Epstein Secrets

USE_OVERSIGHT_020114 president’s part. The daily discussion among senior staffers, those still there and those now gone—all of whom had written off Tillerson’s future in the Trump administration—was how long General Kelly would last as chief of staff. There was something of a virtual office pool, and the j

believed that the sole upside of being part of the Trump White House was to help prevent worse from happening. In early October, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s fate was sealed—if his obvious ambivalence toward the president had not already sealed it—by the revelation that he had called the president “a fucki

ge Bannon’s ouster by McMaster’s hand from the NSC. With the president promising that he would make up his mind by August, and McMaster, Mattis, and Tillerson pressing for a decision as soon as possible, Bannon- inspired media began a campaign to brand McMaster as a globalist, interventionist, and all aroun

ay focused, never great, had notably declined—was that he was likely to suffer by such a comparison. Instead, the interview with Trump was offered to Sean Hannity—with a preview of the questions. Bannon was also taking the Breitbart opposition research group—the same forensic accountant types who had put toget

ldeman, H. R., 27 Haley, Nikki, 305-6 Hall, Jerry, 19 Halperin, Mark, 217 Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, king of Bahrain, 231 Hanley, Allie, 127, 139 Hannity, Sean, 68, 195-96, 222-24, 309 Harder, Charles, 308 Haspel, Gina, 157 Health and Human Services Department (HHS), 166 Hemingway, Mark, 38 Heritage

ought up the possibility of firing everybody. Should I fire Bannon? Should I fire Reince? Should I fire McMaster? Should I fire Spicer? Should I fire Tillerson? This ritual was, everyone understood, more a pretext to a discussion of the power he held than it was, strictly, about personnel decisions. Still, i

dy with foreign policy stature and an international network had been put in HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020053 place—even the new secretary of state designate, Rex Tillerson, had no real experience in foreign policy. To bewildered foreign secretaries, it seemed logical to see the presidentelect’s son-in-law as a figure of

t with Fox from any efforts to compete with it for eighteen months—sent an emissary into the West Wing with a question for Steve Bannon: O’Reilly and Hannity are in, what about you? Ailes, in secret, had been plotting his comeback with a new conservative network. Currently in internal exile inside the Whit

f the line. Hours and then days—carefully tracked by Beth Ailes—ticked off without a condolence call from the president. The morning of the funeral, Sean Hannity’s private plane took off for Palm Beach from HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020051 Republic Airport in Farmingdale, Long Island. Accompanying Hannity was a small

us impressions of the man, agreed to sign on. Jim Mattis, a retired four-star general, one of the most respected commanders in the U.S. armed forces; Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil; Scott Pruitt and Betsy De Vos, Jeb Bush loyalists—all of them were now focused on the singular fact that while he might be a pecu

every cabinet member for the next seven days through their confirmation hearings,” he said of the business-and-military 1950s-type cabinet choices. “Tillerson is two days, Session is two days, Mattis is two days... .” Bannon veered from “Mad Dog” Mattis—the retired four-star general whom Trump had nominate

gone, telling Bannon and Priebus, with a gale of laughter, “Joe doesn’t think we had a good week.” And turning to Scarborough: “I could have invited Hannity!” At lunch—fish, which Brzezinski doesn’t eat—Jared and Ivanka joined the president and Scarborough and Brzezinski. Jared had become quite a Scarbor

r had urged the ouster of many of them), any of whom might testify against him. In March alone, Gary Cohn, the president's chief economic adviser, Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state, and Andrew McCabe, the deputy director of the FBI—each man bearing the president deep contempt— were pushed from the admini

been muted. And this had happened without him knowing it. The night of the twenty-second, the Fox News lineup—flicker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity—hammered the message: betrayal. The battle was on. The Republican leadership on the Hill, along with the donor class, stood sober and pragmatic in