Epstein Secrets

dence, believing that he had). And so it was with Director Comey. In their several meetings since he took office—

ni. He believed they would both perform kamikaze acts for him—yjust as everyone else knew they would almost certainly never be confirmed. OOK Ok As James Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee approached—it would take place on June 8, twelve days after the presidential traveling party retur

ng investigation and is classified I cannot say more about what we are doing and whose conduct we are examining. He had, however, said quite enough. Comey converted rumor, leaks, theory, innuendo, and pundit hot air—and until this moment that was all there was, at best the hope of a scandal—into a forma

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

ical question. He insisted on an answer, and affirmative one: "Mr. President, you're not a target?' Early in his tenu Trump had pushed FBI director James Comey to provide precisely tl reassurance. In one of the signature moves of his presidency, he had fir Comey in May 2017 in part because he wasn't satisf

es of his presidency, he had fir Comey in May 2017 in part because he wasn't satisfied with the enth siasm of the affirmation and therefore assumed Comey was plotti against him. Whether the president was indeed a target—and it would surely he taken a through-the-looking-glass exercise not to see him

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

RVANKA 6. AT HOME 7. RUSSIA 8. ORG CHART 9. CPAC 10. GOLDMAN 11. WIRETAP 12. REPEAL AND REPLACE 13. BANNON AGONISTES 14. SITUATION ROOM 15. MEDIA 16. COMEY 17. ABROAD AND AT HOME 18. BANNON REDUX 19. MIKA WHO? 20. MCMASTER AND SCARAMUCCI 21. BANNON AND SCARAMUCCI HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019879 22. GENERAL KEL

urvived the release of the Billy Bush tape when, in the uproar that followed, the RNC had had the gall to pressure him to quit the race. FBI director James Comey, having bizarrely hung Hillary out to dry by saying he was reopening the investigation into her emails eleven days before the election, had helped av

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

fend Sessions, and who believed that he had militantly— indeed with scathing attacks on the Jarvankas for their stupidity—walled himself off from the Comey smashup, was now suddenly getting calls from reporters with leaks that painted him as an engaged participant in the Comey decision. In a furious pho

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”