A former White House aide says Mark Meadows told her not to quit after the 2020 election because Trump wasn't leaving office

• Alyssa Farah Griffin, a Trump-era White House official, discussed the January 6 hearings on CNN.
• Griffin said Mark Meadows claimed Donald Trump would remain in power after his 2020 defeat.

Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former White House communications director, said she was told by Mark Meadows — then the White House chief of staff — that Donald Trump wouldn't be leaving office in the wake of his 2020 election defeat.

Griffin in a CNN appearance Tuesday discussed the day's hearing by the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol. At the hearing, witnesses described a chaotic December 18, 2020, White House meeting where allies of Trump pushed wild conspiracy theories and pressed him to seize voting machines to cling onto power after his election defeat.

In the interview, Griffin said she had tried to discover who had let the group, which included Michael Flynn and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, into the White House.

"Who waved them?" Griffin asked on CNN. "Which is putting them through security to get onto White House grounds. We don't even have that answer now."

She speculated that it had been Meadows, one of the most ardent backers of Trump's bid to retain power despite his defeat. Meadows' actions have been among the key focuses of the inquiry.

"I suspect it was Mark Meadows, and I say that because I can tell you before I resigned, I said, 'Sir, I'm planning to move on — I want to put in my notice.' And he said to me, 'What if I could tell you we're actually going to be staying?'" Griffin said. "You can interpret that as hypothetical, but there were people around the president telling him that, and that's what led to this absolute insanity."

A spokesman for Meadows, Ben Williamson, told Insider that neither of Griffin's claims were accurate.

The New York Times previously reported that Garrett Ziegler, an aide to the Trump White House official Peter Navarro, had taken credit for admitting the group to the White House on December 18. This circumvented the usual procedure for gaining access to the Oval Office, which would've required the approval of the chief of staff, Meadows.

Griffin resigned from her position on December 3, 2020, having served in several prominent communications roles for the Trump administration.

More recently, she has criticized Trump's bid to overturn the 2020 election, claiming her MAGA-supporting father boycotted her wedding as a consequence. She has said Trump acknowledged to her that he lost to Joe Biden in 2020 and has praised the January 6 committee star witness Cassidy Hutchinson, also a former White House official.