Book Review: Donald T***p v. The United States

 

This is a book that covers the 2017-2021 presidential administration, with a heavy focus on the Russia investigation, both before the Special Counsel was appointed when the FBI was in charge of the investigation, and after. The book was written by Michael Schmidt, a columnist for the New York Times, who had many sources, named and unnamed, both inside the White House, the FBI, and (seemingly inside or around people on the inside of) the Muller team. The book basically spans the time period from before the 2016 election detailing the FBI investigations of both candidates, and how each was handled by the FBI director, and ends with a summary of the first impeachment proceedings.

The substantive portion of the book is 400 pages long, then there are several pages of notes. Schmidt details what was going on in the White House Counsel's office (former White House Counsel Don McGahn was one of his named sources) and seemed to have a lot of insight into what Mueller's team was doing. He goes into great detail about how the Orange Genital Wart was raging at everything, getting crazier as time went on, and refusing to listen to anyone who told him that he could not do the batshit crazy stuff he wanted to do. The end of the book really details how Bill Barr bailed Agent Orange out when the Mueller report was released, based in large part because Mueller refused to actually make any kind of recommendation on whether Little Donny Diapers should be charged with anything. Schmidt also paints Rod Rosenthien as a wimpy slimeball who basically changed his tune depending on who he was talking to.

The book has a lot of reporting that was bombshell news when it came out in 2020, but even now, a few years removed from the original publication there is still material in the book that did not get widely reported, so even if you are a consumer of reputable news, some of the material in the book may be unfamiliar to you. Of course, the MAGATs will scream fake news about everything, but Schmidt brings receipts to back up every assertion that he makes. It is definitely worth reading.