Character Witness
Today we got treated with a special witness in the January 6th Special Subcommittee Hearing. It was Cassidy Hutchinson, a staunch Republican Washington DC staffer who has worked on the Hill for Representative Steve Scalise, Senator Ted Cruz and, most recently, worked in the West Wing of the White House as Special Aide to the President and top staffer for Mark Meadows, the White House Chief of Staff on January 6th, 2021. By now, almost everybody in the world knows Cassidy’s name and face since she has dropped the biggest political bombshell of our lives. This distinction used to be held by the likes of Daniel Ellsberg or perhaps John Dean during the Pentagon Papers and Watergate scandals respectively. But now it falls on the head of a twenty-five year old, a 2019 graduate of Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia and a resident of New Jersey. She is unusual in that she rose so quickly and yet didn’t attend any of the elite universities one usually sees on the resumes of the young and powerful in Washington. When she spoke to her university about her experience as a legislative intern, she said, “I have set a personal goal to pursue a path of civic significance.” She had no idea when she said that just how significant her path would become.
Cassidy is being lauded left and right for her courage in stepping up to tell truth to power in ways that many of her senior, mostly male, colleagues have showed themselves unable to and are perhaps scared to do. This moment will define her life for sure the way Monica Lewinsky’s life was forever exchanged by her internship at the White House. As a strange and funny sign of the times, where Lewinsky was noted for her complicity in a sexual scandal with then President Clinton, which led to his impeachment (without conviction), Hutchinson will be noted for her complicity in a seditious conspiracy with then President Trump, which was preceded by his impeachment (his second and still without conviction). The 80’s may have been out of control on sexual grounds, but our more recent experience leaves sexual malfeasance (something Trump has blatantly engaged and managed to avoid indictment or conviction for repeatedly) and ratchets upward to outright autocratic corruption.
Hutchinson’s testimony pretty much laid bare the reality of the Trump White House in its waning moments, flailing to do whatever it took in his opinion to stay in power and avoid the will and potential wrath of the people. I have followed Trump’s career for over thirty-five years as a New York City banker who worked at the bank (Bankers Trust Company) who had the misfortune and dishonor of having banked the real estate scion (I say scion versus the more common mogul because we all know now that he did little to build his empire rather than take it through inheritance from his mogul father). I may be repeating myself, but Bankers Trust had the distinction of having taken Donald Trump down in his first bankruptcy. It was during that proceeding that our senior credit officer, Joe Manganello, a salt of the earth kind of guy who knew credit better than most, suggested that the Trump brand was only worth money if he could be allowed to maintain his image as a big New York City wheeler dealer. Accordingly, he authorized out of the bankruptcy proceeds to have Donald receive a $400,000 per month allowance to maintain his lavish lifestyle and thus his gold-plated image as a mover and shaker. Without that crutch, Donald would likely have drifted into the oblivion of all ex-fraudsters who infest the periphery of the financial world. He may have found another entry point to perpetrate more high-profile frauds, but likely not on the scale to give him the global notoriety and platform to become the president of the United States. So, in many ways, Joe Manganello and Bankers Trust are to blame for the creation which is the monster Donald Trump.
I say this with nothing but reverence for Joe and Bankers Trust. I worked for Joe during those years (1985 – 1989), when I was responsible for $4 billion of bad Latin American debt and trying to get it back from the likes of General Augusto Pinochet. I don’t remember ever having to give Pinochet an allowance but rather, did some deals that gave Chile the platform to rebuild its image and economy the way it did in the 1990’s (an economic miracle by almost any standard). If Joe could have had a crystal ball and seen what would become of the huckster Trump over the years he might have been unsurprised at his volatile and controversial business career, but he would have been mortified by Trump’s political machinations, culminating in his orchestration of a seditious conspiracy to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power from himself to Joe Biden. As a credit officer of the ultimate order, Joe knew better than anyone the importance of character. I’m sure he had Trump pegged as someone who was corrupt of character, but he probably set that in the context of the real estate world where a caveat emptor approach is often common and acceptable as a means of doing business. I am certain Joe (rest his soul) would have been the first in line to decry Trump as unfit to serve in any political position, much less the presidency of the United States.
I also had the opportunity to meet Trump on several occasions in the 2009 timeframe. At that time I was in the real estate workout game and was trying to reposition a number of properties. I met with Ivanka several times in her Trump Tower office and discussed the Trump brand, ultimately concluding that it was, by then, a very tarnished brand. I met Jared Kushner, who was the publisher of the New York Observer, when he named me as number 67 on his annual Power 100 list of movers and shakers in New York real estate…and then ultimately sold him part of out property, the old historic New York Times Building (the Grey Lady), strangely enough. I even met Don Jr. when he and his first wife sat next to Kim and me at a dinner (Kim thought him quite polite at the time, though her thoughts on him have changed considerably since then).
While I watched in disgust in 2016 as Trump went on to secure the Republican nomination and ultimately to forge such a powerful base that he won the election, I kept wondering what Joe would think. When I would ask friends who voted for Trump how they could countenance his nasty and despicable ways and his abject lack of sound character, they would say that I needed to look at the bigger picture. That meant that somehow his policies justified his abysmal character traits.
All those people then and now have failed to recognizable that the only big picture that matters at the end of the day is character, and that Donald Trump is devoid of character. It seems only fitting that Trump be brought to his knees by a twenty-five year old woman of no particular note other than her ambitious and quick rise in the Washington circles. She has borne witness to the most important characteristic of Donald Trump and has become a character witness for the ages. Brava!