The former White House chief strategist (and evil creep) said something truthful for once. Steve Bannon called the 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Trump campaign officials and a Russian lawyer offering damaging information about Hillary Clinton “treasonous,” according to a new book obtained by The Guardian.
Michael Wolff‘s new book, Fire and Fury (to be released Jan. 9) is based on hundreds of interviews, including ones with Trump and his inner circle and according to the Guardian, Bannon told Wolff that special counsel Robert Mueller‘s investigation into the Trump campaign’s potential ties to Russia is centered on money laundering.
Referencing the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr., then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, Bannon reportedly told Wolff:
“They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV. 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.“
The White House has so far declined to comment about Bannon’s remarks.
Knife in the back, Donny? No, in your front. There’s more to come…
UPDATE: Trump blast back in a new statement:
“Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating 17 candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican party.”
(Photo, YouTube; via CNN)