US President Donald Trump and Steve Bannon —AFP
WASHINGTON—Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has described a meeting between President Donald Trump’s son Don Jr. and a Russian lawyer during the 2016 presidential election campaign as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic,” The Guardian reported on Wednesday.
Bannon made the scathing comments in a book to be published next week, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” by journalist Michael Wolff, the newspaper said.
“They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV,” Bannon reportedly said.
Bannon, who left the White House in August, was also quoted as saying that the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election will focus on money laundering.
Bannon, an executive with right-wing news outlet Breitbart News, joined Trump’s White House bid two months after the June 9, 2016, meeting between Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and Trump campaign officials.
Besides Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and then campaign chair, Paul Manafort, attended the meeting at Trump Tower in New York.
Donald Trump Jr. took the meeting with the Russian lawyer after an intermediary promised material that would incriminate Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.
‘Treasonous’ and ‘unpatriotic’
“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,” Bannon was quoted as saying in the book. “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,” he said.
President Trump returned fire with both barrels on Wednesday, insisting Bannon had little to do with his victorious campaign and “has nothing to do with me or my presidency.”
“When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind,” Trump said in a statement.
A spokesperson for Bannon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
But the former White House chief strategist was not surprised or particularly bothered by the blowback, according to a person familiar with Bannon’s thinking but not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
Bannon vowed on Wednesday to continue his “war” on the Republican establishment and also predicted that, after a cooling-off period, he’d continue to speak with Trump, who likes to maintain contact with former advisers even after he fires and sometimes disparages them.
Trump had relied heavily on Bannon for advice in the months leading up to his upset victory in the November 2016 election.
Alabama loss
Bannon helped Trump shape a populist, antiestablishment message and has been the president’s link to his conservative base of support.
Trump said Bannon was to blame for the loss of a Republican-held US Senate seat in Alabama last December when Republican Ray Moore, whose campaign was derailed by accusations of sexual misconduct with teenage girls, lost to Democrat Doug Jones.
Trump and Bannon backed Moore in the campaign.
“Now he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look. Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country. Yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than 30 years by Republicans,” Trump said.
“Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was. It is the only thing he does well,” he added.
White House aides were blindsided on Wednesday when an early excerpt from the book was published online by a magazine and released by other media outlets that had obtained copies ahead of its Jan. 9 publication date.
The White House did not have a copy of the book as of Wednesday morning, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions.
Trump seemed most angry at Bannon’s comments about the Trump Tower meeting first reported by The Guardian, which obtained an early copy of the book.
Money laundering
The Guardian quoted Bannon as telling Wolff that Mueller’s investigation into potential collusion between Russia and Trump campaign officials would likely focus on money laundering.
The investigation by Mueller, a former FBI director, is looking into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to get him elected—a charge the president has repeatedly and vehemently denied.
Trump said in an interview with The New York Times last week that he expected the Mueller probe to be “fair” and Donald Trump Jr. has denied any wrongdoing.
Manafort and a business associate have been indicted on money laundering charges unrelated to the election campaign.
Trump’s former national security adviser, Mike Flynn, has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians.
Using a hurricane metaphor, The Guardian quoted Bannon as suggesting in the book that the White House was being complacent about the Mueller probe.
“They’re sitting on a beach trying to stop a Category 5,” he said. —REPORTS FROM AFP, AP