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      The Divider review: riveting narrative of Trump’s plot against America

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      The Divider review: riveting narrative of Trump’s plot against America Peter Baker and Susan Glasser offer a beautifully written, utterly dispiriting history of the man who attacked democracyThe US labors in Donald Trump’s shadow, the Republican party “reborn in his image”, to quote Peter Baker and Susan Glasser. Trump is out of office but not out of sight or mind. Determined to explain “what happened” on 6 January 2021, when Trump supporters attacked the Capitol, the husband-and-wife team examines his term in the White House and its chaotic aftermath. Their narrative is riveting, their observations dispiriting.Trump chief of staff used book on president’s mental health as guideRead moreThe US is still counted as a liberal democracy but is poised to stumble out of that state. The stench of autocratization wafts. Maga-world demanded a Caesar. It came close to realizing its dream.In electing Trump, Baker and Glasser write, 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 are the authors’ open questions.Trump spoke kindly of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un. He treated Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine as a plaything, to be blackmailed for personal gain.In a moment of pique, Trump sought to give the Israeli-controlled West Bank to King Abdullah of Jordan. For Benjamin Netanyahu, the former and possibly future prime minister of Israel, he had a tart “fuck him”.At home, the US is mired in a cold civil war. Half the country deems Trump unfit to hold office, half would grant him a second term, possibly as president for life. Trump’s “big lie”, that the 2020 election was stolen, is potent.The tectonics of education, religion and race clang loudly – and occasionally violently. The insurrection stands as bloody testament to populism and Christian nationalism. The cross and the noose are icons. The Confederacy has risen.Baker is the New York Times’s chief White House correspondent. Glasser works for the New Yorker and CNN. Their book is meticulously researched and beautifully written. Those who were in and around the West Wing talk and share documents. Baker and Glasser lay out receipts. They conducted more than 300 interviews. They met Trump at Mar-a-Lago, “his rococo palace by the sea”, to which we now know he took more than 300 classified documents.“When we sat down with [him] a year after his defeat,” Baker and Glasser write, “the first thing he told us was a lie.”Imagine that.Trump falsely claimed the Biden administration had asked him to record a public service announcement promoting Covid vaccinations. Eventually, he forgot he had spun that yarn. It never happened.Baker and Glasser depict a tempestuous president and a storm-filled presidency. Trump’s time behind the Resolute Desk translated into “fits of rage, late-night Twitter storms, abrupt dismissals”. The authors now compare Trump to Napoleon, exiled to Elba.Congress impeached him twice. He never won the popular vote. His legitimacy flowed from the electoral college, the biggest quirk in the constitution, a document he readily and repeatedly defiled. Tradition and norms counted little. The military came to understand that Trump was bent on staging a coup. The guardrails nearly failed.The führer was a role-model. Trump loudly complained to John Kelly, his second chief of staff, a retired Marine Corps general and a father bereaved in the 9/11 wars: “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?”It’s fair to say Trump probably did not know that. He dodged the Vietnam draft, suffering from “bone spurs”, with better things to do. He is … not a reader.In Trump’s White House, Baker and Glasser write, Kelly used The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a study by 27 mental health professionals, as some sort of owner’s manual.A week before Christmas 2020, Trump met another retired general, the freshly pardoned Michael Flynn, and other election-deniers including Patrick Byrne, once a boyfriend of Maria Butina, a convicted Russian agent. Hours later, past midnight, Trump tweeted “Big protest in DC on January 6th … Be there, will be wild!”In that moment, the fears of Gen Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff who saw the coup coming, “no longer seemed far-fetched”. Now, as new midterm elections approach, Republicans signal that they will grill Milley if they retake the House.Baker and Glasser also write of how Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump sought refuge from the Trumpian storm, despite being his senior advisers. They endeavored to keep their hands clean but the muck cascaded downward.Not everyone shared their discomfort. Donald Trump Jr proposed “ways to annul the will of the voters”. Rick Perry, the energy secretary, pushed for Republican state legislatures to declare Trump the winner regardless of reality.“HERE’s an AGGRESSIVE STRATEGY,” a Perry text message read.Trump’s increasing tirade against FBI and DoJ endangering lives of officialsRead moreIn such a rogues’ gallery, even the wife of a sitting supreme court justice, Ginni Thomas, stood ready to help. Mark Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff, was a child who yearned for his parent’s affection. He would say and do anything. And yet he managed to spill the beans on Trump testing positive for Covid before debating Biden. Trump called Meadows “fucking stupid”. Meadows has since complied with subpoenas issued by the Department of Justice and the January 6 committee.Baker and Glasser conclude by noting Trump’s advanced age and looking at “would-be Trumps” who might pick up the torch. They name Ron DeSantis, Josh Hawley and Tucker Carlson.On Thursday, Trump threatened violence if he is criminally charged.“I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before,” he said. “I don’t think the people of the US would stand for it.”As Timbuk 3 once sang, with grim irony: “The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.”
      The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021 is published in the US by Penguin Random House
      TopicsBooksDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS Capitol attackUS politicsRepublicansThe far rightreviewsReuse this content More

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      Trump chief of staff used book on president’s mental health as White House guide

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      Trump chief of staff used book on president’s mental health as White House guideJohn Kelly secretly consulted The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, according to new book by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff secretly bought a book in which 27 mental health professionals warned that the president was psychologically unfit for the job, then used it as a guide in his attempts to cope with Trump’s irrational behavior.Trump feared assassination by Iran as revenge for Suleimani death, book saysRead moreNews of John Kelly’s surreptitious purchase comes in a new book from Peter Baker of the New York Times and Susan Glasser of the New Yorker. The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.The book Kelly bought, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, was a bestseller in 2017. In January 2018 its editor, then Yale psychiatrist Bandy Lee, described its aims in a Guardian column.She wrote: “While we keep within the letter of the Goldwater rule – which prohibits psychiatrists from diagnosing public figures without a personal examination and without consent – there is still a lot that mental health professionals can tell before the public reaches awareness.“These come from observations of a person’s patterns of responses, of media appearances over time, and from reports of those close to him. Indeed, we know far more about Trump in this regard than many, if not most, of our patients.“Nevertheless, the personal health of a public figure is her private affair – until, that is, it becomes a threat to public health.”Kelly, a retired general, became Trump’s second chief of staff in July 2017 – after Trump fired Reince Priebus by tweet – and left the job in January 2019.His struggles to impose order on Trump and his underlings and his virulent falling out with the president have been extensively documented. According to Baker and Glasser, who interviewed Kelly, the retired Marine Corps general bought a copy of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump as he “sought help to understand the president’s particular psychoses and consulted it while he was running the White House, which he was known to refer to as ‘Crazytown’.”“Kelly told others that the book was a helpful guide to a president he came to consider a pathological liar whose inflated ego was in fact the sign of a deeply insecure person.”The authors report that Kelly’s view was shared by unnamed senior officials, quoting one as saying: “I think there’s something wrong with [Trump]. He doesn’t listen to anybody, and he feels like he shouldn’t. He just doesn’t care what other people say and think. I’ve never seen anything like it.”The 25th amendment, which provides for the replacement of a president unable to meet the demands of the job, was seriously discussed at the end of Trump’s presidency, after the Capitol attack he incited.Baker and Glasser say the amendment was tentatively discussed by cabinet members “within months of Trump taking office”. However, its flaws – if Trump opposed its use he would be all but impossible to shift – precluded further action.Trump regularly dismissed claims about his mental health and his staff’s worries about it. In January 2018, after the publication of Michael Wolff’s tell-all book Fire and Fury, Trump memorably told reporters he was “a very stable genius”.Kelly has regularly attacked Trump. In October 2020, CNN reported that Kelly told friends Trump’s dishonesty was “astounding … more pathetic than anything else” and called Trump “the most flawed person” he had ever met.Trump backed failed campaign coup against Kushner, Navarro book saysRead moreTrump blasted back, claiming Kelly “didn’t do a good job, had no temperament and ultimately he was petered out. He got eaten alive. He was unable to handle the pressure of this job.”The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump was a bestseller, hailed by the Washington Post as “the most daring book” of 2017. But it also stoked controversy over its discussion of the mental state of a public figure.In May 2020, Lee lost her job at Yale, in part, she said, over tweets about Trump. This month, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit in which Lee said she was wrongfully fired.TopicsBooksUS politicsDonald TrumpPolitics booksnewsReuse this content More

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      Giuliani review: Andrew Kirtzman’s authoritative life of Trump’s last lackey

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      Giuliani review: Andrew Kirtzman’s definitive life of Trump’s last lackey A new account of the rise and fall of the man who was ‘America’s mayor’ after 9/11 is both masterful and engrossingRudy Giuliani went from hero to zero. As mayor, he guided New York City and the nation through the trauma of 9/11. Twenty years later, Sacha Baron Cohen captured him with his hands down his pants and cameras rolled as dye ran down his sweaty face. America laughed.‘Donald kept our secret’: Mar-a-Lago stay saved Giuliani from drink and depression, book saysRead moreBefore he was mayor, Giuliani was US attorney for the southern district of New York and US associate attorney general under Ronald Reagan. He frog-marched wayward bankers across trading floors, to the delight of all except Wall Street and civil libertarians.As mayor, Giuliani ruled the city as only a former prosecutor could. He demanded loyalty and brooked no dissent.Andrew Kirtzman’s first biography was called Rudy Giuliani: Emperor of the City. In his second, the author describes an “authoritarian” mayor. According to her sister, the mayor’s mother, Helen Giuliani, “liked” Mussolini. Her husband, Harold, was a stick-up man and leg-breaker for the mob and did prison time at Sing Sing. Under Giuliani, New Yorkers felt safer than they would under Bill de Blasio or, now, Eric Adams. But Giuliani broadcast disdain for the city’s minorities and lacked the temperament, capacity for consensus and deep pockets of Michael Bloomberg, his billionaire successor. All too often, Giuliani simply acted like a thug.After 9/11, he ran for president, made money as a lawyer then became a Trump flunky. Now, thanks to his work to advance the former president’s big lie about election fraud, he is being targeted by prosecutors in Fulton county, Georgia and his law license is suspended. Think of a malevolent Inspector Clouseau.Apparently, Giuliani is conscious of his decline. On the other hand, he has said: “I don’t care about my legacy. I’ll be dead.” That quote leads Kirtzman’s introduction.As a reporter on NY1, Time Warner’s 24-hour local cable news channel, Kirtzman covered Giuliani from the campaign trail to city hall. On 11 September 2001, he was there with the mayor in lower Manhattan. He witnessed Giuliani’s strides, his missteps and his spectacular collapse. Kirtzman’s new subtitle, The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor, says it all.The book is masterful and engrossing. It is girded by more than 40 pages of endnotes. The author and David Holley, his researcher, have performed yeoman work. They capture what made the man tick and what led to his fall from grace. Kirtzman’s critique is leavened with bittersweet impressions and references to Giuliani’s accomplishments.On election night 2020 and after, the former mayor helped Trump resist the will of the people. The social fabric was theirs to torch and shred. Giuliani’s self-righteousness complimented Trump’s refusal to acknowledge defeat. The soon-to-be ex-president offered Giuliani another opportunity to seize center stage. If Trump wouldn’t name him secretary of state, he could at least cosplay as a presidential lawyer.Kirtzman’s book ranks with other essential biographies such as Rudy! by the late and great investigative reporter Wayne Barrett and the more favorable The Prince of the City by Fred Siegel, an urban historian and Giuliani adviser.Kirtzman gets Judith Nathan, Giuliani’s third ex-wife, to truly dish the dirt. She says Giuliani’s crushing failure in the 2008 presidential primary left him broken and clutching the bottle. She credits Trump for providing shelter.“We moved into Mar-a-Lago and Donald kept our secret,” she says.As Kirtzman puts it, Giuliani “dreamed of becoming president from a young age, [but] blew his big moment when it arrived”. In the torrid aftermath, he spoke to therapists but, to quote Nathan, was “always falling shitfaced somewhere”.The couple are divorced but their antipathy continues to smolder. Characteristically, Giuliani has offered a different explanation for his stumbles and falls. He played baseball as a youngster and developed “catcher’s knee”. Does anyone really believe Giuliani was ever a budding Yogi Berra?Anthony Carbonetti, Giuliani’s chief of staff at city hall, is also a family friend. He also talked to Kirtzman, targeting Nathan while delivering a backhanded defense of his former boss. He told Nathan to “stay the fuck” out of Giuliani’s life. To Kirtzman, he opines: “If you spent an extensive amount of time with that woman, you’d drink a lot.”Carbonetti became a conduit between Trump and Giuliani … and, with other members of Giuliani’s retinue, a lobbyist for Qatar.As Kirtzman makes clear, Giuliani was never short on zeal. For Trump, he sought to become the second Roy Cohn, Trump’s all-time favorite lawyer. From seeking dirt in Ukraine to falsely blaming Dominion Voting Systems for Trump’s loss, Giuliani did it all. His capacity for self-abasement was bottomless.‘Unhinged’ Rudy Giuliani drank and ranted about Islam, new book claimsRead moreIn the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection, Maria Ryan, a Giuliani associate, sought a pardon and the presidential medal of freedom. She also attempted to get him paid. She failed. Giuliani forgot that even as Cohn lay in hospital, dying of Aids, Trump cast him aside.“I can’t believe he’s doing this to me,” Cohn said. “Donald pisses ice water.”Giuliani has testified before a Fulton county grand jury and the House January 6 committee. He is a defendant in defamation suits brought by Dominion and Smartmatic, another election machines company. In Trumpworld, Maga means Make America Great Again. It might also mean “Making attorneys get attorneys”.Kirtzman’s biography sums things up. Despite it all, two years after the 2020 election he refused to concede, Trump remains the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2024.“Giuliani, on the other hand, [is] finished in every conceivable way.”
      Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor is published in the US by Simon & Schuster
      TopicsBooksRudy GiulianiRepublicansDonald TrumpNew YorkUS politicsPolitics booksreviewsReuse this content More

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      Trump threatened not to leave White House after election loss, book says

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      Trump threatened not to leave White House after election loss, book saysDefeated president told aide ‘we’re never leaving’ despite Biden’s win, according to new book Confidence Man In the days after Joe Biden defeated him in the 2020 election, Donald Trump told an aide he was “just not going to leave” the White House, according to a new book on his presidency and its chaotic aftermath.“We’re never leaving,” he vowed to another aide, says the book from New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman titled Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. “How can you leave when you won an election?”CNN, where Haberman also serves as a political analyst, said Monday it reviewed reporting for the book – set for a 4 October release – and published new details on Trump’s insistence that he intended to stay at the White House despite his electoral loss to Biden.The book reports Trump being overheard whining and asking Republican National Committee chairperson Ronna McDaniel: “Why should I leave if they stole it from me?”None of Trump’s predecessors had ever threatened to remain at the White House after the end of their presidencies. The only remotely close parallel was the former first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, who remained at the White House for a few weeks after the assassination of her husband, Abraham Lincoln, in April 1865, Haberman’s book adds.Trump’s private bluster about refusing to move out of the White House contradicted public statements he made to reporters less than a month after the election that he would “certainly” leave if Biden’s victory over him was certified.“I will, and you know that,” Trump said, though he insisted electoral fraudsters had robbed him of beating Biden.Additionally, Haberman’s book portrays Trump as picking the brains of virtually everyone in his orbit for their thoughts on his camp’s ideas on how to keep him in the Oval Office despite Biden’s win. Among those consulted was the valet who would ferry Diet Cokes to Trump whenever he pressed a red button on the presidential desk in the Oval Office, according to the book.Trump, of course, eventually relented and moved out on the same day as Biden’s inauguration, sparing authorities from having to forcibly escort him out of the White House at the behest of the new president.Trump supporters who bought his lies that he’d been defrauded of victory in the 2020 race staged the deadly US Capitol attack on January 6 the following year. A bipartisan Senate committee report linked seven deaths to the violence that day, which was aimed at preventing the congressional certification of Biden’s victory.Federal prosecutors later filed criminal charges against more than 800 participants, many of whom have already been convicted and sentenced to prison.A bipartisan House committee earlier this year held a series of public hearings making the case that – among other things – Trump apparently violated federal law when he ignored pleas to take action that would halt his supporters’ assault on the Capitol.Later on Monday, the New York Times reported that the justice department has issued about 40 subpoenas over the past week seeking information about the actions of Trump and his associates related to the January 6 attack. Two of Trump’s advisers have had their phones seized, the Times reported, citing sources.The FBI in August also searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after agents say they found evidence that the ousted president was retaining government secrets there without authorization. From Mar-a-Lago, the FBI seized about 11,000 documents and 48 empty folders emblazoned with classified markings.Trump had not been charged with any crimes as Confidence Man’s release date neared.TopicsUS politicsDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump backed failed campaign coup against Kushner, Navarro book says

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      Trump backed failed campaign coup against Kushner, Navarro book saysEx-adviser says president in 2020 agreed that his son-in-law had to be replaced by Steve Bannon but did not dare try to fire him In June 2020, less than five months before polling day, Donald Trump agreed to a “coup d’état” to remove his son-in-law Jared Kushner from control of his presidential re-election campaign and replace him with the far-right provocateur Steve Bannon.‘You have to run’: Romney urged Biden to take down Trump, book saysRead moreThe coup had support from Donald Trump Jr but according to a new book by the former Trump aide Peter Navarro it did not work, after Trump refused to give Kushner the bad news himself.Fearing “family troubles if [he] himself had to deliver the bad news to … the father of his grandchildren”, Trump asked Bernie Marcus, the founder of Home Depot, a major Republican donor and a central player in the coup, “to be the messenger” to Kushner.In Navarro’s telling, Kushner first insulted Marcus by skipping a call, then told Trump’s emissary “things were fine with the campaign, there was no way he was stepping down and, in effect, Bernie Marcus and his big moneybags could go pound sand”.Navarro writes: “And that was that. And the rest is a catastrophic strategic failure history.”In November, Trump lost the White House to Joe Biden.With his wife, Ivanka Trump, Kushner was a senior adviser to Trump in the White House and on the campaign, essentially acting as a shadow chief of staff.Before entering the White House, Navarro, with a Harvard PhD in economics, wrote a number of books attacking China (and liberally quoting a source whose name was an anagram of his own).His new book, Taking Back Trump’s America: Why We Lost the White House and How We’ll Win It Back, will be published later this month. The Guardian obtained a copy.Navarro’s dim view of Kushner permeates his new book: one section is titled Both Nepotism and Excrement Roll Downhill.Navarro also took a central role in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic. He says planning for the campaign coup originated when Kushner told Fox News in April 2020 the pandemic would be over by the summer.“In being so wrong,” Navarro writes, “Jared ‘Pangloss’ Kushner woke up” big donors who until then thought “Kushner and the Trump campaign would, at some point, get its ship together”.Dr Pangloss is a character in Voltaire’s Candide, given to extreme optimism in the face of adversity.Navarro reprints a journal entry for 25 June 2020 which describes a meeting in New York between Bannon and donors who “want[ed] Kushner and Brad Parscale [the campaign manager] out the door”. He adds: “Don Jr [and his girlfriend] Kimberly Guilfoyle feel the same way. This could be really interesting. It could also be our last chance for victory.”According to Navarro, the plotters thought Bannon, who chaired Trump’s campaign in 2016, was the only operative who could steer him to re-election four years later.The plotters also knew that Kushner would never agree to the change – Navarro says Kushner told him he wanted to “crush Bannon like a bug” – and that Trump resented Bannon for taking “too much credit for the 2016 win”.Bannon was fired as White House strategist in August 2017, amid controversy over Trump’s supportive remarks about far-right protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia. Returning to Breitbart News, Bannon remained influential in Trump’s orbit.On the page, Navarro risks Trump’s ire by criticizing his actions as president, at one point devoting six pages to outlining “why a president who is supposed to be one of the greatest assessors of talent … would make such bad personnel choices across so many White House and cabinet-level positions”.He also writes that Trump could not have beaten Hillary Clinton in 2016 without Bannon, at the behest of another big donor, Robert Mercer, “coming in towards the end of the campaign and righting the Kushner ship”.In 2020, Navarro says, he conquered his “trepidations” about angering Trump and pressed ahead with the anti-Kushner plot. Navarro says he set up and attended a White House meeting between Trump and Marcus at which Trump “readily agreed with Bernie that Jared had to be replaced with Steve”.But there was another problem, again at odds with the ruthless image Trump constructed on The Apprentice, his NBC reality TV hit, in which his catchphrase was “You’re fired!”As has been extensively documented, Trump in fact does not like firing people.Peter Navarro: what Trump’s Covid-19 tsar lacks in expertise, he makes upRead more“Rather than being shot himself,” Navarro writes, Trump “asked Bernie to be the messenger” to Kushner.Marcus “accepted the mission, albeit grudgingly”. The mission failed. Parscale, the campaign manager under Kushner, was removed in July but the son-in-law stayed in control.Navarro played a central role in Trump’s attempts to overturn his election defeat, outlining a plan called the “Green Bay Sweep” which was meant to block certification of Biden’s win.In November, Navarro will stand trial. He is charged with contempt of Congress, for refusing to comply with the January 6 investigation. He faces up to two years in jail. The judge in the case refused a request to hold the trial next April, so Navarro could market his new book.TopicsBooksDonald TrumpJared KushnerSteve BannonTrump administrationUS elections 2020RepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Holding the Line review: Geoffrey Berman blasts Barr and dumps Trump

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      Holding the Line review: Geoffrey Berman blasts Barr and dumps Trump The fired New York prosecutor has produced a classic of a modern literary genre: Trump alumni revenge pornFive months before the 2020 election, Bill Barr fired Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney for the southern district of New York.‘You have to run’: Romney urged Biden to take down Trump, book saysRead moreTrying to justify the decision, Barr twisted himself into a pretzel. Donald Trump had not nominated Berman. Jeff Sessions, Barr’s predecessor as attorney general, named him to the post on an interim basis and a panel of federal judges kept him on. Barr’s authority to rid himself of this troublesome prosecutor was at best disputable.Revenge is best served cold. Two years and three months later, Berman is back with a memoir, Holding the Line. In the annals of Trump alumni revenge porn, it is an instant classic. It is smart and crisp. It is full of bile and easy to read.Barr wrote his own book. He has toured the TV studios, seeking rehabilitation. Over 350 pages, Berman immolates all that.He also tells the public what Trump and his own transition team knew from the outset: Rudy Giuliani was “unhinged”, and friends with the bottle. The chaos of Giuliani’s work as Trump’s attorney, through impeachment and insurrection, cannot have been a surprise. It may be surprising, though, that he was once in contention to be secretary of state.Berman also pulverizes Trump’s contention that Merrick Garland’s justice department is hyper-politicized. Berman shows that under Trump, Main Justice was a haven for lackeys all too willing to do the big guy’s bidding. He accuses Trump of weaponizing the justice department, pushing it to prosecute his critics and enemies while sparing his friends.After New York prosecutors brought charges against Michael Cohen, Trump’s one-time fixer, and Chris Collins, a New York congressman, the powers-that-be purportedly advised Berman: “It’s time for you guys to even things out.”Practically, that meant launching an investigation at Trump’s behest into John Kerry, for allegedly violating the Logan Act in talks with Iranian officials after retiring as secretary of state.Briefly, the Logan Act, from 1798, bars non-government officials from negotiating with foreign powers. In the case of Greg Craig, Barack Obama’s White House counsel, it meant charges under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. After Berman unsuccessfully argued that Craig should not have been prosecuted, Craig was acquitted by a federal jury. Kerry was never indicted.Berman is a Republican. He volunteered on Trump’s 2016 campaign and was once a law partner of Giuliani. He is also a former editor of the Stanford Law Review, happy to punch up. As with most Trump memoirs, Holding the Line is full of score-settling. Berman calls Barr a liar, a bully and a thug.Writing about his dismissal, Berman says: “I would describe Barr’s posture that morning as thuggish. He wanted to bludgeon me into submission.”“If you do not resign from your position, you will be fired,” Barr purportedly warned. “That will not be good for your resume and future job prospects.”Think of Berman as the honey badger – if the honey badger headed up a white-collar practice at a Wall Street law firm. He doesn’t give a fig. He holds the receipts. William Barr defends FBI and justice department over Mar-a-Lago searchRead more“Several hours after Barr and I met,” he writes, “on a Friday night, [Barr] issued a press release saying that I was stepping down. That was a lie.”“A lie told by the nation’s top law enforcement officer.”Barr’s stints in government are emblematic of the descent of the Republican party in the last 30 years. Barr was George HW Bush’s attorney general. Next time round he was simply Trump’s guy at Main Justice.Barr coddled Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone. He marched to St John’s church with the president and misled the public about the use of teargas to disperse protesters. More than once, his relationship with the truth drew the ire of the federal bench. His last-moment departure from the Trump administration bore all the marks of the arsonist who flees when the flames grow uncomfortably close.As for Giuliani, Berman portrays him as a boozy and incoherent Islamophobe. In the spring of 2016, Berman organised a “cross-selling dinner” to introduce Giuliani and other lawyers to clients “at a large financial institution”. Things headed south. Giuliani “continued to drink”. The dinner morphed into “an utter and complete train wreck”.At one point, Berman writes, Giuliani turned to a man “wearing a yarmulke [who] had ordered a kosher meal”. Under the impression the man was a Muslim, Giuliani said: “I’m sorry to have tell you this, but the founder of your religion is a murderer.”“It was unbelievable,” Berman gasps. “Rudy was unhinged. A pall fell over the room.”Two years later, the law firm, Greenberg Traurig, shoved Giuliani out the door. He had opined that hush-money payments made via a lawyer were perfectly normal, even when not authorised by the client. In the case in question, Michael Cohen acted as a conduit between Stormy Daniels, an adult film star, and Trump.Donald Trump once tried to pay a lawyer with a horse, new book saysRead more“That was money that was paid by his lawyer, the way I would do, out of his law firm funds,” Giuliani told Fox News. “Michael would take care of things like this, like I take care of this with my clients.”Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges – and became a target of Trump’s animus and Barr’s vengeance.‘Unhinged’ Rudy Giuliani drank and ranted about Islam, new book claimsRead moreThese days, Giuliani is in the cross-hairs of prosecutors in Fulton county, Georgia, over Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat in the state. Trump’s own legal exposure appears to grow almost hourly. Barr surmises that an indictment may be imminent.From the looks of things, Geoffrey Berman is having the last laugh.
      Holding the Line: Inside the Nation’s Preeminent US Attorney’s Office and Its Battle with the Trump Justice Department is published in the US by Penguin Press
      TopicsBooksTrump administrationDonald TrumpWilliam BarrRudy GiulianiUS politicsRepublicansreviewsReuse this content More

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      ‘You have to run’: Romney urged Biden to take down Trump, book says

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      ‘You have to run’: Romney urged Biden to take down Trump, book saysGabriel Debenedetti, author of book on Biden’s relationship with Obama, reports call on night of 2018 midterms On the night of the 2018 midterm elections, as a wave of anti-Trump sentiment swept Democrats to take control of the House, top Republican Mitt Romney urged Joe Biden to run for president.‘Unhinged’ Rudy Giuliani drank and ranted about Islam, new book claimsRead more“You have to run,” said Romney, the Republican presidential nominee Biden and Barack Obama defeated in 2012, speaking to the former vice-president by phone.The same night, Romney was elected a US senator from Utah, a post from which he would twice vote to convict Donald Trump in impeachment trials.Romney’s exhortation to a man then seen as a likely challenger to Donald Trump in 2020 will probably further enrage the former president, his supporters and the Republican party they dominate.The Biden-Romney call is described in The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama, a book by Gabriel Debenedetti that will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.Describing how Biden spent 6 November 2018, Debenedetti writes: “Biden spent election night glued to his phone as usual … He talked to most of the candidates he’d campaigned for, and plenty he didn’t, either to congratulate or console them, or just to catch up.“This time felt better than 2016” – when Trump beat Hillary Clinton for the presidency – “in part because Democrats were winning big, at least in local races and in the House.“But it was also because of a refrain [Biden] kept hearing, and not always from the most expected sources.“At one point he connected with Mitt Romney, who’d been easily elected to the Senate that night as a rare Trump-opposing Republican. They were warm as Biden cheered Romney’s win.“Then Obama’s old rival got to the point: You have to run, Romney said.”In a note on sourcing, Debenedetti says his book is “primarily the product of hundreds of interviews” with “colleagues, aides, rivals, confidants, allies and eyewitnesses from every stage” of Obama and Biden’s careers since 2003.He also says: “When someone’s words are rendered in italics, that indicates an approximation based on the memories of sources who did not recall exact wordings.” Romney’s opposition to Trump is long established, if not entirely consistent.In 2016, the former Massachusetts governor spoke out against Trump, decrying his behaviour on the campaign trail and calling him a “phony” and a “fraud”. After the election, he said he did not vote for the Republican nominee, writing in his wife’s name instead.Trump attorney general Barr a liar, bully and thug, says fired US attorney in bookRead moreNonetheless, Romney then flirted with working for Trump, pitching to be secretary of state. He generally voted with his president after taking his seat in the Senate.But the relationship was never smooth – Trump called Romney a “pompous ass” – and in 2019 Romney told the New York Times: “People say to me, ‘If you’re critical of the president you’re hurting the party.’ No I’m not – I’m laying out a path for the party post the president.”In 2020, when Trump was impeached for blackmailing Ukraine for dirt on rivals including Biden, Romney became the first senator ever to vote to convict and remove a president of his own party.He said he did not vote for Trump in that year’s election – but refused to say if he voted for Biden.In 2021, Trump was impeached a second time, for inciting the Capitol attack. Romney voted to convict again.TopicsBooksMitt RomneyJoe BidenDonald TrumpUS politicsUS elections 2020US midterms 2018newsReuse this content More

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      ‘Unhinged’ Rudy Giuliani drank and ranted about Islam, new book claims

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      ‘Unhinged’ Rudy Giuliani drank and ranted about Islam, new book claimsEx-mayor derailed ‘train wreck’ dinner with clients and colleagues, then was later considered for secretary of state At a law firm dinner in New York in May 2016, an “unhinged” Rudy Giuliani, then Donald Trump’s suggested pick to head a commission on “radical Islamic terrorism”, behaved in a drunken and Islamophobic manner, horrifying clients and attorneys alike.Trump attorney general Barr a liar, bully and thug, says fired US attorney in bookRead moreAccording to a new book by Geoffrey Berman, a former US attorney for the southern district of New York (SDNY), at one point Giuliani turned to a Jewish man “wearing a yarmulke [who] had ordered a kosher meal” and, under the impression the man was a Muslim, said: “I’m sorry to have tell you this, but the founder of your religion is a murderer.”“It was unbelievable,” Berman writes. “Rudy was unhinged. A pall fell over the room.”Later that year, after Trump beat Hillary Clinton for the White House, Giuliani was seriously considered to be secretary of state – top diplomat for the US.He went on to closely advise Trump, as his personal attorney, during his chaotic presidency and its violent aftermath.Giuliani’s drinking has been both widely reported and discussed under oath, in testimony before the House January 6 committee regarding his behaviour during Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.It is also a feature of Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor, a new biography by Andrew Kirtzman. Among other episodes, Kirtzman recounted a period of near-collapse, during which Giuliani stayed in seclusion at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida resort.Berman’s memoir, Holding the Line: Inside the Nation’s Preeminent US Attorney’s Office and its Battle with the Trump Justice Department, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.Berman’s main subject is his long battle with William Barr, Trump’s second attorney general, over what Berman says were attempts to use the Department of Justice for political ends. The contest between the two men culminated in a farcical attempt to fire Berman and, he writes, replace him with someone more politically pliable.Giuliani, also a former US attorney for the SDNY, was mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001, becoming known as “America’s Mayor” for his leadership during and after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. After a failed run for president in 2008 he was a close adviser to Trump when the billionaire launched his own campaign in 2015.In May 2016, Trump told Fox News he had proposed a ban on Muslims entering the US because “radical Islamic terrorism” was “a real problem”.He added: “In fact, I’m thinking about setting up a commission perhaps headed by Rudy Giuliani to take a very serious look at this problem.”Giuliani had just joined Berman’s law firm. Berman writes that he organised a “cross-selling dinner”, to introduce the former mayor and other new lawyers to clients “at a large financial institution”.Giuliani behaved well to start with, Berman says, but he “continued to drink” and “shifted the conversation to his work for Trump on immigration”. For Berman, the dinner became “an utter and complete train wreck”.Giuliani, Berman writes, shared a “wholly inaccurate, alt-right history of the creation and development of Islam, stating that it was an inherently violent religion from its origins to today”.To growing consternation among guests, Giuliani produced his phone and “showed the group drawings of violent acts purportedly committed by Muslims”.There followed the exchange with the man in the yarmulke, who “for some reason, Rudy thought … was Muslim”, even though as a two-term mayor of New York, in Berman’s words, Giuliani “was clearly acquainted with Jews”.After Giuliani’s diatribe, Berman “broke the silence with a stab at humour. ‘Well that’s seven years of client development down the drain,’ I announced.”‘Donald kept our secret’: Mar-a-Lago stay saved Giuliani from drink and depression, book saysRead moreGiuliani “wasn’t slurring his words”, Berman writes, “… but his impulses had control of him”.Berman says the story of the client dinner “never made it into the press, but it did get around”. A few weeks later, at a reunion for “hundreds” of former SDNY prosecutors, Berman was told there was “not a single former [prosecutor] in this room who has not heard about the dinner”.Kirtzman reports that stories of Giuliani’s drinking ultimately contributed to Trump deciding not to make him secretary of state. The former mayor was also discussed as a possible attorney general.Such heights now seem far away. Giuliani’s work for Trump in the attempt to overturn the 2020 election has contributed to the suspension of his law licenses and placed him in legal jeopardy, the target of a criminal investigation in Georgia.TopicsBooksRudy GiulianiRepublicansPolitics booksUS politicsDonald TrumpIslamnewsReuse this content More