EFTA00316512

SIEGE Trump Under Fire MICHAEL WOLFF HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY NEW TONN EFTA00316512 Contents AUTHOR'S NOTE XI 1. BULLSEYE 1 2. THE DO-OVER 21 3. LAWYERS 38 4. HOME ALONE 50 5. ROBERT MUELLER 6o 6. MICHAEL COHEN 75 7. THE WOMEN 88 8. MICHAEL FLYNN 99 9. MIDTERMS 113 10. KUSHNER 125 11. HANNITY 1 43 12. TRUMP ABROAD 156 13. TRUMP AND PUTIN 169 EFTA00316513 x CONTENTS 14.100 DAYS 185 15. MANAPORT 196 16. PECKER, COHEN, WEISSELBERG 209 Author's Note 17. MCCAIN, WOODWARD, ANONYMOUS 223 18. KAVANAUGH 234 19. KHASHOGGI 246 20. OCTOBER SURPRISES 257 21. NOVEMBER 6 268 22. SHUTDOWN 282 23. THE WALL 295 Shortly after Donald Trump's inauguration as the forty-fifth president of EPILOGUE: THE REPORT 309 the United States, I was allowed into the West Wing as a sideline observer. My book Fire and Fury was the resulting account of the organizational ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 317 chaos and constant drama—more psychodrama than political drama—of Trump's first seven months in office. Here was a volatile and uncertain INDEX 319 president, releasing, almost on a daily basis, his strange furies on the world, and, at the same time, on his own staff. This first phase of the most abnor- mal White House in American history ended in August 2017. with the departure of chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon and the appointment of retired general John Kelly as chief of staff. This new account begins in February 2018 at the outset of Trump's second year in office, with the situation now profoundly altered. The pres- ident's capricious furies have been met by an increasingly organized and methodical institutional response. The wheels of justice are inexorably turning against him. In many ways, his own government, even his own White House, has begun to turn on him. Virtually every power center left of the far-right wing has deemed him unfit. Even some among his own base find him undependable, hopelessly distracted, and in over his head. Never before has a president been under such concerted attack with such a limited capacity to defend himself. His enemies surround him, dedicated to bringing him down. EFTA00316514 XII AUTHOR'S NOTE AUTHOR'S NOTE XIII * * * the voices necessary to tell the larger story I provided anonymity to any source who requested it. In cases where I have been told—on the prom- I am joined in my train-wreck fascination with Trump—that certain ise of no attribution—about an unreported event or private conversation knowledge that in the end he will destroy himself—by, I believe, almost or remark. I have made every effort to confirm it with other sources or everyone who has encountered him since he was elected president. documents. In some cases, I have witnessed the events or conversations To have worked anywhere near him is to be confronted with the most described herein. With regard to the Mueller investigation, the narrative extreme and disorienting behavior possible. That is hardly an overstate- I provide is based on internal documents given to me by sources close to ment. Not only is Trump not like other presidents, he is not like anyone the Office of the Special Counsel. most of us have ever known. Hence, everyone who has been close to him Dealing with sources in the Trump White House has continued to feels compelled to try to explain him and to dine out on his head-smacking offer its own set of unique issues. A basic requirement of working there peculiarities. It is yet one more of his handicaps: all the people around is, surely, the willingness to infinitely rationalize or delegitimize the truth, him, however much they are bound by promises of confidentiality or and, when necessary, to outright lie. In fact, I believe this has caused some nondisclosure agreements or even friendship, cannot stop talking about of the same people who have undermined the public trust to become pri- their experience with him. In this sense, he is more exposed than any vate truth-tellers. This is their devil's bargain. But for the writer, interview- president in history. ing such Janus-faced sources creates a dilemma, for it requires depending Many of the people in the White House who helped me during the on people who lie to also tell the truth—and who might later disavow the writing ofFire andFury are now outside of the administration, yet they are truth they have told. Indeed, the extraordinary nature of much of what as engaged as ever by the Trump saga. I am grateful to be part of this sub- has happened in the Trump White House is often baldly denied by its stantial network Many of Trump's pre-White House cronies continue to spokespeople, as well as by the president himself. Yet in each successive both listen to him and support him; at the same time, as an expression both account of this administration, the level of its preposterousness—even as of their concern and of their incredulity, they report among one another, that bar has been consistently raised—has almost invariably been con- and to others as well, on his temper, mood, and impulses. In general, I firmed. have found that the closer people are to him, the more alarmed they have In an atmosphere that promotes, and frequently demands, hyperbole, found themselves at various points about his mental state. They all spec- tone itself becomes a key part of accuracy. For instance, most crucially, ulate about how this will end—badly for him, they almost all conclude. the president, by a wide range of the people in close contact with him, is Indeed, Trump is probably a much better subject for writers interested in often described in maximal terms of mental instability. "I have never met human capacities and failings than for most of the reporters and writers anyone crazier than Donald Trump" is the wording of one staff member who regularly cover Washington and who are primarily interested in the who has spent almost countless hours with the president. Something like pursuit of success and power. this has been expressed to me by a dozen others with firsthand experience. My primary goal in Siege is to create a readable and intuitive narrative— How do you translate that into a responsible evaluation of this singular that is its nature. Another goal is to write the near equivalent of a real-time White House? My strategy is to try to show and not tell, to describe the history of this extraordinary moment, since understanding it well after broadest context, to communicate the experience, to make it real enough the fact might be too late. A final goal is pure portraiture: Donald Trump for a reader to evaluate for him- or herself where Donald Trump falls on a as an extreme, almost hallucinatory, and certainly cautionary, Amer- vertiginous sliding scale of human behavior. It is that condition, an emo- ican character. To accomplish this, to gain the perspective and to find tional state rather than a political state, that is at the heart of this book. EFTA00316515 1 BULLSEYE T he president made his familiar stink-in-the-room face, then way his hands as though to ward off a bug. "Don't tell me this; he said. "Why are you telling me this?" His personal lawyer John Dowd, in late February 2018, little mo than a year into Trump's tenure, was trying to explain that prosecutc were likely to issue a subpoena for some of the Trump Organizatio: business records. Trump seemed to respond less to the implications of such a deep di into his affairs than to having to hear about it at all. His annoyance set i a small rant. It was not so much about people out to get him—and pe ple were surely out to get him—but that nobody was defending him. T problem was his own people. Especially his lawyers. Trump wanted his lawyers to "fix" things. "Don't bring me problen bring me solutions; was a favorite CEO bromide that he often repeate He judged his lawyers by their under-the-table or sleight-of-hand ski and held them accountable when they could not make problems disa pear. His problems became their fault. "Make it go away" was one of t frequent orders. It was often said in triplicate: "Make it go away, make go away, make it go away" The White House counsel Don McGahn—representing the Whi EFTA00316516 2 MICHAEL WOLFF SIEGE House rather than, in a distinction Trump could never firmly grasp, the issues that would immediately need to be addressed if he were to to president himself—demonstrated little ability to make problems disap- on the case. Trump refused to consider any of them. More than a doz pear and became a constant brunt of Trump's rages and invective. His legal major firms had turned down his business. In the end, Trump was left wi interpretation of proper executive branch function too often thwarted his a ragtag group of solo practitioners without the heft and resources of I boss's wishes. firms. Now, thirteen months after his inauguration, he was facing p Dowd and his colleagues, Ty Cobb and Jay Sekulow—the trio of law- sonal legal trouble at least as great as that faced by Richard Nixon and E yers charged with navigating the president through his personal legal Clinton, and doing so with what seemed like, at best, a Court Street lei problems—had, on the other hand, become highly skilled in avoiding team. But Trump appeared to be oblivious to this exposed flank. Ratch' their client's bad humor, which was often accompanied by menacing, ing up his level of denial about the legal threats around him, he breez barely controlled personal attacks. All three men understood that to be a rationalized: "If I had good lawyers, took guilty" successful lawyer for Donald Trump was to tell the client what he wanted Dowd, at seventy-seven, had had a long, successful legal career, be to hear. in government and in Washington law firms. But that was in the past. Trump harbored a myth about the ideal lawyer that had almost noth- was on his own now, eager to postpone retirement. He knew the imp( ing to do with the practice of law. He invariably cited Roy Cohn, his old tance, certainly to his own position in Trump's legal circle, of und. New York friend, attorney, and tough-guy mentor, and Robert Kennedy. standing his client's needs. He was forced to agree with the presider John F. Kennedy's brother. "He was always on my ass about Roy Cohn assessment of the investigation into his campaign's contact with Russi and Bobby Kennedy," said Steve Bannon, the political strategist who, state interests: it would not reach him. To that end, Dowd, and the ott perhaps more than anyone else, was responsible for Trump's victory. members of Trump's legal team, recommended that the president coc "'Roy Cohn and Bobby Kennedy; he would say. 'Where's my Roy Cohn erate with the Mueller investigation. and Bobby Kennedy?'" Cohn, to his own benefit and legend, built the "Sot a target, right?" Trump constantly prodded them. myth that Trump continued to embrace: with enough juice and mus- This wasn't a rhetorical question. He insisted on an answer, and cle, the legal system could always be gamed. Bobby Kennedy had been affirmative one: "Mr. President, you're not a target?' Early in his tenu his brother's attorney general and hatchet man; he protected JFK and Trump had pushed FBI director James Comey to provide precisely tl worked the back channels of power for the benefit of the family. reassurance. In one of the signature moves of his presidency, he had fir This was the constant Trump theme: beating the system. "the guy Comey in May 2017 in part because he wasn't satisfied with the enth who gets away with it," he had often bragged to friends in New York. siasm of the affirmation and therefore assumed Comey was plotti At the same time, he did not want to know details. He merely wanted against him. his lawyers to assure him that he was winning. 'We're killing it, right? Whether the president was indeed a target—and it would surely he That's what I want to know. That's all I want to know. If we're not killing taken a through-the-looking-glass exercise not to see him as the bullsc it, you screwed up," he shouted one afternoon at members of his ad hoc of the Mueller investigation—seemed to occupy a separate reality IN legal staff. Trump's need to be reassured that he was not a target. From the start, it had become a particular challenge to find top law- "Trump's trained me;' Ty Cobb told Steve Bannon. "Even if it's bi yers to take on what, in the past, had always been one of the most vaunted it's great!" of legal assignments: representing the president of the United States. One Trump imagined—indeed, with a preternatural confidence, nothi high-profile Washington white-collar litigator gave Trump a list of twenty appeared to dissuade him—that sometime in the very near future he wot EFTA00316517 4 MICHAEL WOLFF SIEGE hear directly from the special counsel, who would send him a compre- after the FBI had first raised questions about National Security Ad. hensive and even apologetic letter of exoneration. Michael Flynn, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus had walked into Steve I "Where he kept demanding to know, "is my fucking letter?" non's office and said, "going to do you a big favor. Give me your a card. Don't ask me why, just give it to me. You'll be thanking me for rest of your life:" The grand jury empanelled by Special Counsel Robert Mueller met on Bannon opened his wallet and gave Priebus his American ExI Thursdays and Fridays in federal district court in Washington. Its busi- card. Priebus shortly returned, handed the card back, and said, "You ness was conducted on the fifth floor of an unremarkable building at 333 have legal insurance Constitution Avenue. The grand jurors gathered in a nondescript space Over the next year, Bannon—a witness of fact—spent hundrec that looked less like a courtroom than a classroom, with prosecutors at a hours with his lawyers preparing for his testimony before the sp podium and witnesses sitting at a desk in the front of the room. The Mueller counsel and before Congress. His lawyers in turn spent ever moun grand jurors were more female than male, more white than black, older hours talking to Mueller's team and to congressional committee coun rather than younger; they were distinguished most of all by their focus Bannon's legal costs at the end of the year came to $2 million. and intensity. They listened to the proceedings with "a scary sort of atten- Every lawyer's first piece of advice to his or her client was blunt tion, as though they already know everything," said one witness. unequivocal: talk to no one, lest it become necessary to testify about In a grand jury inquiry, you fall into one of three categories. You are you said. Before long, a constant preoccupation of senior staffers in a "witness of fact," meaning the prosecutor believes you have information Trump White House was to know as little as possible. It was a wn about an investigation at hand. Or you are a "subject," meaning you are side-up world: where being "in the room" was traditionally the r regarded as having personal involvement with the crime under investiga- sought-after status, now you wanted to stay out of meetings. You wa tion. Or, most worrisome, you are a "target,' meaning the prosecutor is to avoid being a witness to conversations; you wanted to avoid b seeking to have the grand jury indict you. Witnesses often became sub- witnessed being a witness to conversations, at least if you were sn jects, and subjects often became targets. Certainly, nobody was your friend. It was impossible to know whc In early 2018, with the Mueller investigation and its grand jury main- colleague stood in the investigation; hence, you had no way of knot taining a historic level of secrecy, no one in the White House could be sure how likely it was that they might need to offer testimony about some who was what. Or who was saying what to whom. Anyone and everyone else—you, perhaps—as the bargaining chip to save themselves by a working for the president or one of his senior aides could be talking to the crating with the special counsel, a.k.a. flipping. special counsel. The investigation's code of silence extended into the West The White House, it rapidly dawned on almost everyone who wo: Wing. Nobody knew, and nobody was saying, who was spilling the beans. there—even as it became one more reason not to work there—was Almost every White House senior staffer—the collection of advisers scene of an ongoing criminal investigation, one that could potent who had firsthand dealings with the president—had retained a lawyer. ensnare anyone who was anywhere near it. Indeed, from the president's first days in the White House, Trump's tangled » * * legal past and evident lack of legal concern had cast a shadow on those who worked for him. Senior people were looking for lawyers even as they The ultimate keeper of the secrets from the campaign, the transition, were still learning how to navigate the rabbit warren that is the West Wing. through the first year in the White House was Hope Hicks, the 14, In February 2017, mere weeks after the inauguration, and not ►ong House communications director. She had witnessed most everyth EFTA00316518 6 MICHAEL WOLFF SIEGE 7 She saw what the president saw: she knew what the president, a man she acted as his de facto chief of staff. Trump did not want his administra- unable to control his own running monologue, knew. tion to be staffed by professionals; he wanted it to be staffed by people who On February 27, 2018, testifying before the House Intelligence attended and catered to him. Committee—she had already appeared before the special counsel—she Hicks—"Hope-y," to Trump—was both the president's gatekeeper was pressed about whether she had ever lied for the president. Perhaps a and his comfort blanket. She was also a frequent subject of his pruri- more accomplished communications professional could have escaped the ent interest: Trump preferred business, even in the White House, to be corner here, but Hicks, who had scant experience other than working as personal. "Who's fucking Hope?" he would demand to know. The topic Donald Trump's spokesperson, which, as often as not, meant dealing with also interested his son Don Jr., who often professed his intention to "fuck his disregard of empirical truth, found herself as though in a sudden and Hope The president's daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, unexpected moral void trying to publicly parse the relative importance both White House senior advisers, expressed a gentler type of concern for of her boss's lies. She admitted to telling "white lies: as in, somehow, less Hicks; sometimes they would even try to suggest eligible men. than the biggest lies. This was enough of a forward admission to require But Hicks, seeming to understand the insular nature of Trumpworld, a nearly twenty-minute mid-testimony conference with her lawyers, dis- dated exclusively inside the bubble, picking the baddest boys in it: cam- tressed by what she might be admitting and by where any deconstruction paign manager Corey Lewandowski during the campaign and presiden- of the president's constant inversions might lead. tial aide Rob Porter in the White House. As the relationship between Not long after she testified, another witness before the Mueller grand Hicks and Porter unfolded in the fall of 2017, knowing about the affair jury was asked how far Hicks might go to lie for the president. The witness became an emblem of Trump insiderness, with special care taken to keep answered: "I think when it comes to doing anything as a `yes man for this development from the proprietary president. Or not: other people, Trump, she'll do it—but she won't take a bullet for him." The statement assuming that Porter's involvement with Hicks would not at all please could be taken as both a backhanded compliment and an estimate of how Trump, were less than discreet about it. far loyalty in the Trump White House might extend—probably not too far. Almost no one in Trump's administration, it could be argued, was con- ventionally suited to his or her job. But with the possible exception of the In the heightened enmity of the Trump White House, Rob Porter may have president himself, no one provided a better illustration of this unprepared succeeded in becoming the most disliked person by everyone except per- and uninformed presidency than Hicks. She did not have substantial media haps the president himself. A square-jawed, 1950s-looking guy who could or political experience, nor did she have a temperament annealed by years have been a model for Brylcreem, he was almost a laughable figure of of high-pressure work. Always dressed in the short skirts that Trump betrayal and perfidy: if he hadn't stabbed you in the back, you would be favored, she seemed invariably caught in the headlights. Trump admired forced to acknowledge how unworthy he considered you to be. A sitcom her not because she had the political skills to protect him, but for her pliant sort of suck-up—"Eddie Haskell," cracked Bannon, citing the early televi- dutifulness. Her job was to devote herself to his care and feeding. sion icon of insincerity and brownnosing featured in Leave It to Beaver—he "When you speak to him, open with positive feedback," counseled embraced Chief of Staff John Kelly, while at the same time poisoning him Hicks, understanding Trump's need for constant affirmation and his with the president. Porter's estimation of his own high responsibilities in almost complete inability to talk about anything but himself. Her atten- the White House, together with the senior-most jobs that the president, tiveness to 'frump and tractable nature had elevated her, at age twenty-nine, he let it be known, was promising him, seemed to put the administration to the top White House communications job. And practically speaking, and the nation squarely on his shoulders. EFTA00316519 8 MICHAEL WOLFF SIEGE %IP Porter had, before the age of forty, two bitter ex-wives, at least one informed the media that she had filed an emergency protective ore of whom he had beaten, and both of whom he had cheated on at talk- against him. of-the-town levels. During a stint as a Senate staffer, the married Porter The White House, or at least Kelly—and likely Hicks—had been awi had an affair with an intern, costing him his job. His girlfriend Samantha of many of these claims and, effectively, covered them up. ("You usua Dravis had moved in with Porter in the summer of 2017, while, quite have enough competent people for White House positions to weed out t unbeknownst to her, he was seeing Hicks. "I cheated on you because you're wife beaters, but you couldn't be so choosy in the Trump White House,' not attractive enough; he later told Dravis. one Republican acquaintance of Porter's.) The furor that erupted arou In a potentially criminal break of protocol, Porter had gained access Porter and his troubling gross-guy history not only annoyed Trump to his raw FBI clearance reports and seen the statements of his ex-wives. "He stinks of bad press"—it further weakened Kelly. On February 7, of His most recent ex-wife had also written a blog about his alleged abuse, both of his former wives gave interviews to CNN, Porter resigned. which, while it did not name him, clearly fingered him. Concerned about A publicity-shy Hicks—Donald Trump put a high value on associa the damaging impact his former wives could have on his security review, who did not steal his press opportunities—suddenly found her love I he recruited Dravis to help him smooth his relationship with both women. in the glare of intense international press scrutiny. Her affair with the d Lewandowski, Hicks's former boyfriend, caught wind of the Hicks- credited Porter highlighted her own odd relationship with the preside Porter relationship and began working to expose it; by some reports, and his family, as well as the haphazard management, interpersonal d: he got paparazzi to follow Hicks. Though Porter's history of abuse was functions, and general lack of political savvy in the Trump court. slowly making its way to the surface as a result of the FBI investigation, * * * the Lewandowski campaign against Hicks cut through many other efforts to cover up Porter's transgressions. The affair was, curiously, among the least of Hicks's problems. Indeed, I Dravis, in the autumn of 2017, heard the Lewandowski-pushed Hicks the Porter scandal became perhaps a better cloud under which rumors of the Hicks-Porter relationship. After finding Hicks's number leave the administration than what almost everybody in the West Wi listed under a man's name in Porter's contacts, Dravis confronted Porter, assumed was the real cloud. who promptly threw her out. Moving back in with her parents, she began On February 27, a reporter at the Washington insider newsletter Axi her own revenge campaign, openly talking about Porter's security clear- Jonathan Swan, a favorite conduit for White House leaks, reported tl ance issues, including to people inside the White House counsel's office, Josh Raffel was leaving the White House. In a novel arrangement, Rai saying he had protection at the highest levels in the White House. Then, had come into the White House in April 2017 as the exclusive spokespers along with Lewandowski, Dravis helped leak the details of the Hicks- for the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner, and his wife, Ivanka, bypa Porter romance to the Daily Mail, which published a story about it on ing the White House communications team. Raffel, who, like Kushn February 1. was a Democrat, had worked for Hiltzik Strategies, the New York Pub But Dravis, joined by Porter's former wives, decided that, outra- relations firm that represented ivanka's clothing line. geously, he had come out looking good in the Daily Mail account—he Hope Hicks, who had also worked for the Hiltzik firm—perhaps b was part of a glam power couple! Porter called Dravis to taunt her: "You known for having long represented the film producer Harvey Weinste thought you could get me!" Dravis and his former wives all then publicly caught, in the fall of 2017, in an epochal harassment and abuse scam revealed their abuse at his hand. His first wife said he kicked and punched and cover-up—had originally had the same role as Raffel but at a higl her; she even produced a photograph of her black eye. His second wife level: she was the personal spokesperson for the president. In Septemb EFTA00316520 10 ?MICHAEL WOLFF SIEGE Hicks had been elevated to White House communications director, with unlimited resources. The more a determined team of G-men sifts, stril Raffel as her number two. and inspects, the greater the chance that both methodical and cast The trouble had arisen the previous summer. Both Hicks and Raffel crimes will be revealed. The more comprehensive the search, the me had been on Air Force One in July 2017 as the news broke about Donald inevitable the outcome. The case of Donald Trump—with his history Trump Jr.'s meeting in Trump Tower during the campaign with Russian bankruptcies, financial legerdemain, dubious associations, and gene) government go-betweens offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. During the sense of impunity—certainly seemed to offer prosecutors something flight back to the United States after the G20 summit in Germany, Hicks an embarrassment of riches. and Raffel aided the president in his efforts to issue a largely false story For his part, however, Donald Trump yet seemed to believe that 1 about the Trump Tower meeting, thus becoming part of the cover-up. skills and instincts were at least a match for all the thoroughness as Even though Raffel had been at the White House for a little more than resources of the United States Department of Justice. He even believ nine months, the Axios report said that his departure had been under dis- their exhaustive approach would work in his favor. 'Boring. Confusi cussion for several months. That was untrue. It was an abrupt exit. for everybody:' he said, dismissing the reports of the investigation pi The next day, just as abruptly, Hope Hicks—the person in the White vided by Dowd and others. "You can't follow any of this. No hook." House closest to the president—resigned as well. One of the many odd aspects of Trump's presidency was that The one person who perhaps knew more than anyone else about the did not see being president, either the responsibilities or the exposu workings of the Trump campaign and the Trump White House was sud- as being all that different from his pre-presidential life. He had endur denly out the door. The profound concern inside the White House was almost countless investigations in his long career. He had been involv the reasonable supposition that Hicks and Raffel, both witnesses to and in various kinds of litigation for the better part of forty-five years. Het, participants in the president's efforts to cover up the details of his son and a fighter who, with brazenness and aggression, got out of fixes that wot son-in-law's meeting with the Russians, were subjects or targets of the have ruined a weaker, less wily player. That was his essential busing Mueller investigation—or, worse, had already cut a deal. strategy: what doesn't kill me strengthens me. Though he was wound The president, effusive in his public praise for Hicks, did not try to again and again, he never bled out. talk her out of leaving. In the weeks to come he would mope about her "It's playing the game," he explained in one of his frequent mor absence—"Where's my Hope-y?"--but, in fact, as soon as he got wind logues about his own superiority and everyone else's stupidity. is go that she might be talking, he wanted to cut her loose and began, in a at the game. Maybe. the best. Really, I could be the best. I think I significant rewrite, downgrading her status and importance on the cam- the best. very good. Very cool. Most people are afraid that the wo paign and in the White House. might happen. But it doesn't, unless you're stupid. And. not stupid.' Yet here, from Trump's point of view, was a hopeful point about Hicks: In the weeks after his first anniversary in office, with the Muel as central as she was to his presidency, her duties really only consisted of investigation in its eighth month, Trump continued to regard the si pleasing him. She was an unlikely agent of grand strategy and great con- cial counsel's inquiry as a contest of wills. He did not see it as a war spiracies. Trump's team was made up of only bit players. attrition—a gradual reduction of the strength and credibility of the t get through sustained scrutiny and increasing pressure. Instead, he sat • * * situation to confront, a spurious government undertaking that was v John Dowd may have been reluctant to give his client bad news, but nerable to his attacks. He was confident he could jawbone this "wit he well understood the danger of a thorough prosecutor with virtually hunt"—often tweeted in all-caps—to at least a partisan draw. EFTA00316521 SIEGE 12 12 MICHAEL WOLFF Many in the Trump circle agreed with their boss: they believed tha He remained irritated by efforts to persuade him to play the game in whatever idiotic moves had been made by idiotic Trump hands, the Rus the usual Washington way —mounting a disciplined legal defense, negoti- sia investigation was too abstruse and nickel-and-dime to ultimately stick ating, trying to cut his losses—rather than his way. This was disconcerting At the same time, many, and perhaps all, were privately convinced tha to many of the people closest to him, but it alarmed them more to see that a deep dive—or, for that matter, even a cursory inspection—of Trump' as Trump's indignation and sense of personal insult rose, so did his belief financial past would yield a trove of overt offenses, and likely a pattern o in his own innocence. career corruption. It was hardly surprising, then, that ever since the beginning of th special counsel's investigation, Trump had tried to draw a line in the sang By the end of February, in addition to the Mueller grand jury indictments between Mueller and Trump family finances, openly threatening Muelle of a group of Russian nationals for illegal activities involved with efforts if he went there. Trump's operating assumption remained that the speck- by the Russian government to influence the U.S. election, Mueller had counsel was afraid of him, conscious of where and how his tolerant reached several levels into the Trump circle. Among those who were might end. Trump was confident that the Mueller team could be made t indicted or who had pled guilty to felonies were his former campaign man- understand its limits, by either wink-wink or unsubtle threat. ager Paul Manafort, his former national security advisor Michael Flynn, "They know they can't get me," he told one member of his cirri the eager-beaver junior adviser George Papadopoulos, and Manafort's of after-dinner callers, "because I was never involved.. not a targe business partner and campaign official Rick Gates. This series of legal There's nothing.. not a target. They've told me. not a target. An moves could be classically read as a methodical, step-by-step approach to they know what would happen if they made me a target. Everybod the president's door. Or, from the Trump camp's point of view, it could be understands everybody." seen as a roundup of the sorts of opportunists and hangers-on who had always trailed Trump. * * * The doubts about the usefulness of Trump's hangers-on was an implicit Books and newspaper stories about Trump's forty-five years in busint part of their usefulness: they could be shrugged off and disavowed at any were full of his shady dealings, and his arrival in the White House on time, which is what promptly happened at the least sign of trouble. The helped to highlight them and surface even juicier ones. Real estate w; Trumpers swept up by Mueller were all declared wannabe and marginal the world's favorite money-laundering currency, and Trump's B-level re players. The president had never met them, could not remember them, or estate business—relentlessly marketed by Trump as triple A—was qui had a limited acquaintance with them. "I know Mr. Manafort—I haven't explicitly designed to appeal to money launderers. What's more, Truml spoken to him in a long time, but I know him: declared a dismissive own financial woes, and desperate efforts to maintain his billionaire lib Trump, pulling a line from the "who dat?" page of his playbook. style, cachet, and market viability, forced him into constant and unsubt The difficulty in proving a conspiracy is proving intent. Many of the schemes. In the high irony department, Jared Kushner, when he was president's inner circle believed that Trump, and the Trump Organiza- law school, and before he met Ivanka, identified, in a paper he wrot tion, and by extension the Trump campaign, operated in such a diffuse, possible claims of fraud against the Trump Organization in a particul haphazard, gang-that-couldn't-shoot-straight manner that intent would real estate deal he was studying—a subject now of quite some amuseme be very difficult to establish. What's more, the Trump hangers-on were among his acquaintances at the time. Practically speaking, Trump hid so demonstrably subpar players that stupidity could well be a reasonable plain sight, as the prosecutors appeared to be finding. defense against intent. EFTA00316522 14 MICHAEL WOLFF SIEGE 15 In November 2004, for instance, Jeffrey Epstein, the financier later in fact, never moved into the house. Trump had, miraculously, earned caught in a scandal involving underage prostitutes, agreed to purchase $55 million without putting up a dime. Or, more likely, Trump merely from bankruptcy a house in Palm Beach, Florida, for $36 million, a prop- earned a fee for hiding the real owner—a shadow owner quite possibly erty that had been on the market for two years. Epstein and Trump had being funneled cash by Rybolovlev for other reasons beyond the value been close friends—playboys in arms, as it were—for more than a decade, of the house. Or, possibly, the real owner and real buyer were one and with Trump often seeking Epstein's help with his chaotic financial affairs. the same. Rybolovlev might have, in effect, paid himself for the house, Soon after negotiating the deal for the house in Palm Beach, Epstein took thereby cleansing the additional $55 million for the second purchase Trump to see it, looking for advice on construction issues involved with of the house. moving the swimming pool. But as he prepared to finalize his purchase This was Donald Trump's world of real estate. for the house, Epstein discovered that Trump, who was severely cash- • * • constrained at the time, had bid $41 million for the property and bought it out from under Epstein through an entity called Trump Properties As though using mind-control tricks, Jared Kushner had become highly LLC, entirely financed by Deutsche Bank, which was already carrying a skilled at containing his deep frustration with his father-in-law. He stayed substantial number of troubled loans to the Trump Organization and to expressionless—sometimes he seemed almost immobile—when Trump Trump personally. went off the rails, unleashing tantrums or proposing dopey political or Trump, Epstein knew, had been loaning out his name in real estate policy moves. Kushner, a courtier in a crazy court, was possessed of an deals—that is, for an ample fee, Trump would serve as a front man to eerie calmness and composure. He was also very worried. It seemed disguise the actual ownership in a real estate transaction. (This was, in astounding and ludicrous that this fig-leaf technicality—"You're not a a sense, another variation of Trump's basic business model of licensing target, Mr. President"—could offer his father-in-law such comfort. his name for commercial properties owned by someone else.) A furi- Kushner understood that Trump was surrounded by a set of mortal ous Epstein, certain that Trump was merely fronting for the real owners, arrows, any of which might kill him: the case for obstruction; the case threatened to expose the deal, which was getting extensive coverage in for collusion; any close look at his long, dubious financial history; the Florida papers. The fight became all the more bitter when, not long after always-lurking issues with women; the prospects of a midterm rout and the purchase, Trump put the house on the market for $125 million. the impeachment threat if the midterm elections went against them; the But if Epstein knew some of Trump's secrets, Trump knew some of fickleness of the Republicans, who might at any time turn on him; and the Epstein's. Trump often saw the financier at Epstein's current Palm Beach senior staffers who had been pushed out of the administration (Kushner house, and Trump knew that Epstein was visited almost every day, and had urged the ouster of many of them), any of whom might testify against had been for many years, by girls III hired to give him massages that him. In March alone, Gary Cohn, the president's chief economic adviser, often had happy endings—girls recruited from local restaurants, strip clubs, Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state, and Andrew McCabe, the deputy and, also, Trump's own Mar-a-Lago. Just as the enmity between the two director of the FBI—each man bearing the president deep contempt— friends increased over the house purchase, Epstein found himself under were pushed from the administration. investigation by the Palm Beach police. And as Epstein's legal prob- But the president was in no mood to hear Kushner's counsel. Never lems escalated, the house, with only minor improvements, was acquired entirely trusted by his father-in-law—in truth, Trump trusted no one for $96 million by Dmitry Rybolovlev, an oligarch who was part of the except, arguably, his daughter Ivanka, Kushner's wife—Kushner now found close Putin circle of government-aligned industrialists in Russia, and who, himself decidedly on the wrong side of Trump's red line of loyalty. EFTA00316523 SIEGE 16 MICHAEL WOLFF vicious incredible sacrifice the couple had made by coming to Washington. Ai As a family insider, Kushner, in a game of court politics so appeared to for what? "Our lives have been destroyed," she said melodramatically that, in another time, it might have yielded murder plots, had soured and yet with some considerable truth. The former New York sociali' triumph over his early White House rivals. But Trump invariably not least had been reduced to potential criminal defendants and media laughir on the people who worked for him, just as they soured on him, at his stocks. because he nearly always came to believe that his staff was profiting sooner or After a year of friends and advisers whispering that his daughter a expense. He was convinced that everyone was greedy, and that Increasingly, it son-in-law were at the root of the disarray in the White House, Trui later they would try to take what was more rightfully his. trying to once again was thinking they should never have come. Revising histo seemed that Kushner, too, might be just another staff member he told various of his late-night callers that he had always thought tl take advantage of Donald Trump. never should have come. Over his daughter's bitter protests, he declin Trump had recently learned that a prominent New York investment Black, had to intercede in his son-in-law's security clearance issues. The FBI I fund, Apollo Global Management, led by the fi nancier Leon that had continued to hold up Kushner's clearance—which the president, at provided the Kushner Companies—the family real estate group was in federal discretion, could approve, his daughter reminded him. But Trump been managed by Kushner himself while his father, Charlie, nothing, letting his son-in-law dangle in the wind. prison —with $184 million in financing. Kushner Kushner, with superhuman patience and resolve, waited for his opp This was troubling on many levels, and it left a vulnerable and his tunity. The trick among Trump whisperers was how to focus Trun open to more questions about the conflicts between his business offered attention, since Trump could never be counted on to participate in al position in the White House. During the transition, Kushner had of Man- thing like a normal conversation with reasonable back-and-forth. Spc Apollo's cofounder Marc Rowan, the job of director of the Office declining it only and women were reliable subjects; both would immediately engage h agement and Budget. Rowan initially accepted the job, have to be dis- Disloyalty also got Trump's attention. So did conspiracies. And mono: after Apollo chairman Leon Black objected to what would always money. closed about Rowan's and the firm's investments. more keenly But the president-elect's concerns were elsewhere: he was financings and furiously focused on the fact that, in the constant search for had never Kushner's own lawyer was Abbe Lowell, a well-known showboat of that occur in mid-tier real estate companies like Trump's, Apollo extended itself for the Trump Organization. Now, it seemed baldly appar- S criminal bar who prided himself on, and managed his clients' exp family's con- cations and attention with, an up-to-the-minute menu of rumors ent, Apollo was backing the Kushners solely because of the Trump's head insights about what gambit or strategy prosecutors were about to dish nection to the administration. The constant accounting in was therefore The true edge provided by a high-profile litigator was perhaps not col of who was profiting from whom, and his sense of what he profit, was room skill but backroom intelligence. owed for creating the circumstances by which everyone could Lowell, adding to the reports Dowd had received, told Kushner i one of the things that reliably kept him up at night. at his prosecutors were about to substantially deepen the president's—and "You think I don't know what's going on?" Trump sneered to try to Trump family's—jeopardy. Dowd had continued to try to mollify the pi daughter, one of the few people he usually went out of his way dent, but Kushner, with Intel supplied by Lowell, went to his father-in-law v mollify. You think I don't know what's going on?" reports about this new front in the legal war against him. Sure enough The Kushners had gained. He had not. of the March 15 the news broke that the special counsel had issued a subpo The president's daughter pleaded her husband's case. She spoke EFTA00316524 SIEGE 19 for the Trump Organization records: it was a deep and encompassing order, ing to humor him—or, shortly, even to return his calls. In March 2017, reaching many years back. Trump fired him. Kushner also warned his father-in-law that the investigation was about Now, said Kushner, even without Bharara, the Southern District was to spill over from the Mueller team, with its narrow focus on Russian collu- looking to treat the Trump Organization as a Mob-like enterprise; its law- sion, to the Southern District of New York —that is, the federal prosecutor's yers would use the RICO laws against it and go after the president as if he office in Manhattan—which would not be restricted to the Russia probe. This were a drug lord or Mob don. Kushner pointed out that corporations had was a work-around intended to circumvent the special counsel's restriction no Fifth Amendment privilege, and that you couldn't pardon a corpora- to Russia-related matters, but also an effort by the Mueller team to short- tion. As well, assets used in or derived from the commission of a crime circuit any attempt by the president to disband or curtail its investiga- could be seized by the government. tion. By moving parts of the investigation to the Southern District, Mueller, In other words, of the more than five hundred companies and separate as Kushner explained to Trump, was ensuring that the investigation of the entities in which Donald Trump had been an officer, up until he became president would continue even without the special counsel. Mueller was president, many might be subject to forfeiture. One potential casualty of playing a canny, or ass-protecting, game, while also following precise pro- a successful forfeiture action was the president's signature piece of real cedures: even as he focused on the limited area of his investigation, he was estate: the government could seize Trump Tower. divvying up evidence of other possible crimes and sending it out to other jurisdictions, all of which were eager to be part of the hunt. It gets worse, Kushner told Trump. In mid-March, a witness with considerable knowledge of the Trump The Southern District was once run by Trump's friend Rudy Giuliani, Organization's operations traveled by train to Washington to appear before the former mayor of New York. In the 1980s, when Giuliani was the federal the Mueller grand jury. Picked up at Union Station by the FBI, the wit- prosecutor—and when, curiously, James Comey had worked for him— ness was driven to the federal district court. From 10:00 ■ to 5:00 III the Southern District became the premier prosecutor of the Mafia and of two prosecutors on the Mueller team. Aaron Zelinsky and Jeannie Wall Street. Giuliani had pioneered using a draconian, and many believed Rhee, reviewed with the witness, among other issues, the structure of the unconstitutional, interpretation of the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Trump Organization. Corrupt Organizations) Act against the Mob. He used the same interpre- The prosecutors asked the witness about the people who regularly tation against big finance, and in 1990 the threat of a RICO indictment, talked to Trump, how often they met with him, and for what purposes. under which the government could almost indiscriminately seize assets, They also asked how meetings with Trump were arranged and where they brought down the investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert. took place. The witness's testimony yielded, among other useful pieces of The Southern District had long been worrisome to Trump. After his information, a signal fact: all checks issued by the Trump Organization election, he had an unseemly meeting with Preet Bharara, the federal pros- were personally signed by Donald Trump himself. ecutor there, a move whose optics were alarming to all of his advisers, The Trump Organization's activities in Atlantic City were a particular including Don McGahn and the incoming attorney general, Jeff Sessions. subject of interest that day. The witness was asked about Trump's rela- (The meeting foreshadowed the one Trump would shortly have with tionship with known Mafia members—not if he had such relationships, Comey, during which he sought a pledge of loyalty in return for job secu- but the nature of the relationships prosecutors already knew existed. The rity.) His meeting with Bharara was unsatisfactory: Bharara was unwill- prosecutors also wanted to know about Trump Tower Moscow, a project EFTA00316525 20 MICHAEL WOLFF pursued by 'frump for many years—pursued, in fact, well into the 2016 campaign—albeit never brought to fruition. Michael Cohen, Trump's personal lawyer and a Trump Organization officer, was another significant topic. The prosecutors asked questions 2 about the level of Cohen's disappointment at not being included in the president's White House team. They seemed to be trying to gauge how much resentment Cohen felt, which led the witness to infer that they wanted to estimate how much leverage they might have if they attempted THE DO-OVER to flip Michael Cohen against the president. Minsky and Rhee wanted to know about Jared Kushner. And they wanted to know about Hope Hicks. The two prosecutors also delved into the president's personal life. How often did he cheat on his wife? With whom? How were trysts arranged? What were the president's sexual interests? The Mueller investigation, and its grand jury, was becoming a clearing house for the details of Trump's long history of professional and personal perfidiousness. When the long day was finally over, the witness left the grand jury T he day John Dowd was fired, Steve Bannon was sitting at his dinini room table trying to forestall another threat to the Trump pres dency. This one wasn't about a relentless prosecutor but rather a betray( room shocked—not so much by what the prosecutors wanted to know base. It was about the Wall that wasn't. but by what they already knew. The town houses on Capitol Hill, middle-class remnants of the nit * * * teenth century, are cramped up-and-down affairs of modest parlor floor nook-y sitting rooms, and small bedrooms. Many serve as headquartc By the third week of March, Trump's son-in-law had the president's full for causes and organizations that can't afford Washington's vast amou attention. "They can not only impeach you, they can bankrupt you" was of standard-issue office real estate. Some double as housing for tin Kushner's message. organization's leaders. Many represent amateur efforts or eccentric pt Agitated and angry, Trump pressed Dowd for more reassurances, suits, often a kind of shrine to hopes and dreams and revolutions yet holding him accountable for the prior reassurances Trump had frequently occur. The "Embassy" on A Street—a house built in 1890 and the font demanded he be given. Dowd held firm: he yet believed that the fight was location of Bannon's Breitbart News—was where Bannon had lived a in its early stages and that Mueller was still on a fishing expedition. worked since his exile from the White House in August 2017. It was p But Trump's patience was finally at an end. He decided that Dowd was frat house, part man cave, and part pseudo-military redoubt; conspire a fool and should go back into the retirement from which, Trump kept literature was scattered about. Various grave and underemployed you repeating, he had rescued him. Indeed, resisting that retirement, Dowd men, would-be militia members, loitered on the steps. pleaded his own case, assuring the president that he could continue to The Embassy's creepiness and dark heart were in quite stark contr provide him with valuable help. To no avail: on March 22, Dowd reluc- to Bannon's expansive and merry countenance. He might be in exile fr. tantly resigned, sending another bitter former Trumper into the world. the Trump White House, but it was an ebullient banishment, coffee-fue or otherwise. EFTA00316526 22 MICHAEL WOLFF SIEGE 23 In the last few weeks, he had helped install his allies—and first-draft non, always enjoying the opportunity to joust with a member of the choices during the presidential transition—in central posts in the Trump establishment. administration. Mike Pompeo had recently been named secretary of state, Bannon was—or at least saw himself to be—a fixer, power broker John Bolton would soon become the national security advisor, and Larry and kingmaker without portfolio. He was a cockeyed sort of Clad Kudlow had been appointed director of the National Economic Council. Clifford, that political eminence and influence peddler of the 1960s am The president's chief political aides were Corey Lewandowski and David '70s. Or a wise man of the political fringe, if that was not an ultimate kin( Bossie, both Bannon allies, if not acolytes; both operated outside the of contradiction. Or the head of an auxiliary government. Or, perhaps White House and were frequent visitors at the Embassy. Many of the daily something truly sui generic: no one quite like Bannon had ever player stream of White House defenders on cable television —the surrogates— such a central role in America's national political life, or been such a thort were Bannon people carrying Bannon's message as well as the president's. in the side of it. As for Trump, with friends like Bannon, who needec What's more, his enemies in the White House were moving out, includ- enemies? ing Hope Hicks, H. R. McMaster, the former national security advisor, The two men might be essential to each other, but they reviled anc and the ever shrinking circle of allies supporting the president's son-in- ridiculed each other, too. Bannon's constant public analysis of Trump'. law and daughter. confounding nature—both its comic and harrowing components, thi Bannon was often on the road. He was in Europe meeting with the behavior of a crazy uncle—not to mention his indiscreet diatribes of rising populist right-wing groups, and in the U.S. meeting with hedge the inanities of Trump's family, continued to further alienate him from th hinders desperate to understand the Trump variable. He was also looking president. And yet, though the two men no longer spoke, they hung ol for every opportunity to try to convince liberals that the populist way each other's words—each desperate to know what one was saying abou ought to be their way, too. Early in the year, Bannon went to Cambridge the other. to see Larry Summers, who had been Bill Clinton's Treasury secretary, Whatever current feeling Bannon might have for Trump—his moo( Barack Obama's director of the National Economic Council, and, for a ranged from exasperation to fury to disgust to incredulity—he contin time, president of Harvard. Summers's wife refused to allow Bannon into ued to believe that nobody in American politics could match Trump' their home, so the meeting happened at Harvard instead. Summers was midway-style showmanship. Yes, Donald Trump had restored showman mis-shaven and wearing a shirt that was missing a button or two, while ship to American politics—he had taken the wonk out of politics. In sum Bannon was sporting his double-shirt getup, cargo pants, and a hunting he knew his audience. At the same time, he couldn't walk a straight line jacket. "Both of them looked like Asperger guys:' said one of the people Every step forward was threatened by his next lurch. Like many grea at the meeting. actors, his innate self-destructiveness was always in conflict with his keel "Do you fucking realize what your fucking friend is doing?" yelled survival instincts. Some around the president merely trusted that th• Summers about Trump and his administration. "You're fucking the latter would win over the former. Others, no matter the frustration o country!" the effort, understood how much he needed to be led by unseen hands— "You elite Democrats—you only care about the margins, people who unseen being the key attribute. are rich or people who are poor," returned Bannon. With no one to tell him otherwise, Bannon continued, unseen, b "Your trade mumbo jumbo will sink the world into a depression," conduct the president's business from his dining-room table on A Street thundered Summers. "And you've exported U.S. jobs to China!" declared a delighted Ban- EFTA00316527 24 MICHAEL WOLFF SIEGE 25 That afternoon, a bipartisan Congress with surprising ease had passed the The White House had originally asked for $25 billion for the Wall, $1.3 trillion 2018 appropriations bill. "McConnell, Ryan, Schumer, and although high-end estimates of the Wall's ultimate cost came in at $70 Pelosi," said Bannon about the Republican and Democratic congressional billion. Even then, the $1.6 billion in the appropriations bill was not so leadership, "in their singular moment of bipartisan magnanimity, put one much for the Wall as for better security measures. over on Trump?" As the final vote neared, a gentlemen's agreement appeared to have This legislative milestone was a result of Trump's disengagement and been reached, one that extended to every corner of the government— everybody else's attentive efforts. Most presidents are eager to get down into with, it even seemed, Trump's own tacit support, or at least his conve- the weeds of the budget process. Trump took little or no interest. Hence the nient distraction. The understanding was straightforward: whatever their Republican and Democratic leadership—here supported by the budget stripe, members of Congress would not blow up the appropriations pro- and legislative teams in the White House—were able to pass an enormous cess for the Wall. spending bill that failed to fund Trump's must-must item, the holy grail There were, too, Republicans like Ryan—with the backing of Repub- Wall, that prospective two-thousand-mile monument meant to run the lican donors such as Paul Singer and Charles Koch—who were eager to entire length of the border between the United States and Mexico. Instead, walk back, by whatever increment possible, Trump's hard-line immigra- the bill provided only $1.6 billion for border security. The current bill was in tion policies and rhetoric. Ryan and others had devised a simple method effect the same budget bill that had been pushed forward at the end of the for accomplishing this kind of objective: you agreed with him and then previous September, when the Wall had once again not been funded. In the ignored him. There was happy talk, which Trump bathed in, followed by fall, Trump had agreed to have the Republican-controlled Congress vote to practical steps, which bored him. extend the September budget bill. The next time it carne up, the Wall would That Wednesday, Trump made a series of calls to praise everyone's be funded or, he threatened, the government would be shut down. work on the bill. The next morning, Ryan, in a televised news conference Even the hardest-core Trumpers in Congress seemed content not to to seal the deal, said, "The president supports this bill, there's no two ways have to die on the actual battlefield of funding the Wall, since that would about it." mean embracing or at least enduring an always politically risky shutdown. Here were the twin realities. The Wall was the most concrete manifesta- Trump, too, in his way, seemed to understand that the Wall was more tion of Trumpian policy, attitude, belief, and personality. At the same time, myth than reality, more slogan than actual plan. The Wall was ever for the Wall forced every Republican politician to come to terms with his or another day. her own common sense, fiscal prudence, and political flexibility. On the other hand, it was unclear what the president understood. It was not just the expense and impracticality of the Wall, it was hav- `We've gotten the budget," he privately told his son-in-law at the end of ing to engage in a battle for it. A government shutdown would mean a the March budget negotiations. "We've gotten the Wall, totally." high-stakes face-off between the Trump world and the non-Trump world * * * Should this come to pass, it would potentially be as dramatic a moment a! any that had occurred since the election of 2016. On Wednesday, March 21, the day before the final vote, Paul Ryan, the If the Democrats wanted to harden the partisan division and wen Speaker of the House, had come to the White House to receive the presi- eager to find yet another example—perhaps the mother of all exam. dent's blessings on the budget bill. pies—of Trump at his most extreme, a shutdown over the Wall wouk "Got $1.6 Billion to start Wall on Southern Border, rest will be forth- hand them one. If the Republicans wanted to shift the focus from a full coming," the president shortly tweeted. barbarian Trump to, say, the tax bill the Congress had recently passed EFTA00316528 26 MICHAEL WOLFF SIEGE 27 shutting down the government would sweep that approach right off the he took stock of the Trump reality: "There simply is not going to be a Wall, table. ever, if he doesn't have to pay a political price for there not being a Wall!" The White House, quite behind Trump's back, was aggressively work- If the Wall was not under way by the midterm elections in Novem- ing to pass the appropriations bill and avoid a shutdown. The vice presi- ber, it would show Trump to be false and, worse, weak. The Wall needed dent gave Trump the same assurance he had been given previously when to be real. The absence of the Wall in the spending bill was just what it a budget had been passed without full funding for the Wall: Pence said the seemed to be: Trump out to lunch. Trump's most effective message, the bill provided a "down payment" for the Wall, a phrase whose debt-financ e forward front of the Trump narrative—maximal aggression toward ille- implications seemed to amply satisfy the president and which he repeated gal immigrants—had been muted. And this had happened without him with great enthusiasm. Marc Short, the White House director of legisla- knowing it. tive affairs, and Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Manage- ment and Budget, in a joint appearance in the White House briefing room that Thursday, shifted the debate from the Wall to the military. "This bill The night of the twenty-second, the Fox News lineup—flicker Carlson, will provide the largest year-over-year increase in defense spending since Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity—hammered the message: betrayal. World War IV said Mulvaney. "It'll be the largest increase for our men The battle was on. The Republican leadership on the Hill, along with and women in uniform in salary in the last ten years!" the donor class, stood sober and pragmatic in the face of both political * * * realities and the prospect of unlimited billions in government spending— with, certainly, no illusions that Mexico was going to pay for the Wall. The attempt to distract the Trumpian base with these bromides utterly Opposing them were the Fox pundits, righteous and unyielding in their failed. The hard-core cadre insisted on forcing the issue, and Bannon was appeal to the true emotion of Trumpism. delighted to serve as their general. The personal transformation of Trump over the course of the evening Within minutes of the budget bill's passage on March 22, Bannon, was convulsive. All three Fox pundits delivered a set of electric shocks: in the Embassy, began working the phones. Calling Trump's most ardent each rising in current. Trump had sold out the movement. Or, worse. supporters, his goal was to "light him up!" The effect was nearly imme- Trump had been outsmarted and outwitted. Trump, on the phone, roared diate: an unsuspecting Trump started to hear from many of those on his in pain and fury. He was the victim. He had no one in his corner. He could noisy back bench, who were suddenly furious. trust no one. The congressional leadership: against him. The White House Bannon understood what moved Trump. Details did not. Facts did not. itself: against him. Betrayal? Almost everyone in the White House hac But a sense that something valuable might be taken from him immediately betrayed him. brought him up on his hind legs. If you confronted him with losing, he The next morning it got worse. Pete Hegseth, the most obsequious o would turn on a dime. Indeed, turning on a dime was his only play. "It's the Fox Trump lovers, seemed, on Fox & Friends, nearly brought to tear: not that he needs to win the week, or day, or even the hour; reflected by Trump's treachery. Bannon. "He needs to win the second. After that, he drifts." Then, almost simultaneously with Hegseth's wailing, Trump abruptly— For the hard-core Trumpers, it was back to a fundamental through confoundingly—shifted position and tweeted that he was considering vetoini line of Trumpism: you had to constantly remind Trump which side he the appropriations bill. The same bill that, twenty-four hours before, hi was on. As Bannon organized a howling protest from the president's base, had embraced. EFTA00316529 28 MICHAEL WOLFF SIEGE 29 That Friday morning, he came down from the residence into the the workingman smelled of cigarettes, crushed your hand in his, and wat Oval Office in a full-on rage so violent that, for a moment, his hair came hard as brick—and not from working out in a gym. This remembranCe undone. To the shock of the people with him, there stood an almost of things past, of (if it ever existed) a leveled world where a workingman entirely bald Donald Trump. was proud of his work and identity, was inspiring, Bannon believed, The president's sudden change of heart sent the entire Republican global anger. It was a revolution—this worldwide unease and fear am Party into a panic. If Trump carried out his threat not to sign the bill, he day-by-day upending of liberal assumptions—and it was his. The globs would bring on what they most feared: a shutdown. And he might well hegemon was in his sights. He was the man behind the curtain—and h blame the shutdown on his own party. might as well be in front of it, too—trying to snatch the world back iron Mark Meadows, the head of the House Freedom Caucus and a its postmodern anomie and restore something like the homogenized an. staunch Trump ally in Congress, called the president from Europe to say neighborly embrace of 1962. that after the vote on Thursday afternoon most members had left town for And China! And the coming Gotterdammerung! To Bannon, thi the congressional recess. Congress wouldn't be able to undo the previous was way-of-life stuff. China was the Russia of 1962—but smarter, mot day's vote, and the shutdown was due to commence in mere hours. tenacious, and more threatening. American hedge funders, in their seen Mitch McConnell rushed Defense Secretary Jim Mattis into action to support of China against the interests of the American middle class, wet tell the president that American soldiers would not be paid the next day if the new fifth column. he didn't sign the bill. This was a repeat performance: Mattis had issued a How much of this did Trump understand? How much was Trum similar warning during a threatened shutdown in January. committed to the ideas that moved Bannon and, by some emotion "Never. . . never . . . never... again:. Trump shouted, pounding the osmosis, the base? Trump was more than a year in, and not a shovelful , desk after each "never." dirt had yet been dug for the Wall, nor a penny allocated. The Wall ar Once again he caved and agreed to sign the bill. But he vowed that so much else that was part of Bannon's populist revolution—the detai next time there would be billions upon billions for the Wall or there really of which he had once listed on whiteboards in his White House offic would be a shutdown. Really. Really. expecting to check each one off—were entirely captive to Trump's inatte tion and wild mood swings. Trump. Bannon had long ago learned, "doesi * * * give a fuck about the agenda—he doesn't know what the agenda is." Bannon had been here before, so many times. "Dude, he's Donald fucking Trump,* said Bannon, holding his head and sitting at his table in the Embassy the day after the president signed In late March, after the gloom of the budget bill disaster had lifted, the the bill. was a brief, optimistic moment for the faithful in Trump's inner circle. Bannon was not confused: he had a clear understanding of how great Chief of Staff John Kelly, fed up with Trump—just as Trump was f a liability Trump could be to Bannon's own vision and career. To the ner- up with him —seemed surely on the way out. Kelly had joined the Wh vous titters of the people around him, Bannon believed he was the man of House, replacing Reince Priebus, Trump's first chief of staff, in Aug populist destiny and not Donald Trump. 2017, charged with bringing management discipline to a chaotic W The urgency here was real. Bannon believed he represented the Wing. But by mid-fall, Trump was circumventing Kelly's new pro, workingman against the corporate-governmental-technocratic machine dures. Jared and Ivanka—with many of the new rules designed to c' whose constituency was the college-educated. In Bannon's romantic view, tail their open access to the president—were going over his head. EFTA00316530 MICHAEL WOLFF SIEGE 3' the end of the year, Trump was casually mocking his chief of staff and Trump had warned them not to go down. Mueller, careful to protect his his penchant for efficiency and strict procedures. Indeed, both men were own flank, took pains to reassure the president's lawyers that he wasn't openly trashing each other, quite unmindful of the large audience for pursuing the president's business interests; at the same time, he was pass- their slurs. For Trump, Kelly was a "twitcher" and "feeble" and ready to ing the evidence his investigation had gathered about Trump's business "stroke out:' For Kelly, Trump was "deranged" and "mad" and "stupid." and personal affairs to other federal prosecutors. The drama just got weirder. On April 9, the FBI, on instructions from federal prosecutors in New In February, Kelly, a retired four-star general, grabbed Trump adviser York, raided the home and office of Michael Cohen, as well as a room he Corey Lewandowski outside the Oval Office and pushed him up against a was using in the Regency Hotel on Park Avenue. Cohen, who billed him- wall. "Don't look him in the eye whispered Trump about Kelly after the self as Trump's personal lawyer, sat handcuffed for hours in his kitchen incident, circling his finger next to his head in the crazy sign. The con- while the FBI conducted its search, itemizing and hauling away every frontation left everybody shaken, with Trump asking Lewandowski not electronic device its agents could find. to tell anyone, and Lewandowski, when talking to the people he did tell, Bannon, coincidentally, also stayed at the Regency on his frequent saying that he had almost wet himself. trips to New York, and he would sometimes bump into Cohen in the By March, Trump and Kelly were hardly speaking. Trump ignored hotel's lobby. Bannon had known Cohen during the campaign, and the him; Kelly sulked. Or Trump would drop pointed hints that Kelly should lawyer's mysterious involvement in campaign issues often worried him. resign, and Kelly would ignore him. Everyone assumed the countdown Now, in Washington, seeing the Cohen news, Bannon knew that another had begun. crucial domino had fallen. Various Republicans, from Ryan to McConnell to their right-wing "While we don't know where the end is; said Bannon, "we can guess adversary Mark Meadows, along with Bannon, had gotten behind a plan where it might begin: with Brother Cohen:' to push House majority leader Kevin McCarthy for chief of staff. Even Meadows, who hated McCarthy, was all for it. Here finally * * * was a strat- egy: McCarthy, a top tactician, would refocus an unfocused White House On April 11, three weeks after the president signed the budget bill, Paul on one mission —the midterms. Every tweet, every speech, every action Ryan—one of the government's most powerful figures given the Repub- would be directed toward salvaging the Republican majority. lican lock on Washington—announced his plan to leave the Speakership Alas, Trump didn't want a chief of staff who would focus him. Trump, and depart Congress. it was clear, didn't want a chief of staff who would tell him anything. "Listen to what Paul Ryan is saying; said Bannon, sitting at his table Trump did not want a White House that ran by any method other than to in the Embassy early that morning. "It's over. Done. Done. And Paul Ryan satisfy his desires. Someone happened to mention that John F. Kennedy wants the fuck off the Trump train today:' didn't have a chief of staff, and now Trump regularly repeated this presi- Ryan had been telling almost anyone who would listen that as many dential factoid. as fifty or sixty House seats would be lost seven months hence in the mid- * * * term elections. A Ryan lieutenant, Steve Stivers, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, was estimating a loss of ninety to The Mueller team, as it pursued the Russia investigatio n, continued to one hundred seats. At this gloomy hour, it seemed more than possible bump up against Trump's unholy fi nancial history, exactly the rabbit hole that the Democrats would eliminate their twenty-three-seat deficit and EFTA00316531 32 MICHAEL WOLFF SIEGE 3: gain a majority greater than the one the Republicans held now. Except, then for the general with his 'liquidity' issues?" asked Bannon with hi unlike the Republicans, theirs would be a unified party—or at least one hands out and his eyebrows up. "Let's not dwelt" that was unified against Donald Trump. But for Bannon there were two sides in American politics—not s' Ryan and Stivers were hardly the only ones seeing such a result. Mitch much right and left, but right brain and left brain. The left brain wa McConnell was telling donors not to even bother contributing to House represented by the legal system, which was empirical, evidentiary, am races. The money should go to the Senate campaign, where prospects for methodical; given the chance, it would inevitably and correctly convic holding the Republican majority were significantly brighter. Donald Trump. The right side was represented by politics, and therefor This was, for Donald Trump, in Bannon's view, the most desperate by voters who were emotional, volatile, febrile, and always eager to throt moment in his political career, arguably even worse than the revelation the dice. "Get the deplorables fired up"—he slapped his hands in thunder of the Access Hollywood grab-them-by-the-pussy tape. He was already on clap effect—"and we'll save our man:" the ropes legally, with Mueller and the Southern District bearing down; Almost a year and a half on, all of the issues of 2016 remained a now, looking at a likely wipeout in the midterm elections, he was in seri- powerful and raw as ever: immigration, white man's resentment, and th ous political jeopardy as well. liberal contempt for the working—or out-of-work—white man. The yea But Bannon's usual ebullience quickly returned. As he talked his 2018 was, for Bannon, the real 2016: the deplorable base had become th way out of his funk, he became nearly joyful. If the establishment— deplorable nation. "It's civil war," Bannon said, a happy judgment he ofte Democrats, Republicans, moderate thinkers of every sort —believed that repeated. Donald Trump needed to be run out of town, then Bannon relished the The most resonant issue was Donald Trump himself: the people wh prospect of defending him. For Bannon, this was the mission, but it was elected him would be galvanized by the effort to take him from then also sport. Bannon thrived on the possibility of upset. His own leap to Bannon was horrified by mainstream Republican efforts to run the corn the world stage had come because the Trump campaign was so deep ing election on the strength of the recent Republican tax cut. Are yo in hopelessness that he was allowed to take it over. Then, on Novem- kidding? Oh my fucking god, are you kidding?" This election was abot ber 9, 2016, against all odds and expectations, Trump, riding Bannon's the fate of Donald Trump. campaign —with Bannon's primacy soon one of the bitterest pills for "Let's have a do-over election. That's what the libs want. They ca Trump to swallow—won the presidency. Now, even with almost every have it. Let's do it. Up or down, Trump or no Trump:' indicator for the November elections looking bleak, Bannon believed he Impeachment was not to be feared, it was to be embraced. "That could yet see how Republican losses could be held to under the twenty- what you're voting for: to impeach Donald Trump or to save him fro; three seats needed to save the House majority. Still, it was going to be a impeachment:' grinding fight. The legal threat, however, might be moving faster than the electioi 'When Trump calls his New York friends after dinner and whines that And to Bannon—who knew more about the president's hankerings, moo he doesn't have a friend in the world, he's kind of right," said a mordant swings, and impulse-control issues than almost anyone—you could m Bannon. have produced a needier or more hapless defendant. Bannon viewed the case against Donald Trump as both inherently political—his enemies willing to do whatever it took to bring him down— * ♦ * and essentially true. He had little doubt that Trump was guilty of most of Since coming aboard in the summer of 2017, the president's legal team- what he was accused of. "How did he get the dough for the primary and Dowd, Cobb, and Sekulow—had delivered the message their client insistc EFTA00316532 34 MICHAEL WOLFF SIEGE 35 upon hearing, that he was not a target and would shortly be exonerated. be his ultimate revenge on Trump, saving him yet again. Bannon certainly But the lawyers went even further with their feel-good strategy. believed that he was the only one who could pull off this difficult rescue, a Presidents, faced with hostile investigations by the other coequal reflection of his conviction that he was the most gifted political strategist branches of government, Congress and the judiciary, invariably cite exec- of his time, and of his view that Trump was surrounded by only greater utive privilege both as a legitimate principle and as a dilatory tactic. It's a and lesser lummoxes. built-in bargaining chip. But Trump's lawyers, hoisted by how often they Trump, Bannon believed, needed a wartime consigliere. And if, he had to assure the president that he had nothing to fear, supported their mused, Jared and Ivanka were finally sent packing . .. But no, he insisted, confident assessment, to Trump's delight, by dispensing with any claim not even then. of executive privilege and willingly satisfying all the special counsel's Moreover, Trump would not be able to tolerate it. Bannon under- requests. Trump, in all his dodginess, had become an open book. What's stood that only Trump could save the day, or at least that Trump believed more, Trump himself, ever believing in the force and charm of his own only he could save the day. No other scenario was possible. He would personality, was, with his attorneys' apparent assent, eager to testify. rather lose, would rather even go to jail, than have to share victory with And yet, Bannon knew, it was still much worse. The president's law- someone else. He was psychologically incapable of not being the focus of yers had sent more than 1.1 million documents to the special counsel, all attention. aided by only a scant document production team. It was just Dowd, In the end, it was easier and more productive to give Trump advice at Cobb, and two inexperienced assistants. In major litigations, docu- a distance than up close. It was a safer play to do what needed to be done ments are meticulously logged and cross-referenced into elaborate and without Trump himself actually being involved with, or even aware of, efficient database systems. Here, they shipped over much of the material what was being done. merely as attachments, and kept minimal or no records of what exactly The morning Ryan announced his retirement from the House, Ban- had been sent. Few in the White House knew what they had given up and non was particularly eager to send some advice Trump's way. Setting up thus what the special counsel had. And the haphazard approach didn't a deft bank shot, he invited Robert Costa, a reporter for the Washington stop there. Dowd and Cobb neither prepared many of the witnesses who Post, to visit him at the Embassy. had worked for the White House in advance of their testimony to Mueller's Bannon spent a good part of every day talking to reporters. On some team nor debriefed them after they testified. days, perhaps most days, his blind-quote voice—hidden behind a famil- Bannon was overcome by the hilarity and stupidity of this what-me- iar attribution such as "this account is drawn from interviews with cur- worry approach to federal prosecutors whose very reputations depended rent and former officials"—crowded out most other voices on the subject on nailing the president. Trump needed a plan—which, of course, Ban- of whatever new crisis was engulfing the Trump administration. These non had. quotes functioned as something like a stage whisper that Trump could Bannon swore that he did not want to go back into the White House. pretend he didn't hear. Trump, in fact, was always desperately seeking He wouldn't ever, he said. The humiliations of working in Trump's admin- Bannon's advice, though only if there was the slightest pretext for believ- istration had almost destroyed Bannon's satisfaction at having risen so ing that it came from some place other than Bannon. Indeed, Trump was miraculously to the top of the world. quite willing to hear Bannon say something in this or that interview and Some, however, were not convinced by his protestations. They then claim he had thought of it himself. believed that Bannon actively fantasized that he would be brought back Costa sat at Bannon's dining-room table for two hours, taking down into the West Wing to save Trump—and that, not incidentally, this would Bannon's prescription for how to save Trump from himself. EFTA00316533 36 MICHAEL WOLFF SIEGE 37 Trump's stupidity, said Bannon, could sometimes be made into a vir- Costa had spoken to about the background machinations of Steve Ban- tue. Here was Bannon's idea: the president should make a retroactive claim non, what mattered was that he had spoken directly and at length to of executive privilege. I didn't know. Nobody told me. I was ill-advised. Bannon himself, who was using the Washington Post to pitch a plan to It was hard not to see Bannon's satisfaction in a prostrate Trump the president. admitting to his own lack of guile and artfulness. Bannon's three-part plan for Trump instantly made its way to the Bannon understood that this claim of retroactive executive privilege Oval Office. And the next morning, the president offered Kushner his would have no chance of success—nor should it. But the sheer audacity view that he should fire Rosenstein, reinstate a claim of executive privi- of it could buy them four or five months of legal delay. Delay was their lege, and get a tough-guy lawyer. friend, possibly their only friend. They could work this claim of retroac- Kushner, pressing his own strategies, urged his father-in-law to move tive executive privilege, no matter how loopy, all the way to the Supreme cautiously when it came to Rosenstein. Court. "Jared is spooked," said a scornful Trump later that day while on the For this plan to work, the president would have to get rid of his inept phone to a confidant. "What a girl!" lawyers. Oh, and he would also have to fire Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who was overseeing the Mueller investigation. Bannon had been against the firing of Comey, and in the months after the appoint- ment of the special counsel, he had fought the president's almost daily impulse to fire Mueller and Rosenstein, seeing this as the surest invitation to impeachment. ("Just don't pay attention to his crazy shit," he had urged everyone around the president.) But now they had run out of options. 'iring Rosenstein is our only way out of here," Bannon told Costa. 1 don't come to this lightly. As soon as they went to Cohen —that's what they do in Mob prosecutions to get a response from the true target. So you can sit there and get bled out—get indicted, go to grand juries—or you can fight it politically. Get it out of the law-and-order system where we are losing and are going to lose. A new DAG will review where we stand on this thing, which could take a couple of months. Delay, delay, delay—and shift it politically. Can we win? I have no fucking idea. But I know on that other paths going to lose. It's not perfect ... but we live in a world of imperfect." * * * Costa's story, which was posted online later that day, described Bannon as "pitching a plan to West Wing aides and congressional allies to cripple the federal probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to four people familiar with the discussions." But however many people EFTA00316534 SIEGE 39 One of McGahn's jobs was to navigate what was possibly the most complicated relationship in modern government: he was the effective 3 point person between the White House and the Department of Justice. Part of his portfolio, then, was to endure the president's constant rage and bewilderment about why the DOJ was personally hounding him, and his incomprehension that he could do nothing about it. LAWYERS "It's my Justice Department," Trump would tell McGahn, often repeat- ing this more than dubious declaration in his signature triad. Nobody could quite be certain of the number of times McGahn had had to threaten, with greater or lesser intention, to quit if Trump made good on his threat to fire the attorney general, the deputy attorney gen- eral, or the special counsel. Curiously, one defense against the charge that the president had tried to fire Mueller in June 2017 in an effort to end the special counsel's investigation—as the New York Times claimed in a Jan- T here was a running sweepstakes or office pool for the unhappiest person in the White House. Many had held the title, but one of the most frequent winners was White House counsel Don McGahn. He was uary 2018 scoop—was the fact that Trump was almost constantly trying to fire Mueller or other DOJ figures, doing so often multiple times a day. McGahn's steadying hand had so far helped avert an ultimate crisis a constant target for his boss's belittling, mocking, falsetto-voice mimicry, But he had missed or let slip by or simply ignored a number of intemper- and, as well, sweeping disparagements of his purpose and usefulness. ate, unwise, and interfering actions by the president that might, McGahn "This is why we can't have nice things," McGahn uttered almost obses- feared, comprise the basis of obstruction charges. Deeply involved with the sively under his breath, quoting the Taylor Swift song to comment on conservative Federalist Society and its campaign for "textualist" judges whatever egregious act Trump had just committed C... because you break McGahn had long dreamed himself of becoming a federal judge him- them," the song continues). self, but given the no-man's-land he occupied between Trump and the McGahn's background was largely as a federal election lawyer. Mostly Justice Department—not to mention Trump's sometimes daily attacks or he was on the more-money, less-transparency side—he was against, rather the DOJ's independence, which McGahn had to accept or condone—he than for, aggressive enforcement of election laws. He served as the counsel knew his future as a jurist was dead. to the Trump campaign, arguably among the most careless about election * • * law compliance in recent history. Before joining the Trump administra- tion, McGahn had no White House or executive branch experience. He Fifteen months into Trump's tenure, the tensions between the administra. had never worked in the Justice Department or, in fact, anywhere in gov- tion and the Department of Justice had erupted into open conflict. Now ernment. Formerly an attorney for a nonprofit affiliated with the Koch was war—the White House against its own DOJ. brothers, he was known as a hyperpartisan: when Obama's White House Here was a modern, post-Watergate paradox: the independence o counsel, Kathy Ruemmler, the previous occupant of McGahn's office, the Justice Department. The DOJ might be, from every organizationa reached out to congratulate him and to offer to be a resource on past prac- and statutory view, an instrument of the White House, and, as much a! tices, McGahn did not respond to her email. any other agency, its mission might appear to be driven by whoever hele EFTA00316535 40 MICHAEL WOLPF SIEGE 41 the presidency. That's what it looked like on paper. But the opposite was him, but managed to swallow his rage. Top people from the Bush White true, too. There was a permanent-government class in the Justice Depart- House, the FBI, and the Justice Department almost came to literal blows ment that believed an election ought to have no role at all in how the at the bedside of the ailing AG John Ashcroft—James Comey himself DOJ conducted itself. The department was outside politics and ought standing in the way of the White House representatives trying to get Ash- to be as blind as the courts. In this view, the Justice Department, as the croft to renew a domestic surveillance program—with the White House nation's preeminent investigator and prosecutor, was as much a check on finally having to back down. Under Obama, Comey, who by then was the the White House, and ought to be as independent of the White House, FBI director, made a further grab for the FBI's independence from the as the other branches of government. (And within the Justice Department, Justice Department when he unilaterally decided to end and later reopen the FBI claimed its own level of independence from its DOJ masters, as the Hillary Clinton email investigation—and, by doing so. arguably toss- well as from the White House itself.) ing the election to her opponent. Even among those at Justice and the FBI who had a more nuanced Enter Donald Trump, who had neither political nor bureaucratic view, and who recognized the symbiotic nature of the department's rela- experience. His entire working life was spent at the head of what was in tionship with the White House, there was yet a strong sense of the lines essence a small family operation, one designed to do what he wanted and that cannot be crossed- The Justice Department and the FBI had, since to bow to his style of doing business. At the time of his election, he was Watergate, found themselves accountable to Congress and the courts. Any absent even any theoretical knowledge of modern government and its top-down effort to influence an investigation, or any evidence of having operating rules and customs. bowed to influence—memorialized in a memo or email—might derail a Trump was constantly being lectured about the importance of cus- career. tom and tradition" at the Justice Department. As reliably, he would In February 2018, Rachel Brand, the associate attorney general, a for- respond, "I don't want to hear this bullshit!" mer Bush lawyer who had been nominated for the number three DOJ He needed, one aide observed, "a hard, black line. Without a hard, job by Obama, resigned to take a job as a Walmart lawyer. If Trump had black line that he can't cross, he's crossing it." fired Rosenstein during Brand's tenure, she would have become acting Trump believed what to him seemed obvious: the DOJ and FBI attorney general overseeing the Mueller investigation. She told col- worked for him. They were under his direction and control. They must do leagues she wanted to get out before Trump fired Rosenstein and then exactly what he demanded of them; they must jump through his hoops. demanded that she fire Mueller. She would take Bentonville, Arkansas, "He reports to me!" an irate and uncomprehending Trump repeated early where Walmart had its headquarters, over Washington, D.C. in his tenure about both his attorney general Jeff Sessions and his FBI For a generation or more, the arm's-length relationship between the director James Comey. "I am the boss!" White House and the Department of Justice often seemed more like a "I could have made my brother the attorney general; Trump insisted, never-ending conflict between armed camps. Bill Clinton could hardly although in fact he did not even speak to his brother (Robert, a seventy- stomach his attorney general, Janet Reno, having to weather the blowback one-year-old retired businessman). "Like Kennedy" (Six years after John from her decisions regarding Ruby Ridge, a standoff and deadly overre- F. Kennedy appointed his brother Robert attorney general, Congress action between survivalists and the FBI; Waco, another botched standoff passed the Federal Anti-Nepotism Statute, called the "Bobby Kennedy with a Christian cult; and the investigation of Dr. Wen Ho Lee, with the law; to prevent exactly this sort of thing in the future—although that DOJ chastised for its reckless pursuit of a suspected spy. Clinton came did not stop Trump from hiring his daughter and son-in-law as senior very close to firing Louis Freeh, his FBI director, who openly criticized advisers.) EFTA00316536