Epstein Secrets

virtual policy, it has also been more open to the media than any White House in recent memory. In the beginning, I sought a level of formal access to this White House, something of a fly-on- the-wall status. The president himself encouraged this idea. But, given the many fiefdoms in the Trump White House that came

heeding Senate leader Mitch McConnell’s prescription that “this president will sign whatever is put in front of him,” while also taking advantage of the White House’s lack of political and legislative experience and outsourcing as much policy as possible to Capitol Hill. In the early weeks of the administration, P

om he had never met before, for positions whose importance Trump did not particularly understand. Ailes, a veteran of the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush 41 White Houses, was growing worried by the president-elect’s lack of immediate focus on a White House structure that could serve and protect him. He tried to impres

cific ideas about how to turn his themes and vitriol into policy, nor a team that could reasonably unite behind him. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019969 In most White Houses, policy and action flow down, with staff trying to implement what the president wants—or, at the very least, what the chief of staff says the preside

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

n Trump's inner circle. 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-f

mp campaign, arguably among the most careless about election law compliance in recent history. Before joining the Trump administra- tion, McGahn had no White House or executive branch experience. He had never worked in the Justice Department or, in fact, anywhere in gov- ernment. Formerly an attorney for a nonp

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

thirty, Ryan called the president to say he was short fifteen to twenty votes and needed to pull the vote. Bannon, backed by Mulvaney, who had become the White House’s Hill operative, continued to urge an immediate vote. A defeat here would be a major defeat for the Republican leadership. That suited Bannon just fin

ore and more seemed to be. Meanwhile, virtually everybody believed that a large measure of the fault lay in Reince Priebus, who had failed to create a White House that could protect the president from himself—or from Bannon or from his own children. At the same time, believing that the fundamental problem lay i

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

lic enemy; they expected nothing of him. But Priebus and Spicer HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020089 they regarded as functionaries, and their job was to support the White House’s goals, which included their goals and interests. Spicer, ever ridiculed in the media for his cockamamie defense of the White House and a seeming dum

ce his exit from the White House six weeks before—he was on a crash all-sushi diet. “That building,” said his friend David Bossie, speaking about all White Houses but especially the Trump White House, “takes perfectly healthy people and turns them into old, unhealthy people.” But Bannon, who Bossie had declared

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”