Epstein Secrets

favor. Give me your a card. Don't ask me why, just give it to me. You'll be thanking me for rest of your life:" Bannon opened his wallet and gave Priebus his American ExI card. Priebus shortly returned, handed the card back, and said, "You have legal insurance Over the next year, Bannon—a witness of

Chief of Staff John Kelly, fed up with Trump—just as Trump was f up with him—seemed surely on the way out. Kelly had joined the Wh House, replacing Reince Priebus, Trump's first chief of staff, in Aug 2017, charged with bringing management discipline to a chaotic W Wing. But by mid-fall, Trump was circumventi

on people carrying Bannon's message as well as the president's. What's more, his enemies in the White House were moving out, includ- ing Hope Hicks, H. R. McMaster, the former national security advisor, and the ever shrinking circle of allies supporting the president's son-in- law and daughter. Bannon was ofte

it off: it was Reince Priebus’s fault, not hers. She had spent a good part of the day calling friends and allies in the political world and blaming Priebus. Now she briefed some of the television producers and anchors with whom she’d built strong relationships—and with whom, actively interviewing in the

ce director and then finance director of the Republican National Committee, and finally, pre-White House, chief of staff of the RNC and its chairman, Reince Priebus. In retrospect, the key moment in saving the Trump campaign might be less the Mercer- led takeover and imposition of Bannon and Conway in mid-August

sidestep the people in your organization and to dominate them. It was just one irony of his courtship of admired military figures like James Mattis, H. R. McMaster, and John Kelly: they found themselves working in an administration that was in every way inimical to basic command principles. 7 OK Ok Almost from

ive. As well, he could turn him off, and Bannon would be tactically quiet until turned on again. Kushner had neither Bannon’s policy imagination nor Priebus’s institutional ties. But, of course, he had family status, carrying its own high authority. In addition, he had billionaire status. He had cultivate

e president left the West Wing for Marine One, which was soon en route to Andrews Air Force Base. Accompanying him were Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Reince Priebus, Hope Hicks, and Kellyanne Conway. Vice President Pence and his wife joined the group at Andrews for the brief flight on Air Force One to Harrisburg,

invariably incurred Trump’s annoyance.) Kushner enlisted Scarborough and Brzezinski in something of a regular morning television Bannon slag-a-thon. H. R. McMaster, the three-star general who had replaced Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor, had secured the president’s pledge that he could veto members of

egic approach on the part of the president—quite an unlikely development. Meanwhile, the couple blamed everyone else in the White House. They blamed Priebus for the disarray that had produced a warlike atmosphere that propelled constant and damaging leaks, they blamed Bannon for leaking, and they blamed S

in his unquestioned certitudes. There was now a fair amount of back-of-the-classroom giggling about who had called Trump what. For Steve Mnuchin and Reince Priebus, he was an “idiot.” For Gary Cohn, he was “dumb as shit.” For H. R. McMaster he was a “dope.” The list went on. Tillerson would merely become yet an

was “not taking a pencil to anything.” Nearby, in a small conference room watching the movie Fargo, were Dina Powell, Gary Cohn, Stephen Miller, and H. R. McMaster, all of whom would later insist that they were, however physically close to the unfolding crisis, removed from it. And, indeed, anyone “in the room”