First published 2020
Jeffrey Toobin examines the legal and political forces that allowed Donald Trump to escape accountability despite mounting evidence of wrongdoing. The CNN legal analyst traces how Trump's campaign chairman, personal lawyer, and political advisor all faced criminal consequences while the president himself remained untouched. Toobin reveals the strategies Trump's legal team employed to neutralize Robert Mueller's investigation, exploiting the special counsel's own ethical standards against him. He documents how Republican lawmakers dismissed clear impeachment evidence through intimidation and partisan loyalty. Drawing from extensive interviews with Mueller's prosecutors, Trump's attorneys, congressional investigators, and White House staff, Toobin constructs a detailed account of the legal maneuvering and political calculations that shaped these historic proceedings. The book captures the chaos of Russian interference, hush money payments, and Ukrainian conspiracy theories that defined this era. Toobin offers readers an insider's view of how institutional norms buckled under unprecedented presidential behavior.
Genres: history, crime, biography-memoir, 21st-century, journalism, current-affairs, law, american-history
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Period: 21st-century
496 pages · Hardcover · Doubleday