The former attorney general William Barr and supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett have reportedly signed book deals – with Barrett paid a reported $2m for a volume on how judges should not bring their personal feelings into the way they rule.
Barrett was appointed to the court in a hurried, politicized and bitter process last year, after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a champion of progressive values.
Barrett is a strict Catholic and her presence on the 6-3 conservative court has given rightwing campaigners hope it will soon strike down Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling which established the right to abortion.
An unnamed source who spoke to Politico said Barrett’s advance was “eye-raising”. A spokesperson for the court did not comment.
Barr, who was also attorney general under George HW Bush, is also a strict Catholic conservative. Politico reported that he had begun work on his memoir about working for Donald Trump.
Legal analysts decried Barr’s actions in service of the 45th president, including a highly selective handling of the special counsel Robert Mueller’s report about Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow and support for Trump’s authoritarian impulses in response to protests for racial justice last summer.
Barr resigned in December, over the president’s lies about voter fraud in his defeat by Joe Biden.
One legal professional who clashed publicly with Barr and Trump, former New York prosecutor Geoffrey Berman, is reported to have sold a book for “a lot of money”.
A source told Politico Berman’s book would be “part Paul Giamatti and Billions” – a reference to a hit TV series about corporate crime in New York – “and then sort of the Trump show in the southern district [of New York]”.
Books about Trump’s time in power have proved lucrative, ever since in January 2018 the Guardian broke news of Fire and Fury, the first of two White House tell-alls by the reporter Michael Wolff.
The Russia investigation has been retold in print by members of the special counsel’s team including Andrew Weissmann and Peter Strzok.
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, is reportedly working on a book and former vice-president Mike Pence has signed a deal for two volumes. But Politico said a number of former Trump aides are struggling to find buyers.
Peter Navarro, formerly a senior adviser to Trump on economics and trade, told the website: “The reports of my publishing death are greatly exaggerated. I have a major publishing agreement with an attractive advance and my book will be out shortly after Labor Day.”
It was not immediately clear if Navarro would again co-operate with Ron Vara, an anti-China policy hand he has quoted liberally in previous books but who turned out both not to exist and to have for his name an anagram of “Navarro”.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
