| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020059)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020059" |
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| parseTier: "external-legacy" |
| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
| externalSource: "greg-ep-nov-12" |
| externalLicense: "not granted" |
| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| * ** |
| What did the people around Trump actually think of Trump? This was not just a |
| reasonable question, it was the question those around Trump most asked themselves. They |
| constantly struggled to figure out what they themselves actually thought and what they |
| thought everybody else was truly thinking. |
| Mostly they kept their answers to themselves, but in the instance of Comey and |
| Mueller, beyond all the usual dodging and weaving rationalizations, there really wasn't |
| anybody, other than the president's family, who didn't very pointedly blame Trump |
| himself. |
| This was the point at which an emperors-new-clothes threshold was crossed. Now you |
| could, out loud, rather freely doubt his judgment, acumen, and, most of all, the advice he |
| was getting. |
| "He's not only crazy," declared Tom Barrack to a friend, "he's stupid." |
| But Bannon, along with Priebus, had strongly opposed the Comey firing, while Ivanka |
| and Jared had not only supported it, but insisted on it. This seismic event prompted a new |
| theme from Bannon, repeated by him widely, which was that every piece of advice from |
| the couple was bad advice. |
| Nobody now believed that firing Comey was a good idea; even the president seemed |
| sheepish. Hence, Bannon saw his new role as saving Trump and Trump would always |
| need saving. He might be a brilliant actor but he could not manage his own career. |
| And for Bannon, this new challenge brought a clear benefit: when Trump's fortune |
| sank, Bannon's rose. |
| On the trip to the Middle East, Bannon went to work. He became focused on the figure |
| of Lanny Davis, one of the Clinton impeachment lawyers who, for the better part of two |
| years, became a near round-the-clock spokesperson and public defender of the Clinton |
| White House. Bannon judged Comey-Mueller to be as threatening to the Trump White |
| House as Monica Lewinsky and Ken Starr were to the Clinton White House, and he saw |
| the model for escaping a mortal fate in the Clinton response. |
| "What the Clintons did was to go to the mattresses with amazing discipline," he |
| explained. "They set up an outside shop and then Bill and Hillary never mentioned it |
| again. They ground through it. Starr had them dead to rights and they got through it." |
| Bannon knew exactly what needed to be done: seal off the West Wing and build a |
| separate legal and communications staff to defend the president. In this construct, the |
| president would occupy a parallel reality, removed from and uninvolved with what would |
| become an obvious partisan blood sport—as it had in the Clinton model. Politics would be |
| relegated to its nasty corner, and Trump would conduct himself as the president and as the |
| commander in chief. |
| HOUSE |
| _OVERSIGHT_020059 |
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|
