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Wednesday, January 03, 2018
Trump Tower meeting with Russians 'treasonous', Bannon says in explosive book
Former White House strategist quoted in Fire and Fury, by Michael Wolff
Bannon: ‘They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV
Steve Bannon exits an elevator in the lobby of Trump Tower on 11
November 2016 in New York City. Other Trump campaign officials met with
Russians there in June 2016.
Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon
has described the Trump Tower meeting between the president’s son and a
group of Russians during the 2016 election campaign as “treasonous” and
“unpatriotic”, according to an explosive new book seen by the Guardian.
Bannon,
speaking to author Michael Wolff, warned that the investigation into
alleged collusion with the Kremlin will focus on money laundering and
predicted: “They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national
TV.”
Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, reportedly based on more
than 200 interviews with the president, his inner circle and players in
and around the administration, is one of the most eagerly awaited
political books of the year. In it, Wolff lifts the lid on a White House
lurching from crisis to crisis amid internecine warfare, with even some
of Trump’s closest allies expressing contempt for him.
Bannon, who was chief executive of the Trump campaign in its final
three months, then White House chief strategist for seven months before
returning to the rightwing Breitbart News, is a central figure in the
nasty, cutthroat drama, quoted extensively, often in salty language.
He is particularly scathing about a June 2016 meeting involving
Trump’s son Donald Jr, son-in-law Jared Kushner, then campaign chairman
Paul Manafort and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya
at Trump Tower in New York. A trusted intermediary had promised
documents that would “incriminate” rival Hillary Clinton but instead of
alerting the FBI to a potential assault on American democracy by a
foreign power, Trump Jr replied in an email: “I love it.”
The meeting was revealed by the New York Times
in July last year, prompting Trump Jr to say no consequential material
was produced. Soon after, Wolff writes, Bannon remarked mockingly: “The
three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet
with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on
the 25th floor – with no lawyers. They didn’t have any lawyers.
“Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or
bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have
called the FBI immediately.”
Bannon went on, Wolff writes, to say that if any such meeting had to take place, it should have been set up “in a Holiday Inn in Manchester, New Hampshire,
with your lawyers who meet with these people”. Any information, he
said, could then be “dump[ed] … down to Breitbart or something like
that, or maybe some other more legitimate publication”.
Bannon added: “You never see it, you never know it, because you don’t need to
… But that’s the brain trust that they had.”
Bannon also speculated that Trump Jr had involved his father in the
meeting. “The chance that Don Jr did not walk these jumos up to his
father’s office on the twenty-sixth floor is zero.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed last May, following
Trump’s dismissal of FBI director James Comey, to investigate Russian
meddling in the 2016 election. This has led to the indictments of four
members of Trump’s inner circle, including Manafort and former national
security adviser Michael Flynn.
Manafort has pleaded not guilty to money
laundering charges; Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. In
recent weeks Bannon’s Breitbart News and other conservative outlets have
accused Mueller’s team of bias against the president.
Trump predicted in an interview with the New York Times
last week that the special counsel was “going to be fair”, though he
also said the investigation “makes the country look very bad”. The
president and his allies deny any collusion with Russia and the Kremlin
has denied interfering.
Bannon has criticised Trump’s decision to fire Comey.
In Wolff’s book, obtained by the Guardian ahead of publication from a
bookseller in New England, he suggests White House hopes for a quick end
to the Mueller investigation are gravely misplaced.
“You realise where this is going,” he is quoted as saying. “This is
all about money laundering. Mueller chose [senior prosecutor Andrew] Weissmann
first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to fucking Trump
goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr and Jared Kushner … It’s as
plain as a hair on your face.”
Last month it was reported that federal prosecutors had subpoenaed records from Deutsche Bank,
the German financial institution that has lent hundreds of millions of
dollars to the Kushner property empire. Bannon continues: “It goes
through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner shit. The Kushner shit is
greasy.
They’re going to go right through that. They’re going to roll
those two guys up and say play me or trade me.”
Scorning apparent White House insouciance, Bannon reaches for a
hurricane metaphor: “They’re sitting on a beach trying to stop a
Category Five.”
He insists that he knows no Russians, will not be a witness, will not
hire a lawyer and will not appear on national television answering
questions.
Fire and Fury will be published next week. Wolff is a prominent media critic and columnist who has written for the Guardian and is a biographer of Rupert Murdoch. He previously conducted interviews for the Hollywood Reporter with Trump in June 2016 and Bannon a few months later.
He told the Guardian in November
that to research the book, he showed up at the White House with no
agenda but wanting to “find out what the insiders were really thinking
and feeling”. He enjoyed extraordinary access to Trump and senior
officials and advisers, he said, sometimes at critical moments of the
fledgling presidency.
The rancour between Bannon and “Javanka”
– Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump – is a recurring theme of the book.
Kushner and Ivanka are Jewish. Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of
state, is quoted as saying: “It is a war between the Jews and the
non-Jews.”
Trump is not spared. Wolff writes that Thomas Barrack Jr,
a billionaire who is one of the president’s oldest associates,
allegedly told a friend: “He’s not only crazy, he’s stupid.” Barrack denied that to the New York Times.
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