Trump administration

Subterms

    More stories

    • 188 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Republicans will defend their Caesar but new revelations show Trump’s true threat | Lloyd Green

      by

      OpinionDonald TrumpRepublicans will defend their Caesar but new revelations show Trump’s true threatLloyd GreenThe DoJ has dealt two blows and the 6 January committee is winding up for more. They know democracy is in danger

      Sidney Blumenthal: What did Jim Jordan know and when?
      Sun 1 Aug 2021 01.00 EDTOn Friday, Donald Trump received two more unwelcome reminders he is no longer president. Much as he and his minions chant “Lock her up” about Hillary Clinton and other enemies, it is he who remains in legal jeopardy and political limbo.IRS must turn over Trump tax returns to Congress, DoJ saysRead moreTrump’s allies on Capitol Hill will again be forced to defend the indefensible. That won’t be a bother: QAnon is their creed, Trump is their Caesar and Gladiator remains the movie for our time.But in other ways, the world has changed. The justice department is no longer an extension of Trump’s West Wing. The levers of government are no longer at his disposal.Next year, much as Trump helped deliver both Georgia Senate seats to the Democrats in January, on the eve of the insurrection, his antics may cost Republicans their chance to retake the Senate.Documents that would probably not have seen the light of day had Trump succeeded in overturning the election are now open to scrutiny, be they contemporaneous accounts of his conversations about that dishonest aim or his tax returns.Those who claim that the events of 6 January were something other than a failed coup attempt would do well to come up with a better line. Or a different alternate reality.Ashli Babbitt is no martyr. Trump will not be restored to the presidency, no matter what the MyPillow guy says. Trump’s machinations and protestations convey the desperation that comes with hovering over the abyss. He knows what he has said and done.First, on Friday morning, news broke that the justice department had provided Congress with copies of notes of a damning 27 December 2020 conversation between Trump, Jeffrey Rosen, then acting attorney general, and Richard Donoghue, Rosen’s deputy.As first reported by the New York Times, the powers at Main Justice told Trump there was no evidence of widescale electoral fraud in his clear defeat by Joe Biden.He replied: “Just say that the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me.”That goes beyond simply looking to bend the truth. As George Conway, a well-connected, prominent anti-Trump Republican, tweeted: “It’s difficult to overstate how much this reeks of criminal intent on the part of the former guy.”One White House veteran who served under the presidents Bush told the Guardian: “‘Leave the rest to me’ sure sounds like foreknowledge.”Just “connect the dots and the dates”, the former aide said.The insurrection came 10 days later. As the former Trump campaign chair and White House strategist Steve Bannon framed it on 5 January: “All hell is going to break loose.”Truer words were never spoken.Unfortunately for Trump, Friday’s news cycle didn’t end with the events of 27 December. A few hours later, the DoJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), its policy-setting arm, once led by Bill Barr, Trump’s second attorney general, opined that Trump’s tax returns could no longer be kept from the House ways and means committee.Ever since Watergate, presidents and presidential candidates have released their tax returns as a matter of standard operating procedure. Trump’s refusal to do so was one more shattered norm – and a harbinger of what followed.The OLC concluded that the committee’s demand for those records comported with the pertinent statute. Beyond that, it observed that the request would further the panel’s “principal stated objective of assessing the IRS’s presidential audit program – a plainly legitimate area for congressional inquiry”.Here, the DoJ was doing nothing short of echoing the supreme court. A little over a year ago, the court rejected Trump’s contention that the Manhattan district attorney could not scrutinize his tax returns and, in a separate case, held that Congress could also examine his taxes.In the latter case, in a 7-2 decision, the court eviscerated the president’s argument that Congress had no right to review his tax returns and financial records. Writing for the majority, John Roberts, the chief justice, observed: “When Congress seeks information ‘needed for intelligent legislative action’, it ‘unquestionably’ remains ‘the duty of all citizens to cooperate’.”At that point, Trump had made two appointments to the high court. Both joined in the outcome. So much for feeling beholden.Prospective witnesses before the House select committee on the events of 6 January ought to start worrying. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, Congressman Jim Jordan: this means you. By your own admissions, you spoke with Trump that day.It was one thing for Merrick Garland’s justice department to continue the government defense of Trump in E Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit. It’s a whole other thing to expect Biden’s attorney general to play blocking back for Trump. It is highly unlikely here.The justice department does not appear ready to come to the aid of those who sought to overturn the election. Already, it has refused to defend Mo Brooks, the Alabama congressman who wore a Kevlar vest to a 6 January pre-riot rally.‘Just say the election was corrupt,’ Trump urged DoJ after loss to BidenRead moreOn top of that, the Democrats control Congress and Liz Cheney, dissident Republican of Wyoming and member of the 6 January committee, hates Jordan. It is personal.“That fucking guy Jim Jordan. That son of a bitch,” Cheney told the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley, about Jordan, according to Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker of the Washington Post.Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican who like Cheney voted to impeach Trump over 6 January and has joined the select committee, may also be in the mood to deliver a lesson. Congressional Democrats may want to see Jordan and McCarthy sweat. The House GOP got the committee it asked for when it withdrew co-operation. It faces unwelcome consequences.As for Trump, he may well continue to harbour presidential aspirations and dreams of revenge. But as Ringo Starr sang, “It don’t come easy.” Indeed, after Friday’s twin blows, things likely became much more difficult.TopicsDonald TrumpOpinionTrump administrationUS politicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesUS taxationUS domestic policycommentReuse this content More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Just say the election was corrupt,’ Trump urged DoJ after loss to Biden

      by

      Donald Trump‘Just say the election was corrupt,’ Trump urged DoJ after loss to BidenNotes obtained by House oversight committee show Trump pressured officials to falsely claim the election was not legitimate Hugo Lowell in WashingtonFri 30 Jul 2021 14.49 EDTFirst published on Fri 30 Jul 2021 13.23 EDTDonald Trump pressured top justice department officials to falsely claim that the 2020 election was corrupt so he and his allies in Congress could subvert the results and return him to office, according to newly released memos.“Just say that the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me,” the former president told the former acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, and his deputy, Richard Donoghue, memos obtained by the House oversight committee showed. The notes were taken by Donoghue, who documented a 27 December call with Trump and Rosen.Jared Kushner set to move away from politics and launch investment firmRead moreTrump’s demand to the justice department represented an extraordinary instance of a president seeking to influence an agency that is supposed to operate independently of the White House, to advance his own personal interests and political agenda.It is also the latest example of the far-reaching campaign mounted by Trump over the final weeks of his presidency to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden in a contest devoid of any widespread voter fraud.In the December call, Donoghue told Trump that the justice department had no power to change the outcome of the election, to which the former president replied that he had no such expectation and that he and his allies in Congress would advance the voter fraud claims.Trump did not specifically name the members of Congress on board with his plan, but at various points through the call referred to the House Republicans Jim Jordan and Scott Perry, as well as the Senate Republican Ron Johnson, who are some of his most vociferous defenders on Capitol Hill.The memos taken by Donoghue and turned over to the House oversight committee, which has been investigating Trump and the 6 January attack on the Capitol, directly connect key Republicans to his disinformation campaign to unlawfully subvert the 2020 election.Jordan was among a slew of House and Senate Republicans who voted against certifying Biden’s election victory at the joint session of Congress on 6 January, before a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a violent insurrection that left five dead and nearly 140 injured.But the top Republican on the powerful House judiciary committee has since downplayed his role in the former president’s pressure campaign. “Congressman Jordan did not, has not, and would not pressure anyone at the justice department about the 2020 election,” a spokesperson said.The DoJ has typically fought to keep private, executive-branch discussions between presidents and top advisers secret, to avoid setting a precedent that could prevent officials from having candid conversations for fear that they might later becoming public.But the DoJ’s release of the Donoghue memos to Congress reflects a determination that, as with Richard Nixon and Watergate, congressional investigators ought to have the ability to scrutinize potential wrongdoing by a sitting president.The move by the DoJ also follows its decision this week not to assert executive privilege for Rosen to testify to Congress – clearing the path for other top Trump administration officials to appear before congressional committees investigating the former president.Officials at the DoJ and the White House Office of Legal Counsel concluded that executive privilege exists to protect the country, rather than a single individual – and said in a letter it would not be appropriate to invoke the protection for Trump’s efforts to push his personal agenda.Carolyn Maloney, the chair of the House oversight committee, on Friday commended the release of the memos: “These handwritten notes show that President Trump directly instructed our nation’s top law enforcement agency to take steps to overturn a free and fair election.”In the December call, the notes show both officials pushed back against Trump, who, at one point, alleged that there had been widespread fraud in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Arizona, which he described as “corrupted elections” – an assertion that drew an immediate condemnation from Donoghue.“Much of the info you’re getting is false,” Donoghue told Trump, adding that the DoJ had completed dozens of initial investigations into his claims but were unable to substantiate any, according to the memos. “We look at allegations but they don’t pan out.”But Trump, undeterred and seemingly anxious about his looming departure from office, pressed on: “Ok fine – but what about the others?” he said, the memos show, referring to the slew of other conspiracies about voter fraud in Georgia. “Not much time left,” Trump added.The former president, in an ominous moment of foreshadowing, then raised the prospect of purging the DoJ’s top officials and installing in their place loyalists such as Jeffrey Clark, who was then the head of the DoJ’s civil division.“People tell me Jeff Clark is great, I should put him in,” Trump said, according to the memos. “People want me to replace DoJ leadership.” The New York Times reported that Clark a week later schemed with Trump to oust Rosen as acting attorney general and force Georgia to overturn its election results.TopicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2020Trump administrationHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 175 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump officials can testify to Congress about his role in Capitol attack, DoJ says

      by

      US Capitol attackTrump officials can testify to Congress about his role in Capitol attack, DoJ saysMove declines to assert executive privilege for then acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen, clearing path for others to testify Hugo Lowell in WashingtonTue 27 Jul 2021 15.50 EDTLast modified on Tue 27 Jul 2021 17.26 EDTFormer Trump administration officials can testify to Congress about Donald Trump’s role in the deadly January attack on the Capitol and his efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 election, the justice department (DoJ) has said in a letter obtained by the Guardian.The move by the justice department declined to assert executive privilege for Trump’s acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, clearing the path for other top former officials to also testify to congressional committees investigating the Capitol attack without fear of repercussions.The justice department authorised witnesses to appear specifically before the two committees. But a DoJ official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said they expected that approval to extend to the 6 January select committee that began proceedings on Tuesday.Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House select committee, told the Guardian in a recent interview that he would investigate both Trump and anyone who communicated with the former president on 6 January, raising the prospect of depositions with an array of Trump officials.Rosen and Trump administration witnesses can give “unrestricted testimony” to the Senate judiciary and House oversight committees, which are scrutinising the attempt by the Trump White House to stop Congress certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election win, the letter said.The justice department’s decision marks a sharp departure from the Trump era, when the department repeatedly intervened on behalf of top White House officials to assert executive privilege and shield them from congressional investigations into the former president.It also represents a significant move by the White House Office of Legal Counsel under Biden, which in authorising the decision, pointedly noted that executive privilege protections exist to benefit the country, rather than a single individual.Trump has argued that conversations and deliberations involving the president are always protected by executive privilege. He can sue to block any testimony, which would force the courts to decide the extent of such protections.But the justice department said in the letter that Rosen and Trump administration officials can testify to Congress about Trump’s attempts to subvert the 2020 election because of the extraordinary nature of the circumstances.In his last weeks in office, Trump pressured justice department officials to use the vast powers of the federal government to undo his defeat, asking them to investigate baseless conspiracies of voter fraud and tampering that they had already determined to be false.“The extraordinary events in this matter constitute exceptional circumstances warranting an accommodation to Congress,” Bradley Weinsheimer, a senior career official in the office of the deputy attorney general, said in the letter.The justice department told Rosen and Trump administration officials that they could appear before Congress as long as their testimony was confined to the scope set forth by the committees and did not reveal grand jury or classified information, or pending criminal cases.Rosen’s approval letter, which was sent on Monday night according to a source familiar with the matter, comes after the Senate judiciary committee asked to interview several Trump administration officials as part of their oversight efforts started in January.Negotiations for their testimony were stalled as the justice department weighed how much information former officials could reveal, concerned that many of the conversations were covered by executive privilege, which keeps executive branch deliberations confidential.The justice department ultimately relented after consulting with the White House Office of Legal Counsel, which said it would not be appropriate to assert executive privilege over the specific topics in question, according to the letter.“It is the executive branch’s view that this presents an exceptional situation in which the congressional need for information outweighs the Executive Branch’s interest in maintaining confidentiality,” wrote Weinsheimer, citing Richard Nixon and Watergate.The Senate judiciary committee chairman, Dick Durbin, said on Twitter that he was working to now schedule interviews with the officials. The panel is also still receiving materials and documents from the justice department, the source said.The 6 January special committee – everything you need to knowRead moreThe House oversight committee chairwoman, Carolyn Maloney, said in a statement that she was pleased with the decision: “I am committed to getting to the bottom of the previous administration’s attempts to subvert the justice department and reverse a free and fair election.”Trump exerted significant pressure on the justice department to help him remain president. In one instance, Trump schemed with Jeffrey Clark, the former head of the DoJ’s civil division, to force Georgia to overturn their election results, the New York Times reported.The Senate judiciary and House oversight committees opened wide-ranging investigations into Trump and the justice department shortly after, with Durbin also demanding materials from the National Archives for records and communications concerning those efforts.TopicsUS Capitol attackTrump administrationHouse of RepresentativesDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Hatchet Man review: Bill Barr as Trump loyalist – and fairly typical AG

      by

      BooksHatchet Man review: Bill Barr as Trump loyalist – and fairly typical AGElie Honig excoriates the man who ran interference over Russia. He might have considered attorneys general gone before

      I Alone Can Fix It review: Trump as wannabe Führer
      Lloyd GreenSun 18 Jul 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 18 Jul 2021 02.01 EDTIn his 22 months as attorney general under Donald Trump, Bill Barr played blocking back and spear-catcher for the 45th president.Landslide review: Michael Wolff’s third Trump book is his best – and most alarmingRead moreOnly when Trump tried to steal the election did Barr grow a conscience. Otherwise, he was a close approximation to Roy Cohn, Trump’s notorious and long-dead personal attorney. Cohn and Barr even attended the same high school and college. But in the end, much as Trump ditched Cohn as he lay dying of Aids, Trump discarded Barr.Elie Honig surmises that Barr’s quest for power and desire to turn the clock back on secular modernity girded his disdain for democratic norms and legal conventions that came to stand in his way.Honig is an ex-prosecutor who became a CNN commentator. His first book, subtitled “How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor’s Code and Corrupted the Justice Department”, catalogs Barr’s misdeeds across 288 pages, interspersed with flashbacks to Honig’s career as an assistant US attorney in the southern district of New York.Honig successfully prosecuted more than 100 members and associates of organized crime, including bosses and members of the Gambino and Genovese families. More recently, he drew a comparison between such “mafia cases” and Trump’s Goodfellas-tinged lexicon.“Calling somebody who provides information to law enforcement a ‘rat’ is straight up mob boss language,” Honig tweeted in late 2018.Suffice to say, the author’s anger toward Barr is real and Hatchet Man is thorough. Barr’s transgressions are laid out in black and white.In March 2019, less than two months after succeeding Jeff Sessions, Barr released his own preview of Robert Mueller’s report on Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow – a preview notably untethered to fact. Later, Barr put his fingers on the scale in connection with the sentencing of Roger Stone and the early release of Paul Manafort. For a self-professed law-and-order AG, who also served under George HW Bush but who had never prosecuted a criminal case, these were unusual steps, to say the least.The federal bench came to question Barr’s credibility. In an opinion tied to the release of a memo related to Barr’s summary of the Mueller report, US district judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote that both Barr and the Department of Justice had been “disingenuous”.The Biden administration is appealing against the ruling. Preserving presidential authority takes precedence over the public’s right to know. Buffing DoJ’s halo can be left for another day.Another of Barr’s gambits, seeking to toss Michael Flynn’s guilty plea (for lying to the FBI while national security adviser) before he received a pardon, became a lightning rod. US district judge Emmett Sullivan questioned Barr’s legal gymnastics.“In view of the government’s previous argument in this case that Mr Flynn’s false statements were ‘absolutely material’ because his false statements ‘went to the heart’ of the FBI’s investigation, the government’s about-face, without explanation, raises concerns about the regularity of its decision-making process,” Sullivan observed.Yet as Trump-era books go, Hatchet Man fails to sizzle. It is short on news and does not entertain. Those with first-hand knowledge did not share it with Honig. Rather, his book is a lament and a prayer for an idealized version of Main Justice that seldom ever was.The power to prosecute and defend is a potent weapon and politics weighs in the balance. John F Kennedy tapped Bobby Kennedy, his brother, as attorney general. Richard Nixon placed John Mitchell, his law partner, in the job. Alberto Gonzales, George W Bush’s counsel since his days as Texas governor, held on until he was forced out. His tenure was a hot mess. The usual question for attorneys general is not whether they are “political” but rather “how political” they are.Under Barack Obama, Loretta Lynch declined to recuse herself from the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email use while attempting to steer James Comey from the shadows where he tried to do his work. The FBI director criticized Lynch’s attempt to recast the investigation as a “matter”.Seeing the hand of the Clinton campaign in this kerfuffle over semantics, Comey wrote that the FBI “didn’t do ‘matters’” and “it was misleading to suggest otherwise”.At the other end of the spectrum stands Edward Levi, attorney general under Gerald Ford. Appointed to clear the Augean stables after the Nixon years, Levi was a rarity. A University of Chicago professor, he named an independent counsel to investigate a mere rumor that Ford had received illegal contributions from maritime unions. A six-month investigation found no wrongdoing – and may have torpedoed Ford’s bid for a full term in power.Honig lauds Lynch’s trial experience. Levi’s grandson, Will Levi, was Barr’s chief of staff. It’s a small world, after all.An entire chapter of Hatchet Man, meanwhile, is devoted to Barr’s decision to inject the government into a defamation lawsuit brought against Trump by the writer E Jean Carroll.Frankly, We Did Win This Election review: a devastating dispatch from TrumpworldRead moreIn 2019, Carroll wrote that Trump sexually assaulted her more than two decades before. Trump said she was “totally lying” and that he knew “nothing about her”.After Carroll requested a DNA sample, Barr removed the lawsuit to federal court and claimed Trump’s comments were made within the scope of his official duties. Honig calls the government’s arguments “specious”. A federal trial judge agreed.Not surprisingly, the Trump administration appealed. More surprisingly, Merrick Garland, Biden’s attorney general, has declined to drop that appeal. In the words of one commentator: “There’s nothing new about the justice department protecting the executive branch and the president.”Honig writes that the DoJ “must enact new, on-the-books policies out of the ditch” Barr dug, in an attempt to restore post-Watergate norms. Call that wishful thinking. What ails the department is what ails America: division and political warfare. Another piece of legislation or a well-crafted executive order is not about to change that.
      Hatchet Man is published in the US by Harper
      TopicsBooksWilliam BarrUS politicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS domestic policyPolitics booksreviewsReuse this content More

    • 200 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      I Alone Can Fix It review: Donald Trump as wannabe Führer – in another riveting read

      by

      BooksI Alone Can Fix It review: Donald Trump as wannabe Führer – in another riveting read Gen Mark Milley saw that the US was in a ‘Reichstag moment’ – four days before the Capitol riot. With this and much more startling reporting, Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker of the Washington Post deliver the goods once againLloyd GreenFri 16 Jul 2021 07.37 EDTLast modified on Fri 16 Jul 2021 08.24 EDTCocooned at his resorts, the Trump Organization indicted, Donald Trump has come to embrace the insurrection.Trump told chief of staff Hitler ‘did a lot of good things’, book saysRead more“Personally, what I wanted is what they wanted,” he tells Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker of the Washington Post.Five people died after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on 6 January, seeking to overturn the election.Last week, Trump declared: “These were peaceful people, these were great people.”So much for blaming Antifa. Think Charlottesville redux, on a larger stage. Or something even more ominous.In their second book on the Trump presidency, Leonnig and Rucker report that on 2 January 2021, two months after election day and as Trump still refused to concede defeat, Gen Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told aides: “This is a Reichstag moment.”He was referring to the fire at the German parliament on 27 February 1933, an incident seized as a pretext by Hitler to begin arresting opponents and to consolidate his power.“The gospel of the Führer,” the authors quote Milley as saying.According to the general, the US under Trump was experiencing its own version of the late Weimar Republic, complete with modern-day “Brownshirts”. A graduate of Princeton and Columbia, Milley was not alone in seeing shadows of the past slither into the daylight.Trump, Leonnig and Rucker quote a senior official as saying, is a “guy who takes fuel, throws it on the fire, and makes you scared shitless”, then says “‘I will protect you.’“That’s what Hitler did to consolidate power in 1933.”This is a blockbuster follow-up to A Very Stable Genius, in which Leonnig and Rucker chronicled the chaos of Trump’s first three years in office. I Alone Can Fix It pulls back the curtain on the handling of Covid-19, the re-election bid and its chaotic and violent aftermath.The pair are Pulitzer winners, for investigative reporting. Their book is essential reading. They have receipts, which they lay out for all to see.Of Covid, they capture Marc Short, Vice-President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, telling folks in February 2020: “It’s not that bad.” The families of more than 600,000 dead Americans would probably disagree. (Short later contracted the virus.)Feeling burned by the authors’ first book, this time Trump sat for a two-and-a-half-hour interview. At the end of it, he let it be known – with a “twinkle in his eye” – that “for some sick reason” he “enjoyed it”.Much as he claims to hate the media and the elite, Trump craves their attention. Much as he believes in his own power of persuasion, Leonnig and Rucker were not converted.Trump’s hubris shines through. But for the pandemic, he claims re-election was inevitable. It’s a salesman’s pitch but one sufficiently rooted in reality. He also claims America’s two greatest presidents could not have defeated him. That is just surreal:
      I think it would be hard if George Washington came back from the dead and he chose Abraham Lincoln as his vice-president, I think it would have been very hard for them to beat me.”
      Before Covid, the economy was humming. Trump had taken down Qassem Suleimani, a top general in Iran’s Quds force, and the public approved.Joe Biden lost nominating contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. His first win was on 29 February, days after the stock market’s Covid-induced crash, assisted by James Clyburn of South Carolina, dean of the Congressional Black Caucus and House majority whip.On the relationship between Covid and Trump’s defeat, Leonnig and Rucker describe Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s now former prime minister, sharing his thoughts with Tony Fabrizio, a pollster who worked for him and Trump, in early 2020.Netanyahu said: “The only thing that can beat President Trump is coronavirus.”With analytic capacity Trump could never muster and a sense of history he lacked, Netanyahu added: “If you don’t understand what a pandemic is and the mathematics behind how this will spread if we don’t contain it, it will collapse economies, and that changes the ball game tremendously.”In August, Trump reamed out Fabrizio after he warned the president the electorate was “really fatigued”. Trump bellowed: “They’re tired? They’re fatigued? They’re fucking fatigued? Well, I’m fucking fatigued, too.”The book’s rawest revelations concern 6 January. At best, Trump was blasé about Mike Pence’s plight, presiding over confirmation of Biden’s win, stuck inside the Capitol as halls and offices were plundered. Like Nero watching Rome burn, Trump fiddled in front of his TV.As for the rioters, Trump now claims he and they are one: “They showed up just to show support because I happen to believe the election was rigged at a level like nothing has ever been rigged before.”On 6 January, James Lankford of Oklahoma argued against certification, citing constituents’ concerns about voter fraud. He failed to mention it was Trump who spread that very concern.Hours later, however, the senator voted to certify. Months earlier, Tulsa was the venue for Trump’s infamous comeback rally, a flop which cost Brad Parscale his job as campaign manager and Herman Cain his life.Landslide review: Michael Wolff’s third Trump book is his best – and most alarmingRead moreLiz Cheney also makes a telling appearance in Rucker and Leonnig’s story. In a 7 January call with Gen Milley, the Wyoming congresswoman unloaded on Jim Jordan, a hard-right Ohio representative and Trump favorite, as a “son of a bitch”.Stuck with Jordan during the Capitol siege, Cheney discounted his expressions of concern, saying: “Get away from me. You fucking did this.” Cheney is now a member of the House select committee charged with investigating the riot.Leonnig and Rucker also quote Doris Kearns Goodwin: “There is nothing like this other than the 1850s, when events led inevitably to the civil war.”Politicians and acolytes make pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s mecca in Palm Beach. Each dusk, Leonnig and Rucker write, he receives a standing ovation.Just the way he likes it.
      I Alone Can Fix It is published in the US by Penguin and in the UK by Bloomsbury
      TopicsBooksPolitics booksDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsUS elections 2020US Capitol attackreviewsReuse this content More