Truth continues to prove a major stumbling block for the Trump administration. Last fall, an anonymous official inside the administration published a piece in The New York Times explaining an internal “resistance” effort to try to rein in President Donald Trump where he went most wildly off the edge. The article set Trump off personally, who called the piece “treasonous” and demanded that then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions investigate to find out who the author was. Now, that author is back with a book coming out next month with the ominous title: A Warning. They’re remaining anonymous through publication.
What CNN describes as a draft press release explains the book as “picking up from where those first words of warning left off,” adding that “this explosive book offers a shocking, first-hand account of President Trump and his record.” In the original piece, whoever the author was wrote that Trump was “impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective” and insisted that “many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”
The publisher handling the book is Twelve, a division of the Hachette Book Group, and it’s coming out on November 19.
Twelve’s head Sean Desmond insisted:
‘It’s an honor and a privilege to publish this book. This is serious stuff and this is a serious warning about our President.’
Asserting that the book’s author undertook their effort “as an act of conscience and of duty,” Javelin co-founder Matt Latimer explained:
‘The Author of A WARNING refused the chance at a seven figure advance and intends to donate a substantial amount of any royalties to the White House Correspondents Association and other organizations that fight for a free press that seeks the truth.’
Apparently, “elaborate precautions have been taken to protect the author’s identity,” but the publisher apparently managed to get some kind of verification that the author really was the same person behind the original opinion piece anyway.
It’s unclear whether the author of A Warning is still a member of the Trump administration — there’s been a consistently high rate of senior staff turnover, so they might not be. Latimer declined to comment on that point. Considering precedent, the book seems likely to set off another political firestorm. Trump has personally lashed out about previous books chronicling the inner workings of his administration, and he’s simultaneously kept a steady stream of ads going on his personal Twitter feed for books that he does like.
Despite Trump clinging to these fluff books from Fox News talking heads, he’s hit another major anonymous source-based roadblock more recently than the original Times op-ed. An anonymous whistleblower complaint from inside the intelligence community drove House Democrats to launch their currently ongoing impeachment inquiry, in which they’ve already heard from a large and growing number of witnesses.
This Tuesday, investigators hosted acting Ukraine Ambassador Bill Taylor for testimony, whose account of a scheme Trump led to get Ukraine to produce dirt on the Bidens apparently set off rounds of “gasps,” according to one source.
