The Apprentice: Trump, Mueller and the Subversion of American Democracy

by Greg Miller

Overview

Now updated with new information about efforts to interfere with the 2020 election and Donald Trump’s obstruction of justice.

It has been called the political crime of the century: a foreign government, run by a brutal authoritarian leader, secretly interfering with the American presidential election to help elect the candidate of its choice. Now Greg Miller, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter at the Washington Post, drawing upon hundreds of exclusive interviews and confidential documents, uncovers the truth about the Kremlin’s covert attempt to help Trump win the presidency, the fate of the Mueller investigation, the Ukrainian “quid-pro-quo”, ongoing White House attempts to cover up evidence, and Trump’s continuing deference to Vladimir Putin’s wishes.

 

“A vital contribution to our understanding of how we got here.” —Charles Kaiser, The Guardian

 

“Painstakingly researched. . . . An exhaustive and authoritative case.” —Salon

 

“Miller puts it all together.” —Kai Bird, Washington Post

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062803719
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	02/18/2020
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

GREG MILLER is a national security reporter for the Washington Post. He was part of the team that won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for their groundbreaking stories on Russia’s 2016 election interference and also part of the team awarded the 2014 Pulitzer for coverage of American surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden. 

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

Part 1

1 The Hack 17

2 Putin's Trolls 33

3 Moths to the Flame 55

Part 2

4 "I Believe You Have Some Information for Us" 93

5 The Missing Emails 113

6 Crossfire Hurricane 135

7 Deep Inside the Kremlin 149

Part 3

8 Dezinformatsiya 175

9 The Russian Ambassador 193

10 Briefing the President 223

Part 4

11 You're Fired 261

12 The Special Counsel Strikes 289

Part 5

13 "I Can't Put on the Charm" 319

14 Helsinki 349

Epilogue 387

Acknowledgments 395

Notes 397

Index 413

Editorial Reviews

Lucid and startling…a scathing portrait of the commander-in-chief’s personal and political failings, compounded by the dismal inability of other politicians and institutions to get to grips with the abundant evidence of Russian meddling….The book is the clearest account yet of what Russia actually did.” — Times (UK)

“We cannot understand what happened in the 2016 election, Russia-gate or the imploding Trump presidency by reading the 24-hour digital news on our phones....Fortunately, we still have a simple technology invented nearly six centuries ago: books. Greg Miller has written a damn good one.” — Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian

From the Publisher

Lucid and startling…a scathing portrait of the commander-in-chief’s personal and political failings, compounded by the dismal inability of other politicians and institutions to get to grips with the abundant evidence of Russian meddling….The book is the clearest account yet of what Russia actually did.

Times (UK)

We cannot understand what happened in the 2016 election, Russia-gate or the imploding Trump presidency by reading the 24-hour digital news on our phones....Fortunately, we still have a simple technology invented nearly six centuries ago: books. Greg Miller has written a damn good one.

Kai Bird

Lucid and startling…a scathing portrait of the commander-in-chief’s personal and political failings, compounded by the dismal inability of other politicians and institutions to get to grips with the abundant evidence of Russian meddling….The book is the clearest account yet of what Russia actually did.

Times (UK)

★ 10/08/2018
President Trump is but the bumbling apprentice to Vladimir Putin's master political manipulator, according to this penetrating study of Trump's Russia problem. Pulitzer-winning Washington Post national security correspondent Miller (The Interrogators) builds on his own reporting to recap, in novelistic style, Russia's meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion with Trump's campaign and administration. He covers the Russian government's hacking of Democratic National Committee computers and its pro-Trump social media propaganda, contacts between Trump campaign figures and Russian officials and operatives, Trump's hostility toward special prosecutor Robert Mueller's investigation, and Trump's ardent admiration (expressed in speeches, tweets, and summits) for the Russian president. Well-paced but rich in detail, Miller's narrative is one of the best of the many new books on this evolving saga. His treatment of Trump's possible obstruction of justice in trying to influence investigations by former FBI director James Comey and other intelligence officials is especially good. But on the underlying issue of collusion, there's no smoking gun here; Miller doesn't demonstrate that Russian machinations won Trump the presidency, and his incisive examination of the Trump administration's Russia policy shows that Washington politics—aka democracy—has forced Trump to accept hard-line measures against Russia. The problem that stands out in this account isn't Russian subversion, but a biased, erratic, and self-centered American president. Photos. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Lucid and startling…a scathing portrait of the commander-in-chief’s personal and political failings, compounded by the dismal inability of other politicians and institutions to get to grips with the abundant evidence of Russian meddling….The book is the clearest account yet of what Russia actually did.

The Times (UK)