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      Trump attorney general Barr a liar, bully and thug, says fired US attorney in book

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      Trump attorney general Barr a liar, bully and thug, says fired US attorney in bookIn memoir, Geoffrey Berman recounts clashes before a botched firing he insists was politically motivated Donald Trump’s second attorney general, William Barr, is stupid, a liar, a bully and a thug, according to a hard-hitting new book by Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney for the southern district of New York whose firing Barr engineered in hugely controversial fashion in summer 2020.Mar-a-Lago a magnet for spies, officials warn after nuclear file reportedly foundRead more“Several hours after Barr and I met,” Berman 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.”Trump’s politicization of the US Department of Justice was a hot-button issue throughout his presidency. It remains so as he claims persecution under Barr’s successor, Merrick Garland, regarding the mishandling of classified information, the Capitol attack and multiple other investigations.Berman describes his own ordeal, as Barr sought a more politically pliant occupant of the hugely powerful New York post, in Holding the Line: Inside the Nation’s Preeminent US Attorney’s Office and its Battle with the Trump Justice Department, a memoir to be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.Berman testified in Congress shortly after his dismissal. He now writes: “No one from SDNY with knowledge of [his clashes with Barr over two and a half years] has been interviewed or written about them. Until now, there has not been a firsthand account.”Berman describes clashes on issues including the prosecution of Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, and the Halkbank investigation, concerning Turkish bankers and government officials helping Tehran circumvent the Iran nuclear deal.Barr was also attorney general under George HW Bush. He has published his own book, One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General, in which he discusses SDNY affairs but does not mention Berman. Promoting the book, Barr told NBC he “didn’t really think that much about” his former adversary.Berman calls that “an easily disprovable lie”.In Berman’s book, Barr is a constant presence. Describing the Halkbank case, Berman says Trump’s closeness to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish president, meant Barr was, “always eager to please his boss, appeared to be doing Trump’s bidding” by leaning on Berman to drop charges.Berman says Barr told him he, Barr, would be “point person” for the administration on Halkbank, which Berman found “odd”.“This is a criminal case being run out of New York, right? As attorney general, Barr had a role to play. But why as White House-designated point person? That was problematic.”Berman says Barr tried to block the SDNY to benefit Trump politically. In June 2019, he says, he was summoned to a meeting where Barr told him the Halkbank case “implicates foreign policy” and, “his voice … steadily rising”, asked: “Who do you think you are to interfere?”He writes: “I’ve seen bullies work before. In fact he had used the same words with me a little more than a year before” over the appointment of Berman’s deputy, Audrey Strauss, without Barr’s approval.Berman adds: “I would describe Barr’s posture that morning as thuggish. He wanted to bludgeon me into submission.”Berman turned Barr down. He also says he told Barr a proposal to offer individuals in the Halkbank case a non-prosecution agreement without disclosing the move would be “a fraud on the court”.The Halkbank issue eventually dropped away, after Trump and Erdoğan fell out over the US withdrawal from Syria. But Barr and Berman’s enmity remained.Berman also gives his version of events in June 2020, when Barr summoned him to a meeting at the Pierre hotel in New York City.William Barr told Murdoch to ‘muzzle’ Fox News Trump critic, new book saysRead moreBerman first delivers a sharp aside about Barr’s ostentatious travel, his apparent ambitions – Berman speculates that the attorney general wanted to be secretary of state in Trump’s second term – and an infamous, secretive meeting between Barr and Rupert Murdoch that Berman calls “a scene right out of HBO’s Succession”.Berman says he did not know why Barr wanted to meet him, but thought it might be because he had refused to sign a letter attacking Bill de Blasio, then mayor of New York, over the application of Covid restrictions to religious services and protests for racial justice. Berman did not sign, he writes, because he could not be seen to act politically.At the Pierre, he says, Barr, who with his chief of staff was not wearing a mask indoors, said he wanted to “make a change in the southern district”. Berman says he knew what would come next, given changes elsewhere to instal Barr allies and moves to influence investigations of Trump aides including Roger Stone and Michael Flynn.“The reason Barr wanted me to resign immediately was so I could be replaced with an outsider he trusted,” Berman writes, adding that he was sure he could be removed other than by the judges who appointed him to fill the office on an interim basis in 2018, or by Senate confirmation of a successor.Berman turned down Barr’s offer. He says Barr then made an “especially tawdry” suggestion: that if Berman moved to run the DoJ civil division, “I could leverage it to make more money after I left government”. Berman says Barr also asked if he had civil litigation experience, a question Berman deems “almost comical”. Then Barr threatened to fire him.Berman “thought to myself, what a gross and colossal bully this guy is to threaten my livelihood”. He did not budge. Barr said he would think of other jobs. After the meeting, Berman writes, Barr asked if he would like to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission. Berman says that job “was not [Barr’s] to offer”, as the SEC chair is nominated by the president and Senate confirmed.Berman says he agreed to talk to Barr again after the weekend. Instead, that night Barr issued a press release saying Berman had agreed to resign.“It was a lie, plain and simple,” Berman writes. “I clearly told him I was not stepping down. Barr [was] the attorney general … in addition to being honest, he should be smart. And this was really stupid on his part – a complete miscalculation … he should have known at this point that I was not going to go quietly.”William Barr’s Trump book: self-serving narratives and tricky truths ignoredRead moreIn a press release of his own, Berman said he had not resigned. The next day he showed up for work, greeted by a swarm of reporters. Then, in a public letter Berman now calls “an idiotic diatribe”, Barr said Berman had been fired by Trump.Barr did drop a plan to replace Berman with an acting US attorney, instead allowing Berman’s deputy, Strauss, to succeed him. Berman says that enabled him to step aside in good conscience. He calls Barr’s move a “surrender”.Berman describes both his belief he was fired because his independence represented “a threat to Trump’s re-election” and Trump’s insistence to reporters on the day of the firing that he had not fired Berman – Barr had.“Barr’s attempt to push me out,” he writes, “was so bungled that he and Trump couldn’t even get their stories straight.”TopicsBooksWilliam BarrUS politicsDonald TrumpLaw (US)RepublicansTrump administrationnewsReuse this content More

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      The Trump officials who took children from their parents should be prosecuted | Austin Sarat and Dennis Aftergut

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      The Trump officials who took children from their parents should be prosecutedAustin Sarat and Dennis AftergutThe border policy violated international law – and prosecuting those responsible may be the best way to prevent it from happening again In the Trump administration’s four years of undermining America’s image of decency, perhaps no policy did so as effectively, or as viciously, as his family separation policy – which separated 5,000 children, some as young as four months old, from their mothers and fathers.The theory behind the policy was that inflicting excruciating pain on thousands of parents and children separated at the border would deter migration to the US. It was another example of the Trump administration’s calculated cruelty.We now know something about why officials throughout the government went along with the family separation policy. They “were under orders from Trump”, Kevin McAleenan, the Department of Homeland Security’s commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, told Caitlin Dickerson of the Atlantic. McAleenan was “just following directions”, as Dickerson puts it. Those directions came from Stephen Miller, Trump’s fiercely anti-immigrant enforcer.Just following orders. We’ve heard that before from perpetrators of great wrongs.Whatever their reasons, the actions government officials took in pursuit of the family separation policy demand a response. Doing justice for the victims of the policy demands accountability for those who designed and implemented it. And deterring such conduct in the future is only possible if there are consequences for engaging in it.International law offers a framework for accomplishing those goals and for seeing the family separation policy for what it was: a crime against humanity.But before exploring that framework, let’s examine what we know about why government officials would go along with Trump and Miller’s calculated cruelty.In 1963, the Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram offered the best-known answer. Milgram enlisted subjects in a “learning experiment”. Their job was to apply what they thought were increasing levels of electrical shock to “learners” whenever they gave incorrect answers.Unknown to subjects, the “learners” were Milgram’s collaborators. They intentionally gave wrong answers and feigned excruciating pain as the voltage seemingly increased to severe shock. Under the direction of a “research administrator”, who became increasingly firm when subjects hesitated to apply more pain, two-thirds of them ended up administering the maximum dose of “electricity”.As Milgram put it: “The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study.”Evil, it turned out, was as banal as Hannah Arendt, the famed political theorist, described it in her celebrated chronicle, Eichmann in Jerusalem. This is the evil done by those without whose complicity Trump’s family separation policy could not have been carried out.Eichmann’s 1961 conviction, and those at Nuremberg, established the principle that individuals who claimed to be “just following orders” are as culpable for crimes they commit as those who give the orders.And the 1998 “Rome statute” created a forum that can provide accountability for the people who designed and implemented the family separation policy – the international criminal court.The Rome statute authorized the ICC to prosecute individuals who commit crimes against humanity, including “inhumane acts … [that] intentionally caus[e] great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.”There is no question that systematic actions separating parents from children meet that definition.While the United States is one of only seven countries not to have ratified the Rome Statute, this fact should offer little solace to those who violate its principles. Here is why.First, under the “principle of complementarity”, the ICC may exercise its jurisdiction when a country is either unwilling or unable to investigate and prosecute crimes within its territory.Applying the complementarity doctrine, in 2011 the ICC initiated prosecution of Libya’s one-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi, though his country never ratified the Rome statute.Second, the Nuremberg principles that the United States wrote before the trials began justify prosecuting crimes against humanity in the complete absence of any agreement by an accused violators’ country. That Germany did not ratify those principles was no barrier to prosecution of Nazi officials at Nuremberg.Third, the US has signed other international agreements incorporating protections against crimes such as the ones implicated by Trump’s policy to separate families. For example, in 1992, President George HW Bush signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Congress had ratified, making it the law of the land.Article 24 of the ICCPR provides that “[e]very child shall have, without any discrimination as to race, … national or social origin … the right to such measures of protection as are required by his status as a minor.” As the UN high commissioner for human rights emphasized in a 2010 report, “the principal normative standards of child protection are equally applicable to migrant children and children implicated in the process of migration.”Another relevant treaty under which American officials could be charged is the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, ratified by the US in 1988. It defines “torture” as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted … for such purposes as … punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed … when such pain or suffering is inflicted … at the instigation of a public official.”While the Biden administration has made considerable progress reuniting families, it has not moved quickly enough to completely end the policy. It is up to the public to ensure that result and to demand that Trump administration officials answer for making crimes against humanity a centerpiece of US immigration policy.There is more than enough binding law and precedent for bringing charges against those officials. They should have their day in court, where they can offer their legal defenses and explain to the world why they did what they did.Prosecutors at The Hague should bring before the bar of justice Trump officials who instituted the policy of separating children from their mothers and fathers. Humanity and history require it.
      Austin Sarat is a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College and the author of Lethal Injection and the False Promise of Humane Execution
      Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor, is of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionDonald TrumpTrump administrationMigrationLaw (US)United NationscommentReuse this content More

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      Trump boasted he had ‘intelligence’ on Macron’s sex life

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      Trump boasted he had ‘intelligence’ on Macron’s sex lifeInventory of what was seized at Mar-a-Lago caused ‘transatlantic freakout’ between Paris and Washington Donald Trump boasted to close associates that he knew secrets about Emmanuel Macron’s sex life from US intelligence sources, it has been reported.The report in Rolling Stone magazine comes in the wake of the release of court documents on the classified and national defence documents found in a search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on 8 August, which mention a file referred to as “info re: President of France”.It is unclear whether the file on Macron was classified or what it contained. But Rolling Stone claimed that its mention in the official inventory of what was seized at Mar-a-Lago caused a “transatlantic freakout” between Paris and Washington.A French embassy spokesperson said: “We do not comment on legal proceedings in the US and … the embassy has not asked the administration for any information concerning the documents retrieved at former President Trump’s residence.”Neither the state department nor Trump’s office have so far responded to a request for comment.The Rolling Stone report said that during and after his presidency, Trump claimed to some of his closest associates that he knew details of Macron’s private life, which he had gleaned from “intelligence” he had seen or been briefed on.Macron initially courted Trump, inviting him to the Bastille Day military parade in 2017 just two months after he was elected, inspiring the US president to badger his own generals to stage a similar show of military pageantry in Washington.Relations soon soured between the two leaders, particularly after Macron’s failure to persuade Trump to stay in the nuclear deal with Iran. Trump took the US out of the deal in 2018, and it has unravelled since then. They also fell out over Trump’s abrupt order to pull troops out of northern Syria and his distrust of Nato. In December 2019, Trump called Macron “a pain in the ass” while addressing a group of ambassadors to the UN.TopicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationEmmanuel MacronUS politicsFranceEuropenewsReuse this content More

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      Is Trump back in Murdoch’s good books?

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      At the end of July, it was reported that Fox News and other publications owned by Rupert Murdoch were starting to abandon their extensive coverage of Donald Trump. However, after the FBI launched an unprecedented raid on his Mar-a-Lago home as part of an investigation into Trump’s potentially unlawful removal of White House records when he left office, the former president was back to getting some favourable coverage, at least on Fox News.
      This week, Joan E Greve speaks to former Republican congressional communications director Tara Setmayer about how in the long term, this ongoing scandal could be beneficial to Trump

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      Archive: CNN, Fox News, CBS Miami This episode first aired on Politics Weekly America More

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      Trump is reading my memoir, Kushner claims of famously book-shy boss

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      Trump is reading my memoir, Kushner claims of famously book-shy bossSon-in-law and former adviser says ex-president has ‘given me some compliments on’ critically panned 500-page tome Donald Trump was notoriously averse to reading his briefing papers as president but according to Jared Kushner he has started reading Breaking History, his son-in-law and former adviser’s 500-page White House memoir.Breaking History review: Jared Kushner’s dispiriting Trump bookRead moreSpeaking to the Fox News host Brian Kilmeade on Wednesday, Kushner said: “When I gave it to him, he said, ‘Look, this is a very important book. I’m glad somebody wrote a book that’s really going to talk about what actually happened in the room.’ And he says, ‘I’m going to read it.’“So he started reading and he’s given me some compliments on it so far. And again, I hope he’s proud of it. I don’t know if he’ll like anything [in it].”Critics have not liked much in Kushner’s book. For the Guardian, Lloyd Green called it “a mixture of news and cringe” which “selectively parcels out dirt”. In the New York Times, Dwight Garner called the book “earnest and soulless”, saying “Kushner looks like a mannequin, and he writes like one”.“Kushner’s fealty to Trump remains absolute. Reading this book reminded me of watching a cat lick a dog’s eye-goo,” Garner wrote.Kushner has said he “read that review and … thought it was hysterical” and wanted “to hang it on my wall”. He also said sales had increased since the Times piece. The book does not appear on the Times bestseller list.Married to Trump’s oldest daughter, Ivanka, Kushner was a senior adviser through a presidency that ended in a deadly attack on Congress as Trump attempted to stay in power.Kushner said: “Sometimes he listened. Sometimes he didn’t but we had a lot of fun.”Whether Trump will finish Kushner’s book remains to be seen. The former president has never been known to be much of a reader – although his first wife, Ivana Trump, did say he kept a volume of Hitler’s speeches by his bed.At the time, Trump told Vanity Fair: “If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them.”TopicsBooksJared KushnerDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansTrump administrationPolitics booksnewsReuse this content More

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      Justice Department asks not to disclose affidavit behind Mar-a-Lago search

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      Justice Department asks not to disclose affidavit behind Mar-a-Lago searchUnsealing the document could reveal the scope of the inquiry against Donald Trump, whose team is rattled by recent events The US Justice Department has asked a judge not to release the affidavit that gave the FBI probable cause to search Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, worsening distrust among top Trump aides casting about for any insight into the intensifying criminal investigation surrounding the former president.The affidavit should not be unsealed because that could reveal the scope of the investigation into Trump’s unauthorized retention of government secrets, the Justice Department argued, days after the Mar-a-Lago search warrant showed it referenced potential violations of three criminal statutes.FBI agents a week ago seized around 20 boxes of materials – including documents marked Top Secret – executing a search warrant which referenced the Espionage Act outlawing the unauthorized retention of national security information that could harm the United States or aid an adversary.“The affidavit would serve as a roadmap to the government’s ongoing investigation, providing specific details about its direction and likely course,” the justice department said, adding that it did not oppose unsealing both a cover page and a sealing order that wouldn’t harm the criminal investigation.Trump demands return of seized documents – by order of social mediaRead moreIn arguing against unsealing the affidavit, the justice department also said that the disclosure could harm its ability to gain cooperation from witnesses not only in the Mar-a-Lago investigation but also additional ones that would appear to touch on the former president.“Disclosure of the government’s affidavit at this stage would also likely chill future cooperation by witnesses whose assistance may be sought as this investigation progresses, as well as in other high-profile investigations,” prosecutors added.The existence of potential witnesses who could yet cooperate in a number of investigations against Trump – seemingly people with intimate knowledge of the former president’s activities – rattled close advisors once more Monday, further deepening distrust inside his inner political circle.The lack of insight into what the justice department intends to do with the investigation into Trump’s unauthorized retention of government documents has deeply frustrated the Trump legal team and aides alike in a week of perilous moments for the former president.At least one lawyer on the Trump legal team – led by former assistant US attorney Evan Corcoran, who also acted as the lawyer for Trump’s top former strategist Steve Bannon – has called up a reporter covering the story for any insight into how the justice department might next proceed.It added to the already fraught atmosphere inside the reduced group of advisors who have day-to-day roles around Trump that erupted shortly after the FBI departed Mar-a-Lago and sparked suspicions that a person close to the former president had become an informant for the FBI.That speculation came in part amid widening knowledge about how the FBI might have established probable cause that there was a crime being committed at Mar-a-Lago using new or recent information – to prevent the probable cause from going “stale” – through a confidential informant.According to multiple sources close to Trump, suspicions initially centered on Nicholas Luna, the longtime Trump body-man who stepped back from his duties around March, and Molly Michael, the former Trump White House Oval Office operations chief, who remains on payroll but is due to soon depart.Luna was subpoenaed by the congressional investigation into the January 6 Capitol attack but has not spoken to the FBI about this case, one of the sources said. And although Michael is slated to also leave Trump’s orbit, the source said, her departure – like Luna’s – is not acrimonious.The focus in the middle of the week shifted to Mar-a-Lago employees and other staff at the members-only resort in Palm Beach, Florida, the sources said, seemingly in part because the FBI knew exactly which rooms and where in the rooms they needed to search.But towards the weekend, and following the revelation that the FBI removed a leather-bound box from the property and already knew the location of Trump’s safe, scrutiny shifted once more to anyone else who had not yet been suspected – including members of Trump’s family, the sources said.A spokesperson for the former president did not respond to a request for comment. Calls to Trump lawyers went unanswered or straight to voicemail. The justice department declined to comment on the investigation or Monday’s request.Nonetheless, the escalating distrust and rampant speculation about an informant has started to reach dizzying levels, even by the standards of the Trump presidency, which was characterized in many ways by competing interests and political backstabbing, the sources said.It remains unclear whether the FBI relied on confidential informants, and the Guardian first reported that the search came in part because the justice department grew concerned that classified materials remained at Mar-a-Lago as a result of interactions with Trump’s lawyers.At least one Trump lawyer signed a document – apparently falsely – attesting to the justice department that there were no more classified materials left at Mar-a-Lago after federal officials in June removed 10 boxes worth of government records, the sources said, confirming a New York Times report.TopicsDonald TrumpFBITrump administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Breaking History review: Jared Kushner’s dispiriting Trump book

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      Breaking History review: Jared Kushner’s dispiriting Trump book The former president’s son-in-law has written a predictably self-serving and selective memoir of his time in the White HouseThe House January 6 committee hearings depict Donald Trump as eager to storm the Capitol. He knew the rally held in his name included armed individuals. When rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence”, Jared Kushner’s father-in-law remarked: “He deserves it.”The Big Lie review: Jonathan Lemire laments what Trump hath wroughtRead moreIn response to a plea from Kevin McCarthy, the 45th president questioned the House Republican leader’s devotion. The mob invaded Congress. Trump sat back and watched.Kushner has not fared well either. In testimony to the panel, he has derided Pat Cipollone as a “whiner” and described deigning to exit the shower to take a call from a panicked McCarthy. On the screen, Kushner drips hauteur, empathy nonexistent. It’s not a good look.Then comes Breaking History, Kushner’s White House memoir. Its sits at the intersection of spin, absolution and self-aggrandizement.“What is clear to me is that no one at the White House expected violence that day,” Kushner writes of January 6. Cassidy Hutchinson says otherwise.Kushner adds: “I’m confident that if my colleagues or the president had anticipated violence, they would have prevented it from happening.” DC police tell a different story.Kushner rebuffed early entreaties from Marc Short, the vice-president’s chief of staff, to end Trump’s attempt to stop certification of Joe Biden’s win.“You know, I’m really focused on the Middle East right now,” Kushner replied. “I haven’t really been involved in the election stuff since Rudy Giuliani came in.”In the aftermath of January 6, White House morale was at a nadir, according to Kushner. A second impeachment loomed. Kushner told staff to stay the course.“You took an oath to the country,” he recalls. “This is a moment when we have to do what’s right, not what’s popular. If the country is better off with you here, then stay. If it doesn’t matter, then do what you want.”That sales pitch sounds canned. Those who had served in the military found the spiel stale and grating.In Kushner, Inc, the author Vicky Ward described Kushner’s earlier efforts to persuade Mark Corallo to join the White House staff. Corallo was once in the army and did a stint at the Department of Justice too.After he said no, Kushner asked: “Don’t you want to serve your country?”Corallo replied: “Young man, my three years at the butt end of an M-16 checked that box.”Trump dodged the draft for Vietnam. When his brother, Fred Jr, accepted a commission in the air national guard, he met with his family’s scorn. In contrast, Mike Pence’s son, the Biden boys, Steve Bannon: all wore a uniform.In Breaking History, Kushner selectively parcels out dirt. He seeks to absolve his father for recruiting a sex worker to film her tryst with William Schulder, Charlie Kushner’s brother-in-law. At the time, Schulder, his wife, Esther, (Charlie’s sister), and Charlie were locked in battle over control of the family real estate business.Kushner explains: “Billy’s infidelity was an open secret around the office, and to show his sister Esther what kind of man she had married, my father hired a prostitute who seduced Billy.”Schulder and Esther were also talking to the feds.The names of two Trump paramours, Stormy Daniels, the adult film star, and Karen McDougal, the Playboy model, do not appear in Kushner’s book. Then again, as Trump once said, “When you’re a star … you can do anything.” For Trump and Kushner, rules are meant for others.Breaking History comes with conflicting creation stories. In June, 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.The Guardian reported that Kushner received assistance from Ken Kurson, a former editor of the New York Observer who was pardoned by Trump on cyberstalking charges but then pleaded guilty after being charged with spying on his wife. Avi Berkowitz, a Kushner deputy who worked on the Abraham Accords, and Cassidy Luna, an aide married to Nick Luna, Trump’s White House “body man”, were also on board.Breaking History says nothing about Patterson but gives shout-outs to Kurson, Luna and Berkowitz: “From the inception of this endeavor, Ken’s brutally honest feedback and inventive suggestions have made this a better book.”Kushner rightly takes pride in the Abraham Accords, normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. In the process, he provides backstory for Trump’s frustration with Benjamin Netanyahu.Israel’s then-prime minister’s earned a “fuck him” after he hesitatingly embraced Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, seeking to extract maximum concession without grace or reciprocity. What Netanyahu craved but never received was American approval of Israeli annexation of the West Bank. Here, Breaking History adds color to Trump’s Peace by Barak Ravid.According to Ravid, David Friedman, the US ambassador to Israel, was close to Netanyahu. He sat in on Israeli government meetings until he was tossed out by cabinet members. Ravid also calls Friedman “flesh of the settlers’ flesh”.Trump’s Peace review: dysfunction and accord in US Israel policyRead moreEnter Kushner. “Friedman had assured Bibi that he would get the White House to support annexation more immediately,” he says. “He had not conveyed this to me or anyone on my team.”Things grew heated. “You haven’t spoken to a single person from a country outside of Israel,” Kushner said. “You don’t have to deal with the Brits, you don’t have to deal with the Moroccans, and you don’t have to deal with the Saudis or the Emiratis, who are all trusting my word and putting out statements. I have to deal with the fallout of this. You don’t.”One Trump veteran described Breaking History to the Guardian as “just 493 pages of pure boredom”. Not exactly. Kushner delivers a mixture of news and cringe. He does not extract Trump from his present morass. On Wednesday, Kushner’s father-in-law invoked the fifth amendment. Only Charlie Kushner got the pardon. A devoted child takes care of dad.
      Breaking History: A White House Memoir is published in the US by HarperCollins
      TopicsBooksJared KushnerTrump administrationDonald TrumpUS politicsPolitics booksRepublicansreviewsReuse this content More

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      Political Prisoner review: Paul Manafort stays loyal to Trump – but still spills a few beans

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      Political Prisoner review: Paul Manafort stays loyal to Trump – but still spills a few beans Aide jailed in Russia investigation and pardoned has written a memoir that is mostly – if not completely – forgettablePaul Manafort’s name appeared in reports issued by the special counsel and the Senate intelligence committee. A convicted felon pardoned by the 45th president, he is a free man haunted by the past.The Big Lie review: Jonathan Lemire laments what Trump hath wroughtRead moreHis memoir, Political Prisoner, is primarily an exercise in score-settling, pointing an accusatory finger at federal prosecutors and lashing out at enemies. With a pardon from Trump, Manafort is unencumbered by fear from further prosecution.In a recent interview with Business Insider, he admits he directed the Trump campaign to provide polling data and information to Konstantin Kilimnik, a Soviet-born political consultant with a Russian passport.On the page, Manafort denies that Kilimnik spied for Russia. In 2021, however, the US imposed sanctions against him, and accused him of being a “known Russian Intelligence Services agent implementing influence operations on their behalf”.As expected, Manafort also sings Donald Trump’s praises, an approach much in common with other forgettable Trump alumni narratives. Manafort saw plenty as Trump’s second campaign manager but he directs the spotlight elsewhere. One measure of which team he’s on comes early: talking about Trump’s racist attacks on Barack Obama, he puts the words “birther allegations” in scare-quotes.Manafort could have written a much more interesting book. He is a veteran Republican operative with a knack for the delegate selection process. He owned an apartment in Trump Tower and was closely aligned with Viktor Yanukovych, a former prime minister of Ukraine with powerful backing from the Kremlin. That factoid, of course, stood at the heart of Manafort’s problems.Manafort spent six months on Trump’s winning presidential campaign. In May 2016, he rose to campaign manager. Three months later, Trump sacked him.In summer 2018, in a case arising from the initial investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow, a federal jury convicted Manafort on a potpourri of conspiracy and tax charges. He reached a plea agreement that would be voided by his alleged lack of candor. Two federal judges sentenced him to a combined 90 months in prison.His bitterness is understandable. He denies wrongdoing in his links with Ukraine and Russians. Released from prison because of Covid, Manafort was relegated to life in a condominium, wearing an ankle bracelet. Right before Christmas 2020, he received a pardon. In his book he reproduces the document, a token of gratitude and pride.Political Prisoner glosses over key events. Manafort acknowledges his departure from the campaign but doesn’t mention the arrival of Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway. Instead, he describes a pre-firing breakfast with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.“We embraced and went our separate ways,” Manafort writes.Manafort faces the daunting task of fluffing Trump’s ego while placing himself in proximity to the action. He boasts that he emerged as a Sunday talk show surrogate, presenting an inside view of the campaign.“I would be talking about how [Trump] was going to win and why,” he writes. “He thought that was good idea and told me to do it.”Things didn’t work out as planned. Trump captured the nomination but Manafort’s gig lasted only a short time longer. There can only be one star in the Trump show. As throughout the book, Manafort omits crucial details. TV did him no favors.The Devil’s Bargain, a 2017 page-turner by Joshua Green of Bloomberg News, fills in some of the void. Green recalls a profanity-laced verbal beatdown Trump administered to Manafort, right before his dismissal.Distraught over a New York Times piece that portrayed the campaign as lost at sea, Trump humiliated Manafort in front of senior advisers. It was a tableau, Green writes, straight out of Goodfellas.Trump tore into Manafort, shouting: “You think you gotta go on TV to talk to me … You treat me like a baby! Am I like a baby to you … Am I a fucking baby, Paul?”Joe Pesci as commander-in-chief.These days, the Department of Justice has placed Trump under its microscope again. The FBI executed a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida home. White House lawyers face grand jury subpoenas. Bannon awaits sentencing on a contempt conviction. Alex Jones’ text messages are in the hands of the January 6 committee. Roger Stone, a former Manafort partner and Trump confidant, may be in legal jeopardy.Trumpworld is a cross between an island of broken toys and Lord of the Flies.Manafort does drop a few choice nuggets. The Trump campaign was actually being spied on, in the author’s telling, by Michael Cohen. Cohen administered the campaign server, in a bid to maintain relevance. “He had access to everybody’s communications,” Manafort writes. “He had knowledge, and he would be sitting in his office, gaining knowledge by virtue of spying on the campaign.” Cohen denies it.Ted Cruz comes across badly. In Manafort’s eyes the Texas senator is an ingrate, a liar or both. The categories are porous.Trump claimed Cruz’s father was complicit the assassination of JFK and implied Cruz’s wife was ugly. According to Manafort, Trump offered Cruz an apology, only to be rebuffed.“On his own initiative, Trump did apologise for saying some of the things he said about Cruz, which was unusual for Trump,” Manafort observes.Cruz’s version differs. In September 2016, he said: “Neither [Trump] nor his campaign has ever taken back a word they said about my wife and my family.”Trump’s campaign nickname for Cruz? “Lyin’ Ted”.Manafort recalls Trump declaring “This is bullshit” as the senator avoided endorsing the nominee in his speech to the 2016 convention. In the end, though, Cruz slithered back to the fold. Trump reportedly asked Cruz if he would argue his 2020 election challenge before the supreme court. Cruz voted against certifying results.Manafort predicts Trump will run in 2024, and win. Don’t bet against it. Both Trump and Manafort have been there before.
      Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, But Not Silenced is published in the US by Skyhorse Publishing
      TopicsBooksPaul ManafortDonald TrumpUS elections 2016Trump-Russia investigationTrump administrationUS politicsreviewsReuse this content More