Sixteen Years Later

Happy Mark Sanford Press Conference Day to All Who Celebrate

The Anniversary I Never Asked For

Our lives are full of meaningful dates. Birthdays. Anniversaries. Random holidays we only remember because someone posts a meme about them. And then there’s June 24. It’s the anniversary of the worst day of my professional life.

Sixteen years ago today, I stood in a state of disbelief as Governor Mark Sanford, my boss and the man I had spent years helping get elected and re-elected, stepped in front of a bank of microphones and cameras and completely unraveled. Until then, the official line we were giving the media was that the governor had gone hiking on the Appalachian Trail. That’s the version I approved for our communications director. He said it out loud into phones, press releases, and email chains. That version turned out to be fiction. The real story involved Argentina, a mistress, and a staggering implosion of public trust that unfolded in real time. It remains one of the strangest and most chaotic political press conferences in modern history.

So yes, Happy Mark Sanford Press Conference Day to all who observe. It’s still one of those stories that carries memories for so many people. Feel free to indulge if you’ve never watched a slow-motion political train wreck.

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Why Speak Now?

If you’re new here, welcome. If you’ve been around, thank you for sticking with me. What we’ll discuss won’t just be a behind-the-scenes account of a political scandal. It’s a story that took years to build and years to tell. I wasn’t waiting to get back at anyone. I wasn’t sitting on a draft of a book. It just took that long to be ready to write the full story in a way that felt honest.

My CNN moment (2022)

In 2022, I sat down with Jake Tapper for the United States of Scandal series. We talked for hours about what happened, what led up to it, and what it felt like to suddenly become a central character in a crisis you didn’t create. At the end of the conversation, Tapper asked, “You’ve never done an interview, never written a book, never said anything publicly. Why now? Why turn on him?”

That question caught me off guard. The way he phrased it made it sound like I was betraying someone. But here’s the truth. This wasn’t just Mark Sanford’s story. It was mine too. I was there every step of the way. I sacrificed birthdays, missed holidays, and pushed family obligations aside for the cause. I believed in what we were doing. I believed we were building something that mattered. And then, in a single afternoon, all of it collapsed.

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The Story We Told

Here’s what I haven’t talked about much. I was Chief of Staff. I was the one who gave the green light to tell reporters the governor was hiking the Appalachian Trail. I didn’t believe it, but I was out of options. That phrase has followed me for over a decade, and people still reference it with a smirk. But I didn’t invent it. That line wasn’t a panicked cover story. It was preloaded. Sanford laid it down on his way out of town.

Several people on staff recounted his lie to me, and I finally relented and shared it with the public. I regret few things in life, but I regret that.

I didn’t know he was in Argentina. I didn’t know about the affair. I didn’t know I was issuing a cover for something that would explode into a political firestorm. I wasn’t covering for a lie I understood. I simply unleashed the story he wanted out there.

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What We Were and Weren’t

People still ask if I talk to him. I don’t. Not since the CNN documentary aired in 2024. And the truth is, we were never especially close.

Sanford gave me a runway that wasn’t readily available to a guy with my background and connections. He took a chance on me, but he did it with a mix of genuine belief and sharp criticism designed to keep me in check. That approach worked when I was younger. I responded to the challenge.

But the dynamic had changed by the time we reached the first campaign and later the governor’s office. I was lashing out at him more often than not. By then, he was stuck with someone who knew how he thought, remembered every policy decision, held grudges because he couldn’t, and watched his back even when I was furious with him. I had become his “left brain” as he called me and a security blanket. He didn’t love that arrangement, but he also didn’t have much choice.

Our personal relationship unraveled while we used each other to keep climbing professionally. By the time I was Chief of Staff, I hated spending more than five minutes with him. And oddly enough, that worked for a while.

If I had thought it was one-sided, I probably would have walked away bitter. But it wasn’t. There was mutual value in the dysfunction, at least until everything fell apart. And while I don’t regret being good at the job, I do regret how long I let that dynamic go on without questioning how much of myself I was giving away.

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Staying When I Should Have Walked

I’m not here to dodge responsibility for that. I own my part in it. If I had known he was cheating on his wife and had disappeared to see his mistress, I would have handed in my resignation before he made it back to Columbia. But I didn’t know. And when the story blew up, I wasn’t thinking about him. I was thinking about the people around me, the staff, the team, the ones watching their careers and reputations collapse alongside mine. I couldn’t leave them. I didn’t know how.

Joel Sawyer, the unsung hero, pulls Sanford away from the podium. Finally!

That wasn’t about being noble. It was about being wired to take on too much. It was the instinct of someone who felt responsible for everything, long after it stopped being his to carry.

I spent a lot of time blaming myself for missing the signs or maybe ignoring them. I put a lot of energy into holding the ship together in an unforgivable storm. When it was over I realized I had not processed any of the anger for being misled and lied to by people I trusted. There is no handbook for that. Time has a way of softening the edges, but while you can forgive, you cannot forget.

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Reconstructing the Wreckage

That day, as the press calls exploded and the truth finally surfaced, people started coming to me. They wanted to confess what they knew. They wanted to explain their side. I stopped them. Not because I wasn’t interested, but because I needed to protect my clarity. I would have to testify and I did. I was going to be held accountable for what I did and said. I needed to be able to tell the truth. And the only way to do that was to stay anchored in what I personally knew.

So I started writing everything down. Every call. Every timeline. Every conversation I could reconstruct. I made notebooks of details, gaps, and instinctual red flags I hadn’t followed. I wasn’t thinking about public storytelling; I was thinking about how to stay sane.

Since then, people have tried to rewrite the story. They offer different versions, revise timelines, inflate their importance, or soften their complicity. I stopped correcting them. Most of them only saw a fraction of what was going on. Sanford made sure of that. He gave people just enough information to make them feel trusted, but not enough to know the full picture. I had to stitch those pieces together, learning long before he disappeared. That was part of the job. And even then, I still missed the biggest lie.

The ones who knew what was happening either lied to protect him or themselves. People I had come to trust. I was left with the consequences. It comes with the territory of being the guy at the top, whether you like it or not. But it takes a while to reach peace with that.

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Letting Go of What Doesn’t Serve

I’m not angry anymore. Or at least, I don’t carry that kind of anger in my chest like I used to. Time gives you the choice to let it rot you or reshape you. I chose reshape. It still shows up now and then, mostly in the quiet moments, but it doesn’t run the show. But, this story is still a big part of my life and I can’t hide from it. It defines many things about me, for better or worse.

In time, my memory may fail me, or my time on this earth will be done. I can tell the story objectively now: honest, self-critical, and blunt.

I owe this story to my family, who sacrificed in the name of the mission. I owe it to the people who honored me along the way with their compassion, patience, and encouragement. In the end, it’s just a pretty wild story to tell.

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Let’s Do This

After I published my last post, a wave of subscribers showed up. Some were old friends, some were former coworkers, and some were people I thought I’d never hear from again. It made me smile. Even now, all these years later, the story still connects people. It still matters.

So here’s what I’ll ask. Share this with someone who remembers that day, or someone who doesn’t but might appreciate the human side of what happens when politics turns personal. Ask them to subscribe. It’s free. If it brings something up for you or reminds you of where you were or what you felt, send it to me. I’ve heard a lot, but something new always adds another thread to the story.

I’m grateful we’re here.