Psyched to read “Donald Trump v. The United States” by my colleague @nytmike - now out!
Here are three interesting nuggets from my colleague @nytmike’s book which I haven't seen people picking up on yet elsewhere. (There's a lot more than these; anyone interested in this stuff should definitely get this book!)
1. When Comey in 2007 told the Senate & the public about the dramatic “Stellarwind" fight in Ashcroft’s hospital room 3 years earlier, he had been fighting stage 3 colon cancer and believed he would die soon and that hearing would be the last time he would testify publicly. 96-99
Thoughts: Comey's expansive public discussion violated norms for a law enforcement official but led Obama to make him FBI director. Perhaps a Greek tragedy here: did that experience fuel the norm-busting Clinton email presser, which arguably wrecked his legacy as director?
2. When Trump flirted with pulling Gorsuch’s Supreme Court nomination bc the judge mildly criticized his attack on a “so-called” judge for ruling against his travel ban, McGahn drafted a resignation letter. McGahn gave Gorsuch the letter as a memento after his confirmation. 154
Thoughts: That was VERY early on. McGahn’s hire-wire act to keep his job (& avoid legal trouble) so he could keep filling the courts with Federalist Society-style judges made him both the architect of Trump's clearest achievement & Mueller’s most important obstruction witness.
3. After NYT reported in March 2017 that Comey had asked DOJ to make a statement denying Trump’s false accusation that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower but DOJ refused, Sessions assigned Durham to open a leak investigation into Comey & had his own office, not the DAG, oversee it. 169
Thoughts: So John Durham (then just an AUSA whom Trump later made US attorney) has been carrying out politically-tinged investigations of FBI officials for Trump’s attorney generals from almost the start – not just Barr’s current investigation of the Russia investigators.
Parting thought: This book makes clear that McGahn’s lawyer William Burck is a very interesting guy and has been a big behind-the-scenes orchestrator of events. But there’s not just one nugget that shows that – you’ll need to read the book to appreciate it.
Oh one other parting thought: I've seen some people criticizing Mike for hoarding these kinds of nuggets in his book, rather than printing them months ago in the NYT. This line of criticism I think misses something I learned while writing two Washington books myself: /1
This presupposes there is a choice. But often you only learn things because you are researching for a book. People are more willing to talk for books because it seems more like history, and what they disclose will come out months or years later rather than the next morning. /end
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Next in our reported-out 2025 Trump policy stakes series went up this a.m. and will be Sunday NYT front: the prospect of withdrawing the USA from or gutting NATO, abandoning Ukraine and a retreat from Europe. w/ @jonathanvswan & @maggieNYT
Gift link: nyti.ms/3uSNafa
We've been working on this series for 6 months & have been gratified lately to see others start to join in the conversation. We have been determined to stay grounded in what Trump & his truly close advisers have said & to add substantive reporting. Gift links to other chapters:/2
June 15: Trump plans to use the Justice Department as an instrument of vengeance against his adversaries, ending of the post-Watergate norm of DOJ investigative independence from the White House political control./3 nyti.ms/47RfJrQ
Seeing folks portraying it as a problem or gotcha that Garland appointed Weiss – a sitting US attorney – special counsel even though a 1999 regulation for special counsels has a provision that envisions them being appointed from outside government. Here's an explanation. /1
Takeaway up front: that part of the reg hasn't been understood to impose a controlling limit. It’s a tell that a commentator is not a credible & good-faith source of info if he doesn’t mention that Durham was *also* a sitting US attorney when Barr made him special counsel. /2
An attorney general’s legal authority to appoint someone to run a special investigation doesn’t come from the regulation. It comes from statutes enacted by Congress. Those laws don’t say that appointee has to come from outside government. /3
It occurred to me that one of the dishonest things about @marcthiessen’s column that I pointed out yesterday was actually even more egregious and is another affirmative factual error (a charitable word choice) that the WP should correct./15
When he backed his criticism of the FBI's decision to open a full investigation by misleadingly citing a passage about warrant renewal applications, Thiessen inserted "[the Trump campaign]” into a quote from the report. In context, "the target" instead meant Carter Page./16
Ironically, this comes in the same graph that falsely says the FBI presented a doctored email to the FISA court as evidence. That's wrong–it was not shown to the court–but Thiessen himself demonstrably presented a falsely doctored Durham report quote to WP readers as evidence./17
.@marcthiessen wrote a shoddy Washington Post column using as a foil the headline of my piece yesterday assessing how the Durham inquiry fell flat after years of political hype. (He didn’t engage with its substance, of course.) A dissection follows. /1 washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/…
As an initial matter, Thiessen got his start at a lobbying firm that included two named partners – Paul Manafort and Roger Stone – who were convicted of felonies in the Russia investigation & pardoned by Trump. He does not disclose that conflict to the WP’s readers. /2
Thiessen opens by insinuating that I am downplaying Durham bc I'm implicated in (his tendentious portrayal of) the media’s Trump-Russia coverage. Aside from whether he is accurately describing Mueller's complex findings, I wasn't part of the NYT’s Trump-Russia coverage team./3
In 1999, when I went to work for The Miami Herald as a cub reporter just out of college and he was its publisher, he took a mentor-like interest in me. We got to know each other over occasional dinners/drinks, a Miami Heat game, etc. /2
In late 2001 or early 2002, when I was thinking about applying for a Knight Foundation journalism fellowship at Yale Law School, he encouraged it (he has a law degree from Penn) and wrote a strong letter of recommendation that really helped me stand out from the pack. /3