Alyssa Farah

Alyssa Alexandra Farah (born June 15, 1989) is an American political advisor who served as White House Director of Strategic Communications and Assistant to the President in 2020. Farah previously served as Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Media Affairs and the Press Secretary for the United States Department of Defense from 2019 to 2020. Farah also served as press secretary for U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Special Assistant to President Donald Trump from October 2017 to September 2019, succeeded by Katie Waldman.

Farah was born on June 15, 1989, in Los Angeles. Her father, Joseph Farah, is a journalist of Syrian and Lebanese descent who was executive news editor at the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner before moving to Northern California to become editor of The Sacramento Union in 1990. He later founded the far-right conspiracy website WorldNetDaily. Her mother, Judy, (née Smagula) is a Sacramento-based journalist who has written for HuffPost, the Associated Press, and Comstock's Magazine.

After graduating from Bella Vista High School in 2007, Farah earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism and Public Policy from Patrick Henry College.

In 2010, Farah served as a media intern for Congressman Tom McClintock and began a one-year position as an associate producer on The Laura Ingraham Show. In 2014, she was named Press Secretary for Congressman Mark Meadows; she was later named as his Communications Director. She went on to work as the Communications Director for the Freedom Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives, serving under Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows.

In September 2017, she was appointed Special Assistant to the President and Press Secretary to the Vice President Mike Pence. While serving as Press Secretary to the Vice President, she traveled with Pence on numerous trips, domestic and foreign, serving as part of the official U.S. delegations to the Munich Security Conference and ASEAN Summit.

In April 2020, it was reported that Meadows, now Trump's Chief of Staff, had considered bringing Farah on as a White House Press Secretary. She joined the White House Office as the White House Director of Strategic Communications on April 7, 2020. In August 2020, The Washington Post reported that Farah played an important role in shaping the Trump administration's coronavirus response.

Farah resigned as White House communications director on December 3, 2020, effective the next day. At the time it was reported she planned to start a consulting firm "focusing on the corporate, political and defense realms" and that she had initially planned to leave before the election according to one person speaking anonymously.

On January 8, 2021, a few days after the 2021 Capitol raid, Farah blamed Trump for inciting the insurrection and suggested that he should resign.

In 2020, Farah became engaged to Justin Griffin, a student at the New York University Stern School of Business and the grandson of Samuel A. Tamposi.