After his previous book elicited outrage from media figures on both the right and left, who questioned its veracity, author Michael Wolff’s long anticipated sequel to ‘Fire and Fury’, his landmark book about the opening months of the Trump Administration, will finally hit bookshelves later this week.
And according to a leaked excerpt of the book, entitled “Siege: Trump Under Fire”, published Tuesday by the Guardian, the work definitely won’t disappoint fans of the genre. And to help ensure the maximum amount of buzz, the paper has decided to publish Wolff’s most salacious claim first, which is: That Special Counsel Robert Mueller wrote up a three-count indictment of President Trump on obstruction-related charges, but ultimately decided not to pursue it.
The report is based on unspecified ‘underlying documents’ that purport to substantiate Wolff’s claims. These documents were shared with the Guardian. However, Mueller’s office has vociferously denied the report.
…Wolff reports that Mueller’s office drew up a three-count outline of the president’s alleged abuses, under the title “United States of America against Donald J Trump, Defendant.” The document sat on the special counsel’s desk, Wolff writes, for almost a year.
According to a document seen by the Guardian, the first count, under Title 18, United States code, Section 1505, charged the president with corruptly – or by threats of force or threatening communication – influencing, obstructing or impeding a pending proceeding before a department or agency of the United States.
The second count, under section 1512, charged the president with tampering with a witness, victim or informant.
The third count, under section 1513, charged the president with retaliating against a witness, victim or informant.
According to the purported ‘draft indictment’, Trump’s obstructions began one week after his inauguration.
Wolff writes that the draft indictment he examines says Trump’s attempts to obstruct justice “began on the seventh day of his administration, tracing the line of obstruction from National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s lies to the FBI about his contacts with Russian representative[s], to the president’s efforts to have [FBI director] James Comey protect Flynn, to Comey’s firing, to the president’s efforts to interfere with the special counsel’s investigation, to his attempt to cover up his son and son-in-law’s meeting with Russian governmental agents, to his moves to interfere with Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe’s testimony…”
After months of tortured deliberations, Mueller ultimately demurred on pursuing the indictment, and decided to focus instead on the other investigations that have led to charges against dozens of individuals.
Wolff’s book also included casual accusations of anti-semitism, including a quote attributed to Trump, where he bashed Cohen and Trump Org accountant Allen Weisselberg for cooperating with investigators.
According to Wolff, Mueller endured tortured deliberations over whether to charge the president, and even more tortured deliberations over the president’s power to dismiss him or his boss, the then deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein. Mueller ultimately demurred, Wolff writes, but his team’s work gave rise to as many as 13 other investigations that led to cooperating witness plea deals from Michael Cohen, David Pecker of American Media and Trump Organization accountant Allen Weisselberg
“The Jews always flip,” was Trump’s comment on those deals, according to Wolff.
In one of many echoes of Fire and Fury, such shocking remarks by Trump are salted throughout Siege.
Anticipating a challenge to the indictment because of the DoJ Office of Legal Counsel memorandum that a sitting president can’t be indicted, Mueller and his team also purportedly drew up a memorandum opposing a motion to dismiss. But ultimately, Mueller decided that the odds were stacked against him and his team, and that there would be nothing stopping the president from firing the entire team should they bring an indictment.
But due to the prosecutor’s waffling, Wolff disparaged Mueller as a “cautious and indecisive bureaucrat.”
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“Robert Mueller, the stoic marine, had revealed himself over the course of the nearly two-year investigation to his colleagues and staff to be quite a Hamlet figure. Or, less dramatically, a cautious and indecisive bureaucrat.”
Caught, Wolff says, between wanting to use his full authority and worrying that he had no authority, Mueller went against the will of many of his staff when he chose not to attempt to force Trump to be interviewed in person. Ultimately, he also concluded he could not move to prosecute a sitting president.
Ironically enough given Mueller’s hardcore following of impeachment-obsessed #resistance diehards, Wolff concluded that the special counsel was ultimately swayed by the administration’s argument that ‘Trump is Trump’ – and that’s what the people voted for. This practically guarantees that Mueller – once viewed as a savior by the left – and his reputation will undergo what we like to call ‘the reverse James Comey’ in the eyes of Democrats.
“In a way,” he writes, “Robert Mueller had come to accept the dialectical premise of Donald Trump – that Trump is Trump.”
“Bob Mueller threw up his hands. Surprisingly, he found himself in agreement with the greater White House: Donald Trump was the president, and, for better or for worse, what you saw was what you got – and what the country voted for.”
If the past is any guide, we imagine the Washington press will be dominated by a steady patter of leaks from Wolff’s new book over the coming week in anticipation of its publication next week. The revelations, we imagine, will feature no shortage of salacious comments purportedly made by top administration staff and officials, as well as the unhinged alleged rantings of the president himself.
After selling more than 5 million copies of his first book, expectations for the sequel are high – and given Wolff’s reputation for playing fast and loose with the facts, we very much doubt that he will disappoint.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2KaB7QW Tyler Durden