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Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s speech in full to a joint session of US CongressUkraine’s president vows his country will never abandon resistance to Russian aggression, but said Washington’s support is vital
Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates More
Hunter Biden hires Jared Kushner lawyer to face Republican investigatorsTarget of House GOP looks to Abbe Lowell, seasoned Washington attorney who represented Trump’s son-in-law Facing imminent investigation by House Republicans, Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, has hired a high-profile Washington lawyer who represented Jared Kushner in Congress, as well as during the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Donald Trump and Moscow.Trump left ‘shockingly gracious’ letter to Biden on leaving office, book saysRead more“Hunter Biden has retained Abbe Lowell to help advise him and be part of his legal team to address the challenges he is facing,” another attorney for the president’s son, Kevin Morris, told news outlets on Wednesday.“Lowell is a well-known Washington based attorney who has represented numerous public officials and high-profile people in Department of Justice investigations and trials as well as congressional investigations. [For Hunter Biden] Mr Lowell will handle congressional investigations and general strategic advice.”Lowell has worked across the political divide, representing Democrats including Bob Menendez, a New Jersey senator, and the former senator and vice-presidential nominee John Edwards, both in corruption cases that ended in mistrials; and acting as chief minority counsel to House Democrats in the impeachment of Bill Clinton.Recently, Lowell represented Tom Barrack, a Trump ally acquitted in a foreign lobbying case.Lowell, 70, has said that to be a trial lawyer, “you have to have a desire to be a performer at some level. If I hadn’t done this, it would have been Broadway”.But his work for Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and chief adviser, brought an uncomfortable sort of spotlight. Writing in the American Lawyer in late 2020, Lowell suggested criticism of his work for another client was generated “primarily because I later represented … the president’s son-in-law.“The resulting news coverage, and especially the more sensational headlines, triggered the all-too-common flurry of hate mail, threatening voice mails and anonymous criticisms for doing the very job that attorneys are supposed to do.”Hunter Biden is the focus of considerable criticism and threat from Republicans who will take control of the House next month.The president’s son is also under federal investigation over his tax affairs and personal issues including problems with drugs that have been widely documented, including in his own memoir.Biden has said he “handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisers”. He has not been charged with any crime.Politically speaking – where Lowell comes in – Republicans allege the younger Biden exploited his father’s roles as a senator, vice-president and president for financial gain, allegations Hunter Biden also denies.James Comer, the incoming chair of the House oversight committee, has said an investigation will seek to determine if Biden family business activities have “compromise[d] US national security and President Biden’s ability to lead with impartiality”.Republican allegations focus on Hunter Biden’s work in China and Ukraine, claims that in the case of Ukraine attracted the attention of Donald Trump, resulting in the scandal which led to his first impeachment.Beautiful Things by Hunter Biden review – the prodigal son and Trumpists’ targetRead moreIn November, Comer told reporters: “We want the bank records and that’s our focus. We’re trying to stay focused on: ‘Was Joe Biden directly involved with Hunter Biden’s business deals and is he compromised?’ That’s our investigation.”Republicans are also fixated on a laptop computer once owned by Hunter Biden, the contents of which were shopped to news outlets by Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s attorney, shortly before the 2020 election.The laptop and news and social media’s wariness of it and of Giuliani have recently emerged as a subject of the Twitter Files, a series of releases coordinated by the new owner of the platform, Elon Musk, as he has sought to demonstrate liberal bias.TopicsHunter BidenJared KushnerJoe BidenBiden administrationDemocratsHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressnewsReuse this content More
Trump left ‘shockingly gracious’ letter to Biden on leaving office, book saysThe Fight of His Life, by Chris Whipple, recounts Joe Biden’s first two years in the White House Donald Trump wrote a “shockingly gracious” letter to Joe Biden on leaving office, a new book says, amid the unprecedented disgrace of a second impeachment for inciting the deadly Capitol attack as part of his attempt to overturn Biden’s election victory and hold on to power.Donald Trump: how will prosecutors pursue the House panel’s charges?Read moreAccording to excerpts published by Politico on Tuesday, The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House, by Chris Whipple, captures Biden saying of Trump’s note: “That was very gracious and generous … Shockingly gracious.”Presidents traditionally leave letters for their successors. George HW Bush’s note for Bill Clinton is generally held up as an ideal of civility between presidents from different parties.After Bush died, Clinton wrote in the Washington Post that the letter revealed “the heart of who he was … an honorable, gracious and decent man who believed in the United States, our constitution, our institutions and our shared future”.Trump refuses to admit Biden beat him fairly, faces extensive legal jeopardy for his election subversion attempts, and recently called for the constitution to be “terminated” so he could return to power.Biden has said Trump’s letter was “very generous” but he has not shared its contents. According to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, authors of the book Peril, on discovering the note in the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, Biden “put it in his pocket and did not share it with his advisers”.Whipple’s book will be published in January. He told Politico writing it was “tough, because … this is the most battened-down, disciplined, leak-proof White House in modern times”.But Whipple’s previous books include The Gatekeepers, about White House chiefs of staff, and access to the Biden White House included interviews with Ron Klain, the current holder of that post.Whipple told Politico: “I think Biden’s presidency is the most consequential of my lifetime. His legislative record is comparable to [Lyndon B Johnson’s] and he’s been underestimated every step of the way. But it’s also been a tale of two presidencies – the first year and the second year.“What makes this such a great story is that Joe Biden and his team really turned it all around, I think.”Regarding comments released as reports said Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the president of Ukraine, was on his way to Washington to speak, Politico said Whipple cited Biden’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as well as domestic successes as proof for his contention that the president had turned things around.Whipple interviewed White House staff on “deep background”, allowing quote approval, and conducted written interviews with Biden and Kamala Harris, the vice-president. According to Politico, Harris left some questions blank, while Whipple’s book reports her dissatisfaction with her role and dissent within her team. Biden, Whipple says, initially considered Harris “a work in progress” as vice-president, the office he held for eight years under Barack Obama.Whipple also writes that Biden “felt let down by his briefers” over the US exit from Afghanistan, which was widely held to be a disaster when it took place in late summer 2021. Politico quoted William Burns, the CIA director, Mark Milley, the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, and the secretary of state, Tony Blinken, debating the role of US intelligence assessments.Zelenskiy to meet congressional leaders in Washington on Wednesday – reportsRead moreA White House spokesperson said: “We respect that there will be no shortage of books written about the administration containing a wide variety of claims. We don’t plan to engage in confirmations or denials when it comes to the specifics of those claims. The author did not give us a chance to verify the materials that are attributed here.”Politico also reported a direct comment from Klain – to Whipple via text message. Many observers including reporters for Politico expected Biden to suffer a shellacking in the midterm elections last month. In the event Biden and his Democratic party did unexpectedly well, losing the House but only narrowly, holding the Senate and winning key state races.At 1.16am on Wednesday 9 November, the day after election day, Klain texted Whipple to say: “Maybe we don’t suck as much as people thought … Like maybe the nattering negatives who dumped to Politico were wrong!”TopicsBooksJoe BidenBiden administrationDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More
January 6 committee to use last meeting to refer Trump to justice departmentLawmakers expected to outline findings and vote to issue criminal and civil referrals on Monday The House January 6 select committee plans to use its final meeting on Monday to refer Donald Trump, among others, to the justice department for conduct connected to the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.As it prepares to release its voluminous investigative report, the panel is expected to use its meeting, announced for 1pm, to take several conclusive steps. These include outlining an executive summary of its findings and legislative recommendations, voting to formally adopt the report, and then voting to issue criminal and civil referrals.The committee was scheduled to meet over the weekend to finalize the referrals, which, in the case of Trump, center on obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the United States, among other potential charges, the Guardian first reported.The referrals for Trump mark a remarkable moment for the precedent-shattering investigation, which has looked into the former president’s efforts to reverse his 2020 election defeat at any cost, culminating in the Capitol attack last year.Tennessee man accused of plot to kill FBI agents in latest January 6 chargesRead moreIn addition to Trump, the select committee is likely to proceed with criminal referrals against top former White House advisers, including the former chief of staff Mark Meadows, and to make civil referrals to the House ethics committee for GOP members of Congress and recommend disbarments for Trump lawyers.The criminal referrals are only suggestions. Congress has no ability to compel prosecutions by the justice department, although the department has increasingly ramped up its own investigations into January 6 and subpoenaed a parade of top Trump advisers to testify before at least two grand juries in Washington.But the expected referrals – essentially letters to the justice department urging charges – presage a moment of high political drama at Monday’s final business meeting of the select committee, which has run a supercharged investigation staffed by multiple former federal prosecutors.The panel has broadly concluded the Capitol attack was a conspiracy, according to sources familiar with its work. It concluded Trump oversaw a “political” plan to have his vice-president, Mike Pence, refuse to certify the election for Joe Biden, and a “coup” plan to pressure Congress if Pence refused.For the investigators on three principal teams – the gold team examining the Trump White House and Republican congressmen, the red team examining January 6 rally organizers, and the purple team examining the extremist groups that stormed the Capitol – the chief suspect has, for months, been Trump.Exclusive: January 6 panel considering Trump referral to justice department for obstruction of CongressRead moreThe former president’s desire to illegally impede the certification was clear months before January 6, the investigators are said to believe, from when Trump assented to a fake elector plot to have states replace electoral college votes for Biden with votes for him, to refusing for many hours to call off the attack as it happened.Though Trump did not leave a paper trail that might come back to haunt him as evidence, his aides did. And although Trump deftly wielded the powers of the presidency while in office to stymie investigations, once out of office he found those powers drastically reduced.As a result, the select committee was able to draw upon testimony from hundreds of witnesses and thousands of documents that investigators believe amount to compelling evidence of criminality, the sources said.The panel is only expected to provide a top-level outline of its report on Monday, though the entirety of the eight-chapter document is scheduled to be made public on Wednesday, and all of the deposition transcripts will be released before the end of the year.The final report – which will include an extended executive summary of more than 100 pages – roughly tracks the select committee’s public hearings from the summer. Chapter topics include Trump’s fake-elector plot, his illegal effort to pressure Pence, and his inaction in the West Wing during the 187 minutes of the Capitol attack.“We obviously want to complete the story for the American people,” the congressman Jamie Raskin, a member of the select committee, said. “Everybody has come on a journey with us, and we want a satisfactory conclusion, such that people feel that Congress has done its job.”The transcripts and other evidence cited in the report will be uploaded, with some redactions, through the Government Publishing Office, another federal agency, in an attempt to ensure that the House Republican majority in the next Congress cannot unilaterally remove the documents.TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpUS politicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesBiden administrationnewsReuse this content More
US National Archives releases more than 12,000 documents on JFK assassinationDocuments disclosed after Joe Biden issued an executive order authorizing them to be made available to the public The US National Archives on Thursday released thousands of documents related to the 1963 assassination of then President John F Kennedy shortly after Joe Biden issued an executive order authorizing the release that also kept hundreds of other sensitive records secret.Sixty years ago, true statecraft avoided a nuclear war. We need that again over Ukraine | Jonathan SteeleRead moreThe release of 12,879 documents was not expected to include any new bombshells or change the conclusion reached by the commission led by chief justice Earl Warren that Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine and communist activist who had lived in the Soviet Union, acted alone. However, the latest cache will be useful for historians focusing on the events around the assassination.Kennedy was shot and killed while riding in his motorcade through Dallas on 22 November 1963, at the age of 46.Thousands of books, articles, TV shows and films have explored the idea that Kennedy’s assassination was the result of an elaborate conspiracy. None have produced conclusive proof that Oswald – who was fatally shot by nightclub owner Jack Ruby two days after killing Kennedy – worked with anyone else, although they retain a powerful cultural currency.There were initial concerns that Ruby might have had some connection to Oswald. But a newly released September 1964 memo to the presidential commission investigating the assassination said “the Central Intelligence Agency has no indication that Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald ever knew each other, were associated, or might have been connected in any manner”.Congress in 1992 had ordered that all remaining sealed files pertaining to the investigation into Kennedy’s death should be fully opened to the public through the National Archives in 25 years, by 26 October 2017, except for those the president authorized for further withholding.In 2017, then President Donald Trump released a cache of records, but decided to release the remaining documents on a rolling basis.All of the remaining JFK files were originally supposed to have been released in October 2021. Biden postponed that planned release, citing delays caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, and announced they would be instead disclosed in two batches: one on 15 December 2021, and another by 15 December 2022, after undergoing an intensive one-year review.With Thursday’s release, 95% of the documents in the CIA’s JFK assassination records collection will have been released in their entirety, a CIA spokesperson said in a statement, and no documents will remain redacted or withheld in full after an “intensive one-year review” of all previously unreleased information.In a memorandum on Thursday, Biden said that until 1 May 2023, the National Archives and relevant agencies “shall jointly review the remaining redactions in the records that had not been publicly disclosed”. After that review, “any information withheld from public disclosure that agencies do not recommend for continued postponement” will be released by 30 June 2023.TopicsJohn F KennedyUS politicsBiden administrationnewsReuse this content More
Joe Biden has signed the legislation into law, in a joy-filled ceremony on the south lawn at the White House.In attendance were the first lady, Jill Biden, as well as the vice-president, Kamala Harris, the second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, and hundreds of LGBTQ+ couples, senior members of Congress, including the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and gay lawmakers looking on.Here’s the Guardian’s Washington Bureau chief, David Smith, who has witnessed the event:Joe Biden: “Today is a good day!… Marriage is a simple proposition. Who do you love and will you be loyal to that person you love? It’s not more complicated than that.” pic.twitter.com/ZsL2PEkLri— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) December 13, 2022
Biden made a short but spirited speech.Biden: “Now the law requires that interracial marriage and same sex marriage be recognised in every state in the nation.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) December 13, 2022
Biden pays tribute to many of those activists and campaigners gathered.Biden: “Those who believe in equality and justice, you never gave up… You put your relationships on the line, you put your jobs on the line, you put your lives on the line. From me and the entire nation, thank you, thank you, thank you.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) December 13, 2022
Here’s the president on Twitter:Today is a good day. Today, America takes another step toward equality. Toward liberty and justice not just for some, but for all. Because today, I sign the Respect for Marriage Act into law.— President Biden (@POTUS) December 13, 2022
It’s been a lively though unusual day in US politics. We’re ending this live blog now and we’ll be back on Wednesday morning to bring you all the day’s developments as they happen.Here’s where things stand:
Joe Biden signed the Respect For Marriage Act into law, in a joy-filled ceremony on the south lawn at the White House.
The US president noted that: “Racism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia – they are all connected. But the antidote is love.”
The January 6 House select committee will on 19 December vote on referring people they believe broke the law to the justice department, Politico reports, citing committee chair Bennie Thompson.
Carolyn Maloney, chair of the oversight committee in the House wrote to the National Archives asking for a review of what’s been discovered at a storage unit at Donald Trump’s Florida residence, the Washington Post reported.
Government energy officials announced that the US has taken “the first tentative steps towards a clean energy source that could revolutionize the world” through a successful fusion experiment.
Biden cheered government data released today that showed inflation declining by a greater amount than expected in November, calling it proof that his economic policies were delivering Americans relief from the price increase wave battering the economy.
Samuel Bankman-Fried is not testifying before Congress, because he was arrested in the Bahamas yesterday. Instead, the newly appointed CEO of FTX, the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange Bankman-Fried founded, is being grilled by lawmakers alone.
Reforms to the Electoral Count Act intended to stop another January 6 may end up being included in year-end spending legislation Congress is negotiating.
It’s official: rightwing lawmaker Lauren Boebert has been re-elected, after winning her unexpectedly close House race.
Under sunny skies, the ceremony for Joe Biden to sign the Respect for Marriage Act was a lively one, just wrapping up now.The bill’s primary driver, Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin, can be seen smiling broadly, just behind a beaming Nancy Pelosi.Joe Biden has signed the legislation into law, in a joy-filled ceremony on the south lawn at the White House.In attendance were the first lady, Jill Biden, as well as the vice-president, Kamala Harris, the second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, and hundreds of LGBTQ+ couples, senior members of Congress, including the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and gay lawmakers looking on.Here’s the Guardian’s Washington Bureau chief, David Smith, who has witnessed the event:Joe Biden: “Today is a good day!… Marriage is a simple proposition. Who do you love and will you be loyal to that person you love? It’s not more complicated than that.” pic.twitter.com/ZsL2PEkLri— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) December 13, 2022
Biden made a short but spirited speech.Biden: “Now the law requires that interracial marriage and same sex marriage be recognised in every state in the nation.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) December 13, 2022
Biden pays tribute to many of those activists and campaigners gathered.Biden: “Those who believe in equality and justice, you never gave up… You put your relationships on the line, you put your jobs on the line, you put your lives on the line. From me and the entire nation, thank you, thank you, thank you.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) December 13, 2022
Here’s the president on Twitter:Today is a good day. Today, America takes another step toward equality. Toward liberty and justice not just for some, but for all. Because today, I sign the Respect for Marriage Act into law.— President Biden (@POTUS) December 13, 2022
Joe Biden says love is the antidote to discrimination.“Racism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, they are all connected. But the antidote is love,” Biden just said at the White House, as he prepares to sign the Respect for Marriage Act into law.Biden reminds those gathered that the legislation was spurred by the signal made by supreme court justice Clarence Thomas that, having overturned Roe v Wade, access to contraception and the right to same sex marriage could be next on the conservative bench’s agenda.Joe Biden is now speaking and thanking the lawmakers who drove the legislation that he is about to sign into law as the Respect for Marriage Act.He thanks, to a huge cheer from those gathered, Wisconsin’s Democratic senator Tammy Baldwin, the first out gay person ever to serve in the US Senate, who introduced the legislation and helped steer it to victory.The US president thanked Maine Senator Susan Collins, a Republican, who joined Baldwin in pushing the bill forward and garnering bipartisan support.Biden is celebrating the new law that protects not just same sex marriage but also interracial marriage, which have federal protections via the US Supreme Court but are not codified in US legislation.As the nation saw when the right-wing supermajority on the supreme court in June ditched the federal abortion legalization afforded by Roe v Wade in 1973, without congressional support in the form of legislation, rights can be taken away overnight by the court.Biden just quoted the great Edie Windsor’s words about gay marriage: “Don’t postpone joy.”“The road to this moment has been long,” Biden said. He tips his hat to those who “put their jobs on the line” to fight for the rights “I’m about to sign into law.”Goodbye, Edie Windsor. Thank you for never giving up | Steven W ThrasherRead moreKamala Harris is speaking at the White House ceremony, and she recalls Valentine’s Day, 2004, when she performed some of the US’s first same sex marriages, in San Francisco city hall, when she was the district attorney in that city.She quotes the late Harvey Milk in saying: “Rights are won by those who make their voices heard.”The vice president talks of marrying friends, the tears of joy, and also recalls the victory, ultimately, over the ban on marriage equality in California that had been passed in 2008, known as Proposition 8. More
African leaders gather in US as Joe Biden aims to reboot rocky relationsPresident and Antony Blinken woo nations at summit in Washington in hope they will align with west rather than Russia or China Dozens of African leaders have assembled in Washington for a summit aimed at rebooting US relations on the continent, which have languished in recent years.The US-Africa summit, the first since 2014, will be the biggest international gathering in Washington since the pandemic and the most substantial commitment by a US administration to boosting its influence in the region for almost a decade.The summit comes amid the sharpest great power rivalry for many decades, worsening security problems and acute economic problems in Africa.All three challenges are sometimes blamed on the US, which has been pushed on to the defensive in many areas by determined and often unconventional strategies adopted by strategic rivals such as Russia and China.In all, 49 leaders and heads of states have been invited to the summit, and the guest list underlines the difficulty faced by President Joe Biden and the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, in balancing values with pressing demands of power politics.Observers have noted tensions in US policy between a desire to win friends and also to reach out to populations suffering under repressive, exploitative regimes through promotion of diversity, tolerance, free speech and democracy.“It seems it’s now a numbers game and getting more countries to align with the west against Russia now and, in the longer term, China. The continent feels a lot more cold war-ish than at any time in my career,” said Alex Vines, director of the Africa programme at Chatham House.Four countries that were suspended from the African Union – Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali and Sudan – were not invited to the summit because coups in those nations led to unconstitutional changes in power. The White House also did not invite Eritrea.But Equatorial Guinea was invited despite the state department stating that it held “serious doubts” about last month’s election, in which President Teodoro Obiang’s ruling party won nearly 95% of the vote. So too was Zimbabwe, which has faced years of US and western sanctions over poor governance, human rights abuses and widespread corruption, and Ethiopia, some of whose commercial privileges were withdrawn in an attempt to force an end to a war in the Tigray region that led to “gross violations” of human rights.A peace deal was signed last month, with the significant involvement of US diplomats, but implementation faces major challenges.Many African leaders have come with their own agendas, such as seeking help with high debt repayments, the devastating legacy of the coronavirus, climate change, or military assistance. Most countries are suffering too from the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has pushed up inflation and disrupted food supplies.Geopolitical competition goes beyond that between China, Russia, the EU and the US to include middling powers such as Turkey, Japan, the Gulf states and the UK too, said Vines.On a tour of three countries in Africa earlier this year, Blinken appealed to “governments, communities and peoples” across Africa to embrace Washington’s vision of democracy, openness and economic partnership.The US diplomatic strategy appears in part to appeal directly to ordinary people in Africa, rather than their leaders, by promising support for democracy and accountability. Few rulers on the continent welcome Washington’s admonishments about their often poor human rights records or failures to implement political reform.“I do strongly believe that the United States is still seen as a superpower from the African perspective, but most African leaders do not want to align with its promotion of democracy,” said Abraham Kuol Nyuon, a political analyst and associate professor of political science at the University of Juba in South Sudan. “They need the support of America but not the system of America.”China has made little secret of its preference for strongman rulers, offering assistance without conditions. Sub-Saharan nations have also been major recipients of Chinese investment through its now flagging “belt and road initiative”, which supported infrastructure development.Cold war echoes as African leaders resist criticising Putin’s warRead moreThe Russian strategy has been more opportunistic, and has been focused on unstable countries with significant resources such as Sudan or those where once pro-western political leaders are now seeking new allies.On his tour, Blinken sought to counter Russian and Chinese accusations that the US is a “neo-imperialist power” by stressing that Washington wants to act in consultation with local leaders and communities, reinforcing existing African initiatives.“The United States prioritises our relationship with Africa for the sake of our mutual interests and our partnership in dealing with global challenges,” said Molly Phee, an assistant secretary of state for African affairs. “We are very conscious, again, of the cold war history, we’re conscious, again, of the deleterious impact of colonialism on Africa, and we studiously seek to avoid repeating some of the mistakes of those earlier eras.”A further aim is to make sure failures of Trump’s administration – marked by drift and a series of insulting gaffes – are forgotten.African leaders will be looking for Biden to make some big commitments during the summit, including announcing his first presidential visit to sub-Saharan Africa. One crowdpleaser may be support for adding the African Union as a permanent member of the G20, according to the White House.The Senegalese president, Macky Sall, the current AU chair, has argued that by adding the African Union, the G20 “would come to represent the views of 54 additional members, the bulk of low-income countries, and about 80% of the world’s population”.He wrote in July: “The G20 compromises its effectiveness and influence by omitting such a large fraction of humanity and the world economy.”TopicsUS foreign policyBiden administrationJoe BidenUS politicsAntony BlinkenAfrican UnionAfricanewsReuse this content More
‘That’s Hitler, Bannon thought’: 2022 in books about Trump and US politics The former president continues to dominate political bestseller lists, from staffers’ tell-alls to his own compulsion to tell all to Maggie Haberman and Bob WoodwardDonald Trump has been out of office almost two years, but he is still lodged in America’s consciousness. In mid-November, he declared his 2024 re-election bid. Days later, Merrick Garland, the attorney general, appointed Jack Smith as special counsel.DeSantis and Pence lead Republican wave – of presidential campaign booksRead moreTrump has since demanded that the US constitution be terminated, and dined with Ye, the recording artist and antisemite formerly known as Kanye West, and Nick Fuentes, the white supremacist. This week, on a bleak Tuesday afternoon in New York, a jury found the Trump Organization guilty on all counts in a tax fraud trial.The Trump show is never dull. As expected, in 2022 the 45th president left his mark on what Americans read about politics.In February, Jeremy Peters of the New York Times delivered Insurgency, capturing how the party of Lincoln and Reagan morphed into the fiefdom of Trump. Peters caught Steve Bannon rating his former boss among the worst presidents, and likening Trump’s history-making 2015 escalator ride to a scene from Triumph of the Will, Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi propaganda film.“That’s Hitler, Bannon thought.” By extension, that makes Mar-a-Lago Trump’s Eagle’s Nest.As for Bannon, having burned through a Trump pardon, he awaits sentencing for contempt of Congress and will stand trial next year in Manhattan for conspiracy and fraud.In March came One Damn Thing After Another, another installment of Trump alumni performance art, this time by Bill Barr, the ex-attorney general.Barr took aim at Joe Biden for his stance on Russia, saying “demonizing [Vladimir] Putin is not a foreign policy”, nor “the way grown-ups should think”. Looks like the author didn’t have an invasion of Ukraine on his bingo card. In case anyone cares, Barr still loathes progressives, as his book makes abundantly clear. But he did spill his guts to the January 6 committee.May brought the first political blockbuster of the year, This Will Not Pass, in which Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns delivered 473 pages of essential reading. Kevin McCarthy denied having talked smack about Trump and the January 6 insurrection, so Martin appeared on MSNBC with tapes. The House Republican leader lied.Burns and Martin’s subtitle was “Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future”. They closed with an anxious meditation on the state of US democracy, quoting Malcolm Turnbull, a former prime minister of Australia: “You know that great line that you hear all the time, ‘This is not us. This is not America.’ You know what? It is, actually.”Later in May came A Sacred Oath by Mark Esper, Trump’s last defense secretary, and Here’s the Deal by the former White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway, Trump administration memoirs – and personas – as different as day and night.Esper pulled no punches, depicting Trump as unfit for office and a threat to democracy, a prisoner of wrath, impulse and appetite. His memoir was surgically precise in its score-settling, not just fuel for the pyre of Trump alumni revenge porn.Here’s the Deal was just that. Disdain unvarnished, Conway strafed Bannon, Jared Kushner and Mark Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff. Unsurprisingly, she had few kind words for Biden, blaming him for the Ukraine invasion and for Iran threatening nuclear breakout. Trump junked the Iran deal and was Putin’s toady. Then again, Conway is the queen of “alternative facts”.In August came Breaking History, Kushner’s own attempt to spin his triumphs while playing the victim. His book was predictably self-serving and selective, even trying to spin as something understandable his ex-con dad luring his own brother-in-law into a filmed liaison with a prostitute. The Kushners and the Trumps are not your typical families.Breaking History also came with conflicting creation stories. The New York Times reported that Kushner took an online MasterClass from the thriller writer James Patterson, then “batted out” 40,000 words of his own. By contrast, the Guardian learned that Kushner received assistance from Ken Kurson, a former editor of the New York Observer, and two other Trump White House alumni. As luck had it, Trump granted Kurson a pardon for cyberstalking, though Kurson later pleaded guilty after being charged with spying on his wife.‘The first thing he told us was a lie’Labor Day signaled a pre-midterm publication rush. With The Divider, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser offered a beautifully written, utterly dispiriting history of the man who attacked democracy. In electing Trump, the New York Times and New Yorker, husband-and-wife pair wrote, the US empowered a leader who “attacked basic principles of constitutional democracy at home” and “venerated” strongmen abroad. Whether the system winds up in the “morgue” and how much time remains to make sure it doesn’t were the authors’ open questions.The Divider review: riveting narrative of Trump’s plot against AmericaRead moreThe results of the midterms – Republicans squeaking the House, Democrats holding the Senate, election deniers defeated in key states – offered a glimmer of hope. Truth, however, remains a scarce commodity for Trump.“When we sat down with [him] a year after his defeat,” Baker and Glasser wrote, “the first thing he told us was a lie.”Specifically, Trump claimed the Biden administration had asked him to record a public service announcement promoting Covid vaccinations.Baker and Glasser also depicted Hitler as a Trump role model. To John Kelly, his second chief of staff, a retired Marine Corps general and a father bereaved in the 9/11 wars, Trump complained: “You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?”“Which generals?”“The German generals in World War II.”“You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?”According to Baker and Glasser, Kelly used The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a study by 27 mental health professionals, as an owner’s manual.Next, a month before the midterms, Maggie Haberman’s Confidence Man made its debut. A political epic, the book traced Trump’s journey from the streets of Queens to the Upper East Side, from the White House to Mar-a-Lago.Haberman gave Trump and those close to him plenty of voice – and rope. She caught Kushner gleefully asking a White House visitor: “Did you see I cut Bannon’s balls off?” To quote Peter Navarro, another Trump tell-all author, like Bannon now under indictment: “Nepotism and excrement roll downhill.”Confidence Man review: Maggie Haberman takes down TrumpRead moreHaberman interviewed Trump three times. He confessed that he is drawn to her like a moth to a flame. “I love being with her,” he said. “She’s like my psychiatrist.” But she saw through him, writing: “The reality is that he treats everyone like they are his psychiatrists.”Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, tried his hand with So Help Me God, a well-written and well-paced memoir that will, however, do little to shake the impression that he is the Rodney Dangerfield of vice-presidents: he gets no respect.Pence delivered a surprising indictment, cataloging Trump’s faults, errors and sins from Charlottesville to Russia and Ukraine. But Pence’s is a precarious balancing act. He upbraided Trump for his failure to condemn “the racists and antisemites in Charlottesville by name”, but also rejected the contention Trump was a bigot. As for Putin, “there was no reason for Trump not to call out Russia’s bad behaviour”, Pence wrote, while calling Trump’s infamous, impeachment-triggering phone call to Volodymyr Zelenskiy “less than perfect”. In the end, So Help Me God was a strained attempt to retain political viability.‘As long as you make the right friends’Not all the notable books of 2022 were about Trump himself. Some examined the people and movements that lie adjacent. We Are Proud Boys by Andy Campbell looked at the violence-addicted street fighters who have become best friends with many of Trump’s past and present supporters, from Ann Coulter to Roger Stone.As Campbell put it, the Proud Boys have “proven that you can make it as a fascist gang of hooligans in this country, as long as you make the right friends”.Andrew Kirtzman’s Giuliani provided a vivid reminder that Trump’s gravitational pull induces destruction. The author covered Rudy Giuliani when he was New York mayor. Rudy wasn’t always a buffoon. The book is masterly and engrossing.Broken News, by Chris Stirewalt, doubled as a critique of the media and a rebuke of Fox News, his former employer, and Trump. The Washington Post, the New York Times, MSNBC and Joe Scarborough fared poorly too. Substantively, Stirewalt contended that much of the news business is about the pursuit of ratings. These days, Fox is battling defamation lawsuits arising from repeatedly airing Trump’s “big lie”.Robert Draper’s Weapons of Mass Delusion dissected the Trumpian nightmare, focusing on the consequences of the world the internet created. Republicans like the far-right Arizona congressman Paul Gosar and his mentee, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, are much more likely to be rewarded than penalized for “outrageous, fact-free behavior”.Gabriel Debenedetti is the national correspondent for New York magazine. His first book, The Long Alliance, brought depth and context to the near-two-decade relationship between the 44th and 46th presidents, emphasizing that the pair’s time in power together was no buddy movie. Barack Obama was the star. Joe Biden played a supporting role – until he too seized the brass ring.‘It’s on the tape’: Bob Woodward on Donald Trump’s ‘criminal behavior’Read moreThe most memorable contribution to this year’s American political literature, however, was not a printed book. The Trump Tapes, subtitled “Bob Woodward’s Twenty Interviews with President Donald Trump” is an audio collection that offers a passport to the heart of darkness.In June 2020, Trump confided: “I get people, they come up with ideas. But the ideas are mine, Bob. Want to know something? Everything is mine.” Wow.Woodward’s tapes convincingly demonstrated that Trump knew in early 2020 that Covid posed a mortal danger to the US, but balked at telling the whole truth.Trump holds the press in contempt but yearns for its approval. He flattered Woodward as “a great historian”. Maggie Haberman knows the feeling.TopicsBooksUS politicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS elections 2020US elections 2024Joe BidenfeaturesReuse this content More
