An instructive, highly readable account of the law, its protectors, and its enemies.
The former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York dishes on the corrupt Trump administration.
“One of the things you learn as a prosecutor is that there are a surprising number of people in the world who enjoy talking like mobsters when they’re behind closed doors,” writes prosecutor Berman in a memoir whose every page touches still-fresh headlines. One of those people was Berman’s former boss Donald Trump. The author, who describes himself as a “Rockefeller Republican,” came into office by means familiar to Trump watchers as, he suspects, a compromise candidate in a power struggle between Chris Christie and Jared Kushner, with Rudy Giuliani in a corner position. It was politics from Day 1, from trying to retain independence in the Mueller investigation to the prosecution of former Trump counsel Michael Cohen. The latter had a denouement in Berman and associates’ subsequent probe into possible campaign finance violations, when newly installed Attorney General Bill Barr “not only tried to kill the ongoing investigations but—incredibly—suggested that Cohen’s conviction on campaign finance charges be reversed.” Thereafter, Berman writes, he was in constant struggle against Barr, who, “always eager to please his boss, appeared to be doing Trump’s bidding” by interfering in matters such as a census question on citizenship or hijinks on the part of wealthy allies of Turkey’s president, a pal of Trump’s until he wasn’t. Jeffrey Epstein, Michael Avenatti, and Steve Bannon are among the many villains of this book, but Barr is the worst of the lot: instead of protecting the Constitution, he “was looking for clever, invisible ways to let Trump undermine our rule of law.” Barr finally fired Berman by press release, and this book stands not just as a compelling look at how justice works, but also as a fine specimen of sweet revenge.
An instructive, highly readable account of the law, its protectors, and its enemies.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-30029-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.
Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward (The Price of Politics, 2012, etc.) returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency.
Of all the candidates to work in the White House, Butterfield was a bizarre choice. He was an Air Force colonel and wanted to serve in Vietnam. By happenstance, his colleague H.R. Haldeman helped Butterfield land a job in the Nixon administration. For three years, Butterfield worked closely with the president, taking on high-level tasks and even supervising the installation of Nixon’s infamous recording system. The writing here is pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield’s tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men. Yet the book is a surprisingly funny read. Butterfield is passive, sensitive, and dutiful, the very opposite of Nixon, who lets loose a constant stream of curses, insults, and nonsensical bluster. Years later, Butterfield seems conflicted about his role in such an eccentric presidency. “I’m not trying to be a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Butterfield concedes. It is curious to see Woodward revisit an affair that now feels distantly historical, but the author does his best to make the story feel urgent and suspenseful. When Butterfield admitted to the Senate Select Committee that he knew about the listening devices, he felt its significance. “It seemed to Butterfield there was absolute silence and no one moved,” writes Woodward. “They were still and quiet as if they were witnessing a hinge of history slowly swinging open….It was as if a bare 10,000 volt cable was running through the room, and suddenly everyone touched it at once.”
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1644-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
Welcome reading for anyone concerned with real rigged elections.
Tired of the lies about the 2020 election? Buckle up: Trump is just warming up, and his allies may be getting craftier.
“This is not a book about January 6, 2021. It is a book about January 6, 2025,” write legal scholars Lessig and Seligman. We are lucky, Lessig suggests, that John Eastman and his fellow plotters “picked the dumbest possible strategy for pursuing what we feared they were trying to accomplish”: namely, trying to convince Mike Pence that he had the constitutional authority to refuse to certify the results by which Joe Biden won the presidency. One might argue that the second dumbest strategy was to send an army of fascist goons to the Capitol to try to enforce Eastman’s argument. However, Lessig and Seligman argue, there are holes in the Constitution wide enough to drive a burning dumpster through, and they might allow an interested party to falsely claim victory in a closely contested race and win the election. The authors presume that any such gaming-the-system effort will come from MAGA Republicans, though they add that a Democrat could easily use the same tactics. Readers may need a law degree to follow some of the arguments, but others are quite accessible. One argument that Lessig has been mounting for some time, for instance, is that the winner-take-all method employed by most states for electoral votes needs to be replaced with an apportionment system so that the Electoral College count will align with the popular vote. On that score, the authors warn, the prospect of rogue electors—or more, rogue governors who control those electors—is very real, and numerous other threats could enable someone smarter than the last bunch to mount “a cataclysmic attack on our democracy.”
Welcome reading for anyone concerned with real rigged elections.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780300270792
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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