Epstein Secrets

19995 11 WIRETAP ith three screens in his White House bedroom, the president was his own best cable y Y curator. But for print he depended on Hope Hicks. Hicks, who had been his junior aide for most of the campaign and his spokesperson (although, as he would point out, he was really his own spokespers

the media that could not be positively spun. The day after his “reset” speech before the joint session of Congress presented a certain conundrum for Hicks. Here were the first generally good notices for the administration. But in the Post, the Times, and the New Yorker that day, there was also an ugly b

good ink in the Zimes, the president saw Haberman as “mean and horrible.” And yet, on a near-weekly basis, he and Hicks plotted when next to have the Zimes come in. OOK Ok Kushner had his personal press operation and Bannon had his. The leaking culture had become so open and overt—most of the time ever

agendas and weak spots among cable anchors and producers and Times and Post reporters. Often the focus of this otherworldly ambition was directed at Zimes reporter Maggie Haberman. Haberman’s front-page beat at the paper, which might be called the “weirdness of Donald Trump” beat, involved producing viv

n aggrieved, unyielding, and threatening president dominated the discussion, pushing HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020079 into line his daughter and her husband, Hicks, and Raffel. Kasowitz—the lawyer whose specific job was to keep Trump at arm’s length from Russian-related matters—was kept on hold on the phone for

s the ultimate facilitator of unmediated behavior. His impulses and thoughts—unedited, unreviewed, unchallenged—not only passed through him, but, via Hicks, traveled out into the world without any other White House arbitration. “The problem isn’t Twitter, it’s Hope,” observed one communication staffer.

Circa. The lawyers, and spokesperson Mark Corallo, had been working to manage this news. But while in Hamburg, the president’s staff learned that the Zimes was HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020078 developing a story that had far more details about the meeting—dquite possibly supplied by the Kushner side—which it wou

two most combustible elements of a cover-up. In Washington, Kasowitz and the legal team’s spokesperson, Mark Corallo, weren’t informed of either the Zimes article or the plan for how to respond to it until Don Jr.’s initial statement went out just before the story broke that Saturday. Over the course o

rly Hills— the then candidate polishing off a pint of Haagen-Dazs vanilla as he happily and idly opined about a range of topics while his aides, Hope Hicks, Corey Lewandowski, and Jared Kushner, went in and out of the room. Conversations with members of the campaign’s team continued through the Republica

the disloyalty of his staff. The initial subject of his ire was the New York Times and its reporter Maggie Haberman, whom he called “a nut job.” The Zimes’s Gail Collins, who had written a column unfavorably comparing Trump to Vice President Pence, was “a moron.” But then, continuing under the rubric of