’t know whether one of his most trusted aides, someone like his comfort blonde, is exposing his humiliation, whether one of the big-egoed people left as bait is exacting revenge, or whether someone like Whiskey Pete is leaking Signal texts to journalists again.
And the circle of people who might have betrayed his humiliating secret is very, very narrow.
None of that justifies the abusive way Kash and Susie Wiles started chasing down sources.
But it does explain it.
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