• 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 c