40 MICHAEL WOLFF SIEGE 41 the presidency. That's what it looked like on paper. But the opposite was him, but managed to swallow his rage. Top people from the Bush White true, too. There was a permanent-government class in the Justice Depart- House, the FBI, and the Justice Department almost came to literal blows ment that believed an election ought to have no role at all in how the at the bedside of the ailing AG John Ashcroft—James Comey himself DOJ conducted itself. The department was outside politics and ought standing in the way of the White House representatives trying to get Ash- to be as blind as the courts. In this view, the Justice Department, as the croft to renew a domestic surveillance program—with the White House nation’s preeminent investigator and prosecutor, was as much a check on finally having to back down. Under Obama, Comey, who by then was the the White House, and ought to be as independent of the White House, FBI director, made a further grab for the FBI's independence from the as the other branches of government. (And within the Justice Department, Justice Department when he unilaterally decided to end and later reopen the FBI claimed its own level of independence from its DOJ masters, as | the Hillary Clinton email investigation—and, by doing so, arguably toss- well as from the White House itself.) ing the election to her opponent. Even among those at Justice and the FBI who had a more nuanced Enter Donald Trump, who had neither political nor bureaucratic view, and who recognized the symbiotic nature of the department's rela- experience. His entire working life was spent at the head of what was in tionship with the White House, there was yet a strong sense of the lines | essence a small family operation, one designed to do what he wanted and that cannot be crossed. The Justice Department and the FBI had, since j to bow to his style of doing business. At the time of his election, he was Watergate, found themselves accountable to Congress and