U.S. President Donald Trump speaks on the day he is expected to sign a sweeping spending and tax legislation, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 4, 2025. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno
President Donald Trump has so many revenge campaigns and such a huge list of grievances that the White House staff is struggling to keep them straight.
Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, a new book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, details a number of exchanges with aides. Haberman explained on CNN Wednesday morning that there is no longer a line between the Justice Department and Trump.
"But we make clear in the reporting how true that is he wanted the top DOJ officials to understand — as they were trying to obtain an indictment against Letitia James — and there was this question of whether a mortgage fraud charge could actually be brought. Todd Blanche, who was then the deputy attorney general, was not convinced this was going to work," Haberman explained.
"[Blanche] was operating, in our reporting, from the perspective of if you're going to bring a case, you need to be able to actually prove the case," she said.
"Like a lawyer" host John Berman cut in.
Haberman read an excerpt illustrating Trump's frustrations with James and the lack of progress in going after her.
"He told one adviser that Blanche needed to grasp: He didn't really care whether she was ultimately convicted," the book explains. "The president's true goal was to drag into court the New York Attorney General who had won a nearly half billion dollar civil fraud judgment against him."
Trump told the advisor, "I want to make her life miserable."
When they asked Trump whether he said it, Trump said he didn't think so, but agreed, "I would have said it."
He attacked her as a "dirty cop" and "very corrupt person."
"So, we got a real look at how this is working," said Haberman. The reporter also detailed a case in which top aides Stephen Miller and Boris Epstein were talking about one of Trump's targets from 2020 that they couldn't remember.
"They're talking about 'who was that guy involved in the in the elections,' in the machines and the security of the elections in 2020?" Haberman said, noting they couldn't even remember and had to look up who the person was. It was Chris Krebs.
"And then soon there is this presidential memorandum about investigating Krebs," Haberman explained.
