Document Text Content
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SIEGE
Trump Under Fire
MfCEEATEL
WOLFF
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
NEW YORK
Contents
AUTHOR'S NOTE XI
1. BULLSEYE 1
2. THE DO-OVER 21
3. LAWYERS 38
4. HOME ALONE 50
5. ROBERT MUELLER 6o
6. MICHAEL COHEN 75
7. THE WOMEN 88
8. MICHAEL FLYNN 99
9. MIDTERMS 113
10. KUSHNER 125
11. HANNITY 143
12. TRUMP ABROAD 156
13. TRUMP AND PUTIN 169
CONTENTS
14. 100 DAYS 185
15. MANAFORT 196
16. PECKER, COHEN, WEISSELBERG 209
17. MCCAIN, WOODWARD, ANONYMOUS 223
18. ICAVANAUGH 234
19. KHASHOGGI 246
20. OCTOBER SURPRISES 257
21. NOVEMBER 6 268
22. SHUTDOWN 282
23. THE WALL 295
EPILOGUE: THE REPORT 309
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 317
INDEX 319
Author's Note
Shortly after Donald Trump's inauguration as the forty-fifth president of
the United States, I was allowed into the West Wing as a sideline observer.
My book Fire and Fury was the resulting account of the organizational
chaos and constant drama—more psychodrama than political drama—of
Trump's first seven months in office. Here was a volatile and uncertain
president, releasing, almost on a daily basis, his strange furies on the world,
and, at the same time, on his own staff. This first phase of the most abnor-
mal White House in American history ended in August 2017, with the
departure of chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon and the appointment of
retired general John Kelly as chief of staff
This new account begins in February 2018 at the outset of Trump's
second year in office, with the situation now profoundly altered. The pres-
ident's capricious furies have been met by an increasingly organized and
methodical institutional response. The wheels of justice are inexorably
turning against him. In many ways, his own government, even his own
White House, has begun to turn on him. Virtually every power center left
of the far-right wing has deemed him unfit. Even some among his own
base find him undependable, hopelessly distracted, and in over his head.
Never before has a president been under such concerted attack with such
a limited capacity to defend himself.
His enemies surround him, dedicated to bringing him down.
XII
AUTHOR'S NOTE
AUTHOR'S NOTE
XI!!
* * *
I am joined in my train-wreck fascination with Trump—that certain
knowledge that in the end he will destroy himself—by, I believe, almost
everyone who has encountered him since he was elected president.
To have worked anywhere near him is to be confronted with the most
extreme and disorienting behavior possible. That is hardly an overstate-
ment. Not only is Trump not like other presidents, he is not like anyone
most of us have ever known. Hence, everyone who has been close to him
feels compelled to try to explain him and to dine out on his head-smacking
peculiarities. It is yet one more of his handicaps: all the people around
him, however much they are bound by promises of confidentiality or
nondisclosure agreements or even friendship, cannot stop talking about
their experience with him. In this sense, he is more exposed than any
president in history.
Many of the people in the White House who helped me during the
writing of Fire and Fury are now outside of the administration, yet they are
as engaged as ever by the Trump saga. I am grateful to be part of this sub-
stantial network. Many of Trump's pre-White House cronies continue to
both listen to him and support him; at the same time, as an expression both
of their concern and of their incredulity, they report among one another,
and to others as well, on his temper, mood, and impulses. In general, I
have found that the closer people are to him, the more alarmed they have
found themselves at various points about his mental state. They all spec-
ulate about how this will end—badly for him, they almost all conclude.
Indeed, Trump is probably a much better subject for writers interested in
human capacities and failings than for most of the reporters and writers
who regularly cover Washington and who are primarily interested in the
pursuit of success and power.
My primary goal in Siege is to create a readable and intuitive narrative—
that is its nature. Another goal is to write the near equivalent of a real-time
history of this extraordinary moment, since understanding it well after
the fact might be too late. A final goal is pure portraiture: Donald Trump
as an extreme, almost hallucinatory, and certainly cautionary, Amer-
ican character. To accomplish this, to gain the perspective and to find
the voices necessary to tell the larger story, I provided anonymity to any
source who requested it. In cases where I have been told—on the prom-
ise of no attribution—about an unreported event or private conversation
or remark, I have made every effort to confirm it with other sources or
documents. In some cases, I have witnessed the events or conversations
described herein. With regard to the Mueller investigation, the narrative
I provide is based on internal documents given to me by sources close to
the Office of the Special Counsel.
Dealing with sources in the Trump White House has continued to
offer its own set of unique issues. A basic requirement of working there
is, surely, the willingness to infinitely rationalize or delegitimize the truth,
and, when necessary, to outright lie. In fact, I believe this has caused some
of the same people who have undermined the public trust to become pri-
vate truth-tellers. This is their devil's bargain. But for the writer, interview-
ing such Janus-faced sources creates a dilemma, for it requires depending
on people who lie to also tell the truth—and who might later disavow the
truth they have told. Indeed, the extraordinary nature of much of what
has happened in the Trump White House is often baldly denied by its
spokespeople, as well as by the president himself. Yet in each successive
account of this administration, the level of its preposterousness—even as
that bar has been consistently raised—has almost invariably been con-
firmed.
In an atmosphere that promotes, and frequently demands, hyperbole,
tone itself becomes a key part of accuracy. For instance, most crucially,
the president, by a wide range of the people in close contact with him, is
often described in maximal terms of mental instability. "I have never met
anyone crazier than Donald Trump" is the wording of one staff member
who has spent almost countless hours with the president. Something like
this has been expressed to me by a dozen others with firsthand experience.
How do you translate that into a responsible evaluation of this singular
White House? My strategy is to try to show and not tell, to describe the
broadest context, to communicate the experience, to make it real enough
for a reader to evaluate for him- or herself where Donald Trump falls on a
vertiginous sliding scale of human behavior. It is that condition, an emo-
tional state rather than a political state, that is at the heart of this book.
1
BULLSEYE
The president made his familiar stink-in-the-room face, then way
his hands as though to ward off a bug.
"Don't tell me this," he said. "Why are you telling me this?"
His personal lawyer John Dowd, in late February 2018, little mo
than a year into Trump's tenure, was trying to explain that prosecutc
were likely to issue a subpoena for some of the Trump Organizatio:
business records.
Trump seemed to respond less to the implications of such a deep di
into his affairs than to having to hear about it at all. His annoyance set (
a small rant. It was not so much about people out to get him—and pe
pie were surely out to get him—but that nobody was defending him. T
problem was his own people. Especially his lawyers.
Trump wanted his lawyers to "fix" things. "Don't bring me problen
bring me solutions:' was a favorite CEO bromide that he often repeat€
He judged his lawyers by their under-the-table or sleight-of-hand ski
and held them accountable when they could not make problems disa
pear. His problems became their fault. "Make it go away" was one of I-
frequent orders. It was often said in triplicate: "Make it go away, make
go away, make it go away."
The White House counsel Don McGahn—representing the Whi
2 MICHAEL WOLFF
SIEGE
House rather than, in a distinction Trump could never firmly grasp, the
president himself—demonstrated little ability to make problems disap-
pear and became a constant brunt of Trump's rages and invective. His legal
interpretation of proper executive branch function too often thwarted his
boss's wishes.
Dowd and his colleagues, Ty Cobb and Jay Sekulow—the trio of law-
yers charged with navigating the president through his personal legal
problems—had, on the other hand, become highly skilled in avoiding
their client's bad humor, which was often accompanied by menacing,
barely controlled personal attacks. All three men understood that to-be a
successful lawyer for Donald Trump was to tell the client what he wanted
to hear.
Trump harbored a myth about the ideal lawyer that had almost noth-
ing to do with the practice of law. He invariably cited Roy Cohn, his old
New York friend, attorney, and tough-guy mentor, and Robert Kennedy,
John F. Kennedy's brother. "He was always on my ass about Roy Cohn
and Bobby Kennedy," said Steve Bannon, the political strategist who,
perhaps more than anyone else, was responsible for Trump's victory.
"'Roy Cohn and Bobby Kennedy,' he would say. 'Where's my Roy Cohn
and Bobby Kennedy?" Cohn, to his own benefit and legend, built the
myth that Trump continued to embrace: with enough juice and mus-
cle, the legal system could always be gamed. Bobby Kennedy had been
his brother's attorney general and hatchet man; he protected JFK and
worked the back channels of power for the benefit of the family.
This was the constant Trump theme: beating the system. "I'm the guy
who gets away with it:' he had often bragged to friends in New York.
At the same time, he did not want to know details. He merely wanted
his lawyers to assure him that he was winning. "We're killing it, right?
That's what I want to know. That's all I want to know. If we're not killing
it, you screwed up," he shouted one afternoon at members of his ad hoc
legal staff.
From the start, it had become a particular challenge to find top law-
yers to take on what, in the past, had always been one of the most vaunted
of legal assignments: representing the president of the United States. One
high-profile Washington white-collar litigator gave Trump a list of twenty
issues that would immediately need to be addressed if he were to ta
on the case. Trump refused to consider any of them. More than a doz
major firms had turned down his business. In the end, Trump was left wi
a ragtag group of solo practitioners without the heft and resources oft
firms. Now, thirteen months after his inauguration, he was facing p(
sonal legal trouble at least as great as that faced by Richard Nixon and I
Clinton, and doing so with what seemed like, at best, a Court Street lei
team. But Trump appeared to be oblivious to this exposed flank. Ratchi
ing up his level of denial about the legal threats around him, he breez
rationalized: "If I had good lawyers, I'd look guilty"
Dowd, at seventy-seven, had had a long, successful legal career, bc
in government and in Washington law firms. But that was in the past.
was on his own now, eager to postpone retirement. He knew the imp(
tance, certainly to his own position in Trump's legal circle, of und(
standing his client's needs. He was forced to agree with the presider
assessment of the investigation into his campaign's contact with Russi
state interests: it would not reach him. To that end, Dowd, and the otk
members of Trump's legal team, recommended that the president coo
erate with the Mueller investigation.
"I'm not a target, right?" Trump constantly prodded them.
This wasn't a rhetorical question. He insisted on an answer, and
affirmative one: "Mr. President, you're not a target:' Early in his tenu
Trump had pushed FBI director James Comey to provide precisely ti
reassurance. In one of the signature moves of his presidency, he had fir
Comey in May 2017 in part because he wasn't satisfied with the enth
siasm of the affirmation and therefore assumed Comey was plotti
against him.
Whether the president was indeed a target—and it would surely ha
taken a through-the-looking-glass exercise not to see him as the bulls€
of the Mueller investigation—seemed to occupy a separate reality fn
Trump's need to be reassured that he was not a target.
"Trump's trained me:' Ty Cobb told Steve Bannon. "Even if it's tx
it's great:'
Trump imagined—indeed, with a preternatural confidence, nothi
appeared to dissuade him—that sometime in the very near future he ww.
4
MICHAEL WOLFF
SIEGE
hear directly from the special counsel, who would send him a compre-
hensive and even apologetic letter of exoneration.
"Where," he kept demanding to know, "is my fucking letter?"
* * *
The grand jury empanelled by Special Counsel Robert Mueller met on
Thursdays and Fridays in federal district court in Washington. Its busi-
ness was conducted on the fifth floor of an unremarkable building at 333
Constitution Avenue. The grand jurors gathered in a nondescript space
that looked less like a courtroom than a classroom, with prosecutors at a
podium and witnesses sitting at a desk in the front of the room. The Mueller
grand jurors were more female than male, more white than black, older
rather than younger; they were distinguished most of all by their focus
and intensity. They listened to the proceedings with "a scary sort of atten-
tion, as though they already know everything," said one witness.
In a grand jury inquiry, you fall into one of three categories. You are
a "witness of fact:' meaning the prosecutor believes you have information
about an investigation at hand. Or you are a "subject:' meaning you are
regarded as having personal involvement with the crime under investiga-
tion. Or, most worrisome, you are a "target:' meaning the prosecutor is
seeking to have the grand jury indict you. Witnesses often became sub-
jects, and subjects often became targets.
In early 2018, with the Mueller investigation and its grand jury main-
taining a historic level of secrecy, no one in the White House could be sure
who was what. Or who was saying what to whom. Anyone and everyone
working for the president or one of his senior aides could be talking to the
special counsel. The investigation's code of silence extended into the West
Wing. Nobody knew, and nobody was saying, who was spilling the beans.
Almost every White House senior staffer—the collection of advisers
who had firsthand dealings with the president—had retained a lawyer.
Indeed, from the president's first days in the White House, Trump's tangled
legal past and evident lack of legal concern had cast a shadow on those
who worked for him. Senior people were looking for lawyers even as they
were still learning how to navigate the rabbit warren that is the West Wing.
In February 2017, mere weeks after the inauguration, and not long
after the FBI had first raised questions about National Security AdN
Michael Flynn, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus had walked into Steve I
non's office and said, "I'm going to do you a big favor. Give me your ci
card. Don't ask me why, just give it to me. You'll be thanking me fol
rest of your life:'
Bannon opened his wallet and gave Priebus his American Exr
card. Priebus shortly returned, handed the card back, and said, "You
have legal insurance'
Over the next year, Bannon—a witness of fact—spent hundrec
hours with his lawyers preparing for his testimony before the spi
counsel and before Congress. His lawyers in turn spent ever moun
hours talking to Mueller's team and to congressional committee coun
Bannon's legal costs at the end of the year came to $2 million.
Every lawyer's first piece of advice to his or her client was blunt
unequivocal: talk to no one, lest it become necessary to testify aboutI
you said. Before long, a constant preoccupation of senior staffers in
Trump White House was to know as little as possible. It was a wr(
side-up world: where being "in the room" was traditionally the
sought-after status, now you wanted to stay out of meetings. You wa:
to avoid being a witness to conversations; you wanted to avoid b
witnessed being a witness to conversations, at least if you were sn
Certainly, nobody was your friend. It was impossible to know wilt
colleague stood in the investigation; hence, you had no way of knoN
how likely it was that they might need to offer testimony about som(
else—you, perhaps—as the bargaining chip to save themselves by a
erating with the special counsel, a.k.a. flipping.
The White House, it rapidly dawned on almost everyone who wol
there—even as it became one more reason not to work there—was
scene of an ongoing criminal investigation, one that could potent
ensnare anyone who was anywhere near it.
* * *
The ultimate keeper of the secrets from the campaign, the transition,
through the first year in the White House was Hope Hicks, the AN
House communications director. She had witnessed most everyth
6 MICHAEL WOLFF SIEGE 7
She saw what the president saw: she knew what the president, a man
unable to control his own running monologue, knew.
On February 27, 2018, testifying before the House Intelligence
Committee—she had already appeared before the special counsel—she
was pressed about whether she had ever lied for the president. Perhaps a
more accomplished communications professional could have escaped the
corner here, but Hicks, who had scant experience other than working as
Donald Trump's spokesperson, which, as often as not, meant dealing with
his disregard of empirical truth, found herself as though in a sudden and
unexpected moral void trying to publicly parse the relative importance
of her boss's lies. She admitted to telling "white lies:' as in, somehow, less
than the biggest lies. This was enough of a forward admission to require
a nearly twenty-minute mid-testimony conference with her lawyers, dis-
tressed by what she might be admitting and by where any deconstruction
of the president's constant inversions might lead.
Not long after she testified, another witness before the Mueller grand
jury was asked how far Hicks might go to lie for the president. The witness
answered: "I think when it comes to doing anything as a 'yes man' for
Trump, she'll do it—but she won't take a bullet for him?' The statement
could be taken as both a backhanded compliment and an estimate of how
far loyalty in the Trump White House might extend—probably not too far.
Almost no one in Trump's administration, it could be argued, was con-
ventionally suited to his or her job. But with the possible exception of the
president himself, no one provided a better illustration of this unprepared
and uninformed presidency than Hicks. She did not have substantial media
or political experience, nor did she have a temperament annealed by years
of high-pressure work. Always dressed in the short skirts that Trump
favored, she seemed invariably caught in the headlights. Trump admired
her not because she had the political skills to protect him, but for her pliant
dutifulness. Her job was to devote herself to his care and feeding.
"When you speak to him, open with positive feedback:' counseled
Hicks, understanding Trump's need for constant affirmation and his
almost complete inability to talk about anything but himself. Her atten-
tiveness to Trump and tractable nature had elevated her, at age twenty-nine,
to the top White House communications job. And practically speaking,
she acted as his de facto chief of staff. Trump did not want his administra-
tion to be staffed by professionals; he wanted it to be staffed by people who
attended and catered to him.
Hicks—"Hope-y," to Trump—was both the president's gatekeeper
and his comfort blanket. She was also a frequent subject of his pruri-
ent interest: Trump preferred business, even in the White House, to be
personal. "Who's fucking Hope?" he would demand to know. The topic
also interested his son Don Jr., who often professed his intention to "fuck
Hope The president's daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner,
both White House senior advisers, expressed a gentler type of concern for
Hicks; sometimes they would even try to suggest eligible men.
But Hicks, seeming to understand the insular nature of Trumpworld,
dated exclusively inside the bubble, picking the baddest boys in it: cam-
paign manager Corey Lewandowslci during the campaign and presiden-
tial aide Rob Porter in the White House. As the relationship between
Hicks and Porter unfolded in the fall of 2017, knowing about the affair
became an emblem of Trump insiderness, with special care taken to keep
this development from the proprietary president. Or not: other people,
assuming that Porter's involvement with Hicks would not at all please
Trump, were less than discreet about it.
* * *
In the heightened enmity of the Trump White House, Rob Porter may have
succeeded in becoming the most disliked person by everyone except per-
haps the president himself A square-jawed, 1950s-looking guy who could
have been a model for Brylcreem, he was almost a laughable figure of
betrayal and perfidy: if he hadn't stabbed you in the back, you would be
forced to acknowledge how unworthy he considered you to be. A sitcom
sort of suck-up—"Eddie Haskell," cracked Bannon, citing the early televi-
sion icon of insincerity and brownnosing featured in Leave It to Beaver—he
embraced Chief of Staff John Kelly, while at the same time poisoning him
with the president. Porter's estimation of his own high responsibilities in
the White House, together with the senior-most jobs that the president,
he let it be known, was promising him, seemed to put the administration
and the nation squarely on his shoulders.
8 MICHAEL WOLFF
SIEGE
Porter had, before the age of forty, two bitter ex-wives, at least one
of whom he had beaten, and both of whom he had cheated on at talk-
of-the-town levels. During a stint as a Senate staffer, the married Porter
had an affair with an intern, costing him his job. His girlfriend Samantha
Dravis had moved in with Porter in the summer of 2017, while, quite
unbeknownst to her, he was seeing Hicks. "I cheated on you because you're
not attractive enough:' he later told Dravis.
In a potentially criminal break of protocol, Porter had gained access
to his raw FBI clearance reports and seen the statements of his ex-wives.
His most recent ex-wife had also written a blog about his alleged abuse,
which, while it did not name him, clearly fingered him. Concerned about
the damaging impact his former wives could have on his security review,
he recruited Dravis to help him smooth his relationship with both women.
Lewandowski, Hicks's former boyfriend, caught wind of the Hicks-
Porter relationship and began working to expose it; by some reports,
he got paparazzi to follow Hicks. Though Porter's history of abuse was
slowly making its way to the surface as a result of the FBI investigation,
the Lewandowski campaign against Hicks cut through many other efforts
to cover up Porter's transgressions.
Dravis, in the autumn of 2017, heard the Lewandowski-pushed
rumors of the Hicks-Porter relationship. After finding Hicks's number
listed under a man's name in Porter's contacts, Dravis confronted Porter,
who promptly threw her out. Moving back in with her parents, she began
her own revenge campaign, openly talking about Porter's security clear-
ance issues, including to people inside the White House counsel's office,
saying he had protection at the highest levels in the White House. Then,
along with Lewandowski, Dravis helped leak the details of the Hicks-
Porter romance to the Daily Mail, which published a story about it on
February 1.
But Dravis, joined by Porter's former wives, decided that, outra-
geously, he had come out looking good in the Daily Mail account—he
was part of a glam power couple! Porter called Dravis to taunt her: "You
thought you could get me!" Dravis and his former wives all then publicly
revealed their abuse at his hand. His first wife said he kicked and punched
her; she even produced a photograph of her black eye. His second wife
informed the media that she had filed an emergency protective orC
against him.
The White House, or at least Kelly—and likely Hicks—had been am
of many of these claims and, effectively, covered them up. ("You usua
have enough competent people for White House positions to weed out
wife beaters, but you couldn't be so choosy in the Trump White House,"
one Republican acquaintance of Porter's.) The furor that erupted arou
Porter and his troubling gross-guy history not only annoyed Trump
"He stinks of bad press"—it further weakened Kelly. On February 7, af
both of his former wives gave interviews to CNN, Porter resigned.
A publicity-shy Hicks—Donald Trump put a high value on associa
who did not steal his press opportunities—suddenly found her love 1
in the glare of intense international press scrutiny. Her affair with the d
credited Porter highlighted her own odd relationship with the presid(
and his family, as well as the haphazard management, interpersonal •:1
functions, and general lack of political savvy in the Trump court.
* * *
The affair was, curiously, among the least of Hicks's problems. Indeed, i
Hicks the Porter scandal became perhaps a better cloud under which
leave the administration than what almost everybody in the West Wi
assumed was the real cloud.
On February 27, a reporter at the Washington insider newsletter Axi
Jonathan Swan, a favorite conduit for White House leaks, reported ti
Josh Raffel was leaving the White House. In a novel arrangement, Rai
had come into the White House in April 2017 as the exclusive spokespers
for the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner, and his wife, Ivanka, bypa
ing the White House communications team. Raffel, who, like Kushn
was a Democrat, had worked for Hiltzik Strategies, the New York pub
relations firm that represented Ivanka's clothing line.
Hope Hicks, who had also worked for the Hiltzik firm—perhaps 1),
known for having long represented the film producer Harvey Weinste
caught, in the fall of 2017, in an epochal harassment and abuse scan(
and cover-up—had originally had the same role as Raffel but at a hie
level: she was the personal spokesperson for the president. In Septemb
10 MICHAEL WOLFF
SIEGE
Hicks had been elevated to White House communications director, with
Raffel as her number two.
The trouble had arisen the previous summer. Both Hicks and Raffel
had been on Air Force One in July 2017 as the news broke about Donald
Trump Jr.'s meeting in Trump Tower during the campaign with Russian
government go-betweens offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. During the
flight back to the United States after the G20 summit in Germany, Hicks
and Raffel aided the president in his efforts to issue a largely false story
about the Trump Tower meeting, thus becoming part of the cover-up.
Even though Raffel had been at the White House for a little more than
nine months, the Axios report said that his departure had been under dis-
cussion for several months. That was untrue. It was an abrupt exit.
The next day, just as abruptly, Hope Hicks—the person in the White
House closest to the president—resigned as well.
The one person who perhaps knew more than anyone else about the
workings of the Trump campaign and the Trump White House was sud-
denly out the door. The profound concern inside the White House was
the reasonable supposition that Hicks and Raffel, both witnesses to and
participants in the president's efforts to cover up the details of his son and
son-in-law's meeting with the Russians, were subjects or targets of the
Mueller investigation—or, worse, had already cut a deal.
The president, effusive in his public praise for Hicks, did not try to
talk her out of leaving. In the weeks to come he would mope about her
absence—"Where's my Hope-y?"—but, in fact, as soon as he got wind
that she might be talking, he wanted to cut her loose and began, in a
significant rewrite, downgrading her status and importance on the cam-
paign and in the White House.
Yet here, from Trump's point of view, was a hopeful point about Hicks:
as central as she was to his presidency, her duties really only consisted of
pleasing him. She was an unlikely agent of grand strategy and great con-
spiracies. Trump's team was made up of only bit players.
* * *
John Dowd may have been reluctant to give his client bad news, but
he well understood the danger of a thorough prosecutor with virtually
unlimited resources. The more a determined team of G-men sifts, strir
and inspects, the greater the chance that both methodical and cast
crimes will be revealed. The more comprehensive the search, the mc
inevitable the outcome. The case of Donald Trump—with his history
bankruptcies, financial legerdemain, dubious associations, and gene]
sense of impunity—certainly seemed to offer prosecutors something
an embarrassment of riches.
For his part, however, Donald Trump yet seemed to believe that I
skills and instincts were at least a match for all the thoroughness a]
resources of the United States Department of Justice. He even believ
their exhaustive approach would work in his favor. "Boring. Confusi
for everybody:' he said, dismissing the reports of the investigation pi
vided by Dowd and others. "You can't follow any of this. No hook:'
One of the many odd aspects of Trump's presidency was that
did not see being president, either the responsibilities or the exposu
as being all that different from his pre-presidential life. He had endur
almost countless investigations in his long career. He had been involv
in various kinds of litigation for the better part of forty-five years. He
a fighter who, with brazenness and aggression, got out of fixes that wot
have ruined a weaker, less wily player. That was his essential busint
strategy: what doesn't kill me strengthens me. Though he was wound
again and again, he never bled out.
"It's playing the game," he explained in one of his frequent mor
logues about his own superiority and everyone else's stupidity. "I'm go
at the game. Maybe I'm the best. Really, I could be the best. I think I
the best. I'm very good. Very cool. Most people are afraid that the wo
might happen. But it doesn't, unless you're stupid. And I'm not stupid: