Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon believes President Trump obstructed justice, according to author Michael Wolff.
Doing the media rounds to promote his new book Siege, a book on the White House which relies heavily on interviews with Bannon, Wolff was asked about special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“Do you think Steve Bannon believes that the president obstructed justice?” CNN’s John Berman asked.
“Yes,” Wolff said. “Now I would say that Steve Bannon would go and characterize this as, that’s Donald Trump. So, I mean, the Steve Bannon view is partly, you know what this guy is, there’s never been any, any illusion otherwise. He’s Donald Trump. That’s the man you elected. A man who cannot, literally cannot, tell the truth.”
The questions comes after Mueller, as part of his investigation, declined to make a determination about whether he believed the president attempted to obstruct justice. He did, however, outline 10 instances of possible obstruction, and while Attorney General William Barr said there was insufficient evidence to accuse Trump of an obstruction crime, Democrats argue Mueller left it to them to investigate and decide.
Wolff also commented on a part of his book that focused on Trump’s business empire. Wolff wrote that Trump’s businesses “increasingly seemed to resemble a semi-criminal enterprise.” Bannon replied, “I think we can drop the ‘semi’ part.”
Asked if he thinks this was meant as a joke, Wolff told CNN that he thinks Bannon is “perfectly straightforward about this” and suspects the former Breitbart News executive chairman has “direct knowledge of that.”
Bannon, who also was chief executive officer of Trump’s successful 2016 campaign, left the White House in August 2017.
Wolff’s last book, Fire and Fury, was riddled with unsubstantiated allegations, several of which were denounced as false. His new book, which hits bookshelves Tuesday, is already facing accusations of falsehoods, and in an interview with the New York Times the author admitted he does not check his stories with his subjects.
