Epstein Secrets

d reached several levels into the Trump circle. Among those who were indicted or who had pled guilty to felonies were his former campaign man- ager Paul Manafort, his former national security advisor Michael Flynn, the eager-beaver junior adviser George Papadopoulos, and Manafort's business partner and campa

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

ould say. “All our guys are terrible, nobody knows what they’re doing... . Wish Corey was back.” Trump quickly soured on his second campaign manager, Paul Manafort, as well. By August, trailing Clinton by 12 to 17 points and facing a daily firestorm of eviscerating press, Trump couldn’t conjure even a far-fetch

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

egated to find a crime would find one—likely many. Everybody became a potential agent of implicating others. Dominos would fall. Targets would flip. Paul Manafort, making a good living in international financial gray areas, his risk calculation based on the long-shot odds that an under-the-radar privateer would

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

would be gone. All this was part of the background to one of the most preposterous meetings in modern politics. On June 9, 2016, Don Jr., Jared, and Paul Manafort met with a movieworthy cast of dubious characters in Trump Tower after having been promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton. Don Jr., enco

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”