More stories

  • in

    Donald Trump v the United States review: how democracy came under assault

    Now disgraced, Jerry Falwell Jr once announced that Donald Trump was entitled to an extra two years on the job as “reparations” for a “failed coup”, meaning the Mueller investigation. Joe Biden has gone so far as to predict the president will try to steal the election.Trump and his backers openly speak of four terms in office. “If you really want to drive them crazy, say 12 more years,” the president cackles, despite express constitutional strictures to the contrary.Even as doubts surrounding its legitimacy grow, the election assumes ever greater significance. Michael Schmidt’s first book is aptly subtitled: “Inside the Struggle to Stop a President.”The Pulitzer-winning New York Times reporter chronicles what he has seen from his “front-row seat”. It was Schmidt who broke news of Hillary Clinton’s use of personal email while secretary of state, and of James Comey authoring a memo that detailed the president ordering him to end the FBI investigation of Gen Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser.Hindering Trump is one thing, stopping him something elseSchmidt argues persuasively that the Trump presidency has highlighted the fragility of American democracy, and that Trump views the rule of law as something for others. More precisely, the president believes prison is meant for his political adversaries but not so much for his convicted cronies and for himself, never. Schmidt documents how Trump sought to prosecute Clinton and Comey: literally and seriously.A central premise of Donald Trump v the United States is that those who have sought to thwart the president have failed. Comey is no longer FBI director, Gen John Kelly is no longer White House chief of staff. Donald McGahn, Trump’s first White House counsel, is back in private practice.Trump usually gets what he wants. Jared Kushner, for example, holds a “top secret” security clearance despite persistent objections from senior White House staff and the intelligence community. After all others refused, Trump personally granted his son-in-law his clearance. Hindering Trump is one thing, stopping him something else. Over on Capitol Hill, according to Schmidt, Trump has “routinely outflanked the Democratic lawmakers investigating him”, while Republican leaders have emerged as “Trump’s public defenders”. Career civil servants, including those at the Food and Drug Administration, are “maligned” as part of a ‘Deep State’.” So what if a pandemic rages?Similarly, Trump targets journalists as “fake news” and as “enemies of the people”, a term popularized by Joseph Stalin. As one administration insider has said, it’s all a “bit” reminiscent of the “late” Weimar Republic.Schmidt frames his book as a four-act play, Comey and McGahn the central actors, a quote from King Lear as prelude. Chapters weave context with drama, even as they inform.The reader is continuously reminded of how many days remained before a particular event, such as “Donald Trump is sworn in as president”, “the appointment of special counsel Robert S Mueller III” or the “release of the Mueller Report”. It difficult to forget what came next. Donald Trump v the United States is laden with direct quotes and attribution. It is credible and intriguing. Beyond that, it is also unsettling.Schmidt details McGahn’s cooperation with the special counsel. Here, he recalls a conversation for the ages, with McGahn while he was still White House counsel and Mueller’s investigation was months away from its end.“You did a lot of damage to the president,” Schmidt tells McGahn, minutes before a thunderstorm over the White House. “I understand that. You understand that. But [Trump] doesn’t understand that.”McGahn replies: “I damaged the office of the president. I damaged the office.”Schmidt parries: “That’s not it. You damaged him, and he doesn’t understand that.”Ultimately, McGahn responds: “This is the last time we ever talk.”On cue, the rain begins to fall.Equally vivid are exchanges between Comey and his wife, Patrice, she of a keener sense of peril. As he moved toward announcing the FBI’s determination surrounding Clinton’s emails, in late June 2016, she presciently warned: “This is going to be bad for you.”According to Schmidt, Patrice Comey also pleaded, “You’re going to get shot … you’re going to get slammed.” Months later, her husband would tell the Senate judiciary committee it made him “mildly nauseous to think we might have had some impact on the election”.The book also clears up the mystery of what happened to the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation, which if concluded would likely have examined Trump’s broader ties with Moscow. One day it was there, the next day it had vanished.Specifically, the special counsel’s report addressed conspiracy and obstruction of justice but did not discuss related counterintelligence issues. Schmidt reveals that we can blame that on Rod Rosenstein, then deputy attorney general.According to Schmidt, in the hand-off of the FBI investigation to Mueller, in the aftermath of the firing of Comey, Rosenstein deliberately narrowed the special counsel’s remit. The deputy attorney general directed Mueller to concentrate on criminality. Whether Trump was a Russian agent was not on the special counsel’s plate.According to Schmidt, Rosenstein “had foreclosed any deeper inquiry before investigation even began”. This is the same Rosenstein who in spring 2017 suggested he secretly record the president, and that the cabinet consider removing him from office.“The president had bent Washington to his will,” Schmidt writes.The question now is whether the electorate follows. America goes to the polls in little more than nine weeks. More

  • in

    Trump-Russia investigation: former CIA chief interviewed by US attorney

    The former CIA director John Brennan was interviewed on Friday by US attorney John Durham’s team, as part of its inquiry into the investigation of Russian election interference in 2016.The interview took place at CIA headquarters and lasted eight hours, said Nick Shapiro, Brennan’s former deputy chief of staff and senior adviser.“Brennan was informed by Mr Durham that he is not a subject or a target of a criminal investigation and that he is only a witness to events that are under review,” Shapiro said in a statement.Brennan led the CIA as it and other agencies arrived at the conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Donald Trump.Durham is continuing to examine how US intelligence officials reached that assessment, which Trump has long resisted.Brennan appeared voluntarily and has said he welcomed the chance to be questioned and had nothing to hide.“I look forward to the day when the truth is going to come out and the individuals who have mischaracterized what has happened in the past will be shown to have deceived the American people,” Brennan told MSNBC in May.Brennan offered Durham details on efforts to “understand and disrupt” Russia’s efforts to interfere in the election, and answered questions related to a “wide range of intelligence activities” undertaken by the CIA in the run-up to November 2016, Shapiro said.Brennan also answered questions about the January 2017 intelligence community assessment that blamed Russia for the interference. A spokesman for Durham declined to comment.Attorney general William Barr last year appointed the US attorney for Connecticut to examine decisions made by officials as they investigated ties between Trump and Russia.Exhaustive reports by special counsel Robert Mueller and the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee have detailed extensive ties between Russians and Trump associates during the 2016 campaign.But Barr has challenged the idea that the FBI had sufficient basis to open its counterintelligence investigation and empowered Durham to look at other agencies too.Brennan questioned why the CIA’s findings and tradecraft were being scrutinized, given that Mueller and the bipartisan Senate report validated the conclusions on Russian interference, Shapiro said.“Brennan also told Mr Durham that the repeated efforts of Donald Trump and William Barr to politicize Mr Durham’s work have been appalling and have tarnished the independence and integrity of the Department of Justice, making it very difficult for Department of Justice professionals to carry out their responsibilities.”A spokeswoman for the justice department declined to comment.Brennan, a vocal critic of Trump, testified before Congress in 2017 that he personally warned Russia against interfering in the election and was so concerned about its contacts with Trump’s campaign he convened top officials to focus on the issue.He told the House intelligence committee it “should be clear to everyone that Russia brazenly interfered in our 2016 present election process”, though he said he didn’t have enough information to know if it was colluding with the Trump campaign.“But,” he said, “I know there was a basis to have individuals pull those threads.”Mueller found that the Trump campaign embraced Russia’s help and expected to benefit from it, though he did not allege a criminal conspiracy.Durham brought his first criminal charge last week, against a former FBI lawyer accused of altering an email related to secret surveillance of former Trump adviser Carter Page. The attorney, Kevin Clinesmith, pleaded guilty to a false statement charge. More

  • in

    Roger Stone speaks in Fox News interview after Trump commutation

    Donald Trump’s longtime confidant Roger Stone gushed over his political allies during an interview on Fox News on Monday, his first major television appearance since the president commuted Stone’s prison sentence on Friday.Stone had been convicted of seven felony counts – including obstruction of justice, lying to Congress and witness tampering in the congressional investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election – and was sentenced to more than three years in jail. The president, in defending his commutation, said Stone was treated “very unfairly”.The commutation was met with widespread criticism from Democrats and several Republicans, including Pennsylvania senator Pat Toomey and Utah senator Mitt Romney, who called it an act of “historic corruption”.Stone appeared on the Monday night interview show with Fox News’s Sean Hannity alongside his lawyer, David Schoen. “I have deep, deep affection for Donald Trump because I’ve known him for 40 years,” Stone said. “He’s a man of great justice and fairness, he’s a man of enormous courage … He saved my life. And, at least on paper, he gave me a chance to fight for vindication.”On Saturday, special counsel Robert Mueller spoke out publicly for the first time in a year to defend his investigation against criticism from Trump and his supporters.“We did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government in its activities,” Mueller wrote. “The investigation did, however, establish that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome. It also established that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”Stone has consistently denied any wrongdoing and argued that the investigation was a sham.“I had a biased judge, I had a stacked jury, I had a corrupt jury forewoman,” Stone said, going on to thank Hannity and a host of public conservative figures including General Mike Flynn and Tucker Carlson. “And also Congressman Matt Gaetz from Florida who I hope to live long enough to live in the White House.”Stone used his interview with Hannity to argue that the prison sentence would have effectively been a death sentence because of his ongoing asthma and the multiple inmates with Covid-19 cases.“I’m 67 years old, I’ve had lifelong respiratory problems,” Stone said.At another point in the interview, Stone said prosecutors wanted to use Stone to fuel an impeachment effort against the president.“They wanted me to be the ham in their ham sandwich because they knew the Mueller report, particularly on Russia, it was a dud. It was a goose egg,” Stone said. The Mueller report did not conclude that Trump directly coordinated with Russia or obstructed justice but it did not absolve him completely. The report did, however, argue that Trump may have played a role in Russia’s effort to interfere in the 2016 election. Nevertheless, Trump himself has argued that the fact that the report did not completely implicate him means he is innocent and the investigation is just an effort to undermine his presidency. Mueller himself has pushed back on that and noted that Trump could be charged after he left office.Schoen spoke only briefly during the interview and, like his client, thanked Trump.“This commutation was a great tribute to President Trump,” Schoen said, saying the president was “sending the message that the Mueller team was rotten to the core”. “The president saved a life here.”Trump called Stone on Friday after commuting his sentence, a call Stone told ABC News was a “normal conversation” and “brief”.Stone, a longtime friend and former campaign adviser to the president, was due to begin his sentence this week. The commutation does not erase Stone’s felony convictions but allows Stone to avoid setting foot in prison for his crimes. More

  • in

    Roger Stone case: Trump ally given special treatment, Congress hears

    A federal prosecutor who was part of Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation told Congress on Wednesday Roger Stone, a close ally of Donald Trump, was given special treatment before sentencing because of his relationship with the US president. “What I heard repeatedly was that Stone was being treated differently from any other defendant because of his […] More

  • in

    Trump: Sessions was not ‘mentally qualified’ to be attorney general

    Sessions protests loyalty to Trump despite fierce abuse President endorses opponent in Alabama Senate election Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions’ playground fight continued into Sunday. In an interview with Sinclair TV, Trump said Sessions had not been “mentally qualified” to be his first attorney general. Related: Jeff Sessions snaps back after Trump tells Alabama not […] More