Steve Bannon says Trump Tower meeting with Russians was ‘treasonous’
Trump's former chief strategist smells political trouble for Trump Jr.
Trump's former chief strategist smells political trouble for Trump Jr.
Steve Bannon reportedly blasted the meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and Russians as “treasonous.”
According to a new book by Michael Wolff called Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, Bannon predicted that the Russia investigation will focus on money laundering and will hurt Trump Jr. badly.
“They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV,” Bannon said, according to The Guardian, which got a sneak peek at the highly-anticipated political book.
The book is based on over 20 interviews with President Donald Trump and those around him. It’s expected to offer an insight into a White House plagued by constant crises, like the Trump Tower meeting.
‘You should have called the FBI immediately’
According to Wolff, Bannon blasted Trump Jr. shortly after the story broke that he had met with Russians in Trump Tower. In July, after the New York Times published the story, Trump Jr. claimed that the meeting hadn’t been consequential. But Bannon clearly disagreed.
“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. They didn’t have any lawyers,” Bannon apparently said at the time.
“Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad sh**, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately,” he added.
Bannon then reportedly went on to say that if Trump Jr. wanted such a meeting, he should have set it up “in a Holiday Inn in Manchester, New Hampshire, with your lawyers who meet with these people.”
That way, Bannon said, information could have been “dump[ed] … down to Breitbart or something like that, or maybe some other more legitimate publication.”
“You never see it, you never know it, because you don’t need to … But that’s the brain trust that they had.”