When Trump returned to court after lunch, aide Boris Epshteyn handed CNN's Kaitlan Collins a stack of color photo printouts and said, "Can you give that to George when you see him?" She looked befuddled. Epshteyn added, "Conway.” Trump reportedly travels with a portable printer
What's on Trump's mind? Trump posted photos of George Conway at his 2016 Election Night party this afternoon on his Truth Social, apparently between breaks in the trial. "Mr. Kellyanne Conway celebrating my Victory in 2016!" he wrote.
Nuclear war is unthinkable, until events like today’s false alarm in Hawaii confront us with the worst thing we can imagine. But
@DanielEllsberg
has been thinking about the unthinkable for decades
My latest feature for
@NYMag
is a deep dive into an experiment in government austerity: McKinsey's all-encompassing work on the bankrupt island of Puerto Rico, which is spending more than $1 billion on advice from consultants and lawyers
There may be no better distillation of Trump's communication style that he keeps insisting day after day that his courtroom is cold even though, by any objective measure, it is hot
I take it people are unhappy with the GOT finale but personally I thought its depiction of a drawn-out, consultant-driven hiring committee process that ends with a groundswell for an “out of the box” candidate who is manifestly unqualified, was pretty dead-on
My latest cover story for
@NYMag
is on New York's commercial real estate crash, and what it means for the future of the city, its skyline, and the people who own it all
I was talking to
@JeremyStahl
on a street corner after court on Thursday when we saw Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche. “How do you think I’m doing?” he asked. My answer is complicated
Having trouble keeping track of what’s going on with the Horowitz report, the Durham investigation, the Chalupa affair, and the Parallax Corporaton? (Ok, one of those is made up!) The most important man to keep your eye on in all of this is Bill Barr
My latest feature for
@NYMag
is a profile of Cindy Yang. It’s about Palm Beach, social ambition, money, Donald Trump’s business, corruption, prostitution, US-China relations, football, Mar-a-Lago, possibly spying, and more than anything else, Florida
My latest piece for
@NYMag
is about the most unfixable problem of this pandemic year, public schools, and what the reopening debate did to one lovely suburban community. Reporting it was cheaper than paying for therapy
Cop testifying in NYPD corruption case today names Ike Perlmutter, Mar-a-Lago member and friend/supporter of Donald Trump. Perlmutter has memorably played an unofficial role as "shadow ruler" of the VA, as detailed in this
@ProPublica
story
Villanueva testifying that he got to go to Los Angeles premieres of Marvel movies in exchange for expediting gun permits for Marvel CEO Isaac Perlmutter. Says that Perlmutter's assistant, Marisol Garcia, arranged the deal.
A day later, *another*
@NYTimes
story predicting a hot desking, itinerant future of work, again without zero discussion of question of how employees are compensated for devoting their own real estate to office work.
And here's the cover! The issue is filled with illustrative charts and sidebars from my colleagues at
@Curbed
. You can find it all online, but there's still nothing like the power and convenience of having it all in print.
Maybe it's possible that every generation, in middle age, tries to turn baseball back into the sport it was when it was 10 years old. Inside the sport's effort to bring back triples, stolen bases, contact hitting, and the spirit of Rod Carew (by
@iboudway
)
Didn’t think I could be surprised by anything about Trump’s management of the federal bureaucracy. But this story about the Mar-a-Lago member who runs Marvel Comics and his stealth influence over the VA is simply astounding. Great work by
@ProPublica
David Rubenstein has well documented legislative interests before government. The president is pushing a major social spending bill that involves taxing the ultra-wealthy. And yet, Biden’s defenders are acting to this news as if it's insane to point out this out.
The Charlie Kushner one is significant in terms of the family real estate business. As long as he had a felony record there was a lot of stuff he couldn’t do.
My latest for
@NYMag
, with co-writer extraordinaire
@Olivianuzzi
, is the crazy, can't-make-it-up story of Hunter Biden's laptop. It's about political families, foreign money, information warfare and what happened to a man after his life was totally exposed
Trump v Biden will build on the lessons of Bush v. Gore (and will involve many of the same people). For
@NYMag
, I delved into the history of the Florida recount, and Al Gore’s noble mistakes, based on reporting I did for a book I’m writing
My latest piece for
@NYMag
, "The Panic Attack of the Power Brokers," is about COVID's paralyzing and polarizing effect on NYC's real estate industry, public finances and politics
One thing I thought was notable about Todd Blanche's comments on CNN last night: he refused (despite being prodded hard) to say Judge Merchan was unfair. Very different message than the one his client wants to amplify.
James O'Keefe is on paid leave from Project Veritas, and an employee says he faces a board vote on Friday that could lead to his ouster from the nonprofit he founded.
The special master evaluating the objections of
@Project_Veritas
and
@JamesOKeefeIII
over FBI searches related to the Ashley Biden diary case has issued her report. It gives prosecutors access to almost all contested documents, brushing aside claims of journalistic privilege
My own read on Juror 2, whose sympathies were the matter of much baseless speculation, is that he’s a super consumer of news. Follows Trump. Follows
@MuellerSheWrote
. He was the defense’s worst nightmare. He probably still wonders what the deal was with Alfa Bank
Following an account that posts Trump’s statements from Truth Social ≠ citing Truth Social as your primary source of news. Minor distinction, wildly different implications about Juror no. 2’s political sympathies.
I don't think it's fully gotten through that work-from-home, while convenient in some ways, is actually a huge cost shift from employers onto employees
Stunning work from top to bottom, but the reporter in me loves this little Easter egg tucked into the massive Times story, about the random relative who ended up with all of Fred Trump’s financial records in his Long Island basement. Every rich family has a Cousin Greg, it seems
Some (old) news: I'm taking a break from 2020 to write a book: a history of the Year 2000 in Florida. It's going to be about Bush v. Gore and much more: Elian, Y2K, Trump, populism, celebrity, terrorism, race, cyberspace, the past and the future. It's for
@HarperCollins
. Onward!
Hmmm ... the official
@Project_Veritas
account, which usually tweets many times a day, has been silent since last Thursday. Heard from a source in contact with staff that the nonprofit is basically shut down as board considers what to do about James O'Keefe
My latest feature for
@NYMag
is a profile of Gary Maynard, a sociology professor specializing in studying deviant and criminal behavior, who is accused of committing an unfathomable--and newly dangerous--kind of crime
Thinking back to my days as a reporter covering Congress. The basement level of the Capitol is a warren of tunnels, weird nooks and crannies and hideaway rooms, all connected to the adjoining office buildings. It's going to be very, very hard to secure the building once invaded
My latest
@NYMag
feature is an excerpt from my new book, The Year That Broke America, and the culmination of 4 years of reporting, involving hundreds of pages of FOIA docs and dozens of interviews. It's a fascinating tale of money, temptation and intrigue
My latest article, for
@Wired
, is a profile of FCC chairman Ajit Pai, the nerdy conservative ideologue who repealed net neutrality, and maybe--amid stiff competition--the most hated man on the Internet
My latest feature for
@NYMag
is about James O'Keefe, Project Veritas, a stolen diary written by Joe Biden's daughter, a FBI investigation, and the legal boundaries that separate journalism and criminal behavior. Plus, Florida!
Most notably, the master (a retired federal judge) found that the crime-fraud exception applied to many docs where PV had claimed attorney-client privilege, finding DOJ had “satisfied its burden of proving facts that show probable cause to believe that crimes” were committed
I talked with the Indian publication
@livemint
about my
@NYMag
profile of Nate Anderson, whose firm
@HindenburgRes
released a blockbuster investigation into the holdings of Gautam Adani, richest man in India (and the third-richest in the world)
On Monday,
@NYMag
will publish my latest feature, on Ted Cruz vs Beto O’Rourke. (Apt headline: “Can a Democrat Ever Win in Texas?”) Story not up online until Tuesday, so for now I’ll just post this July 4 photo of Beto and an elderly Texas taxpayer, by the great Bill McCullough
My latest article, the culmination of a year-long reporting process, is about a man who proposed to build a mosque in his New Jersey town, and what happened to him--and America--afterward
Good morning. I published a book today. It's called The Year That Broke America, and it's about the 2000 election, the 9/11 plot, Donald Trump, Florida and much more. I hope you read it. I think it explains a lot about where we live today
The complaints range from allegedly calling Spencer Meads--a longtime employee who is under scrutiny in the Biden diary case--a "pussy," to allegedly going on a hangry public rant and then taking and eating an 8-months pregnant woman's sandwich
As someone who is writing a book on the disputed 2000 Florida election, a few quick thoughts as we enter an uncertain time about the historical echoes and differences between then and now
Here is what happened when Judge Merchan kicked the press out of the courtroom today. No surprise--he threatened to hold Trump defense witness (and attorney) Robert Costello in contempt. Not sure why we couldn't be present to hear this (1/2)
It’s going to be a big week: Cohen wraps, then if Trump doesn’t testify (and he likely won’t), we’ll have summations Tuesday and maybe a verdict as soon as Thursday
Hi folks. I'm back at
@NYMag
after my six-month book leave and self-imposed social media blackout. Looking forward to getting back to the office, doing lunch, meeting people, and traveling around this great, prosperous and frivolous nation of ours!
You don't have to believe all roads lead to Russia to think it's interesting how much the Ukraine narrative intertwined with Trump's domestic political scandals
I don’t know what Beto’s going to do. But the sentiment, “He’s Barack Obama but white,” is not only glib, it also makes the single most compelling thing about Barack Obama as a political and historical figure sound like a liability!
Here is what happened when Judge Merchan kicked the press out of the courtroom today. No surprise--he threatened to hold Trump defense witness (and attorney) Robert Costello in contempt. Not sure why we couldn't be present to hear this (1/2)
It will be a while before we fully understand the psychological toll that this pandemic is taking on children, and what's maddening is, we've chosen as a society to make it worse than it had to be
Of course, no lawyer wants to attack a judge who is about to sentence his client. But it's another example of how Trump's political interests and instincts run counter to his legal interests
The president's lawyer and self-described fixer is meeting with pro-Russian Ukrainians as he seeks to drum up business and is simultaneously reminding the same president, in the Oval Office, that he is in his debt for covering up a sex scandal
My latest feature for
@NYMag
is about Nathan Anderson of Hindenburg Research, a financial detective who is digging into--and profiting from the destruction of--public companies in a fraud-filled marketplace
Attained one of my lifelong goals: making the highbrow quadrant of the
@NYMag
Approval Matrix. (And in case you’re wondering, I have nothing to do with preparing the Matrix, that’s for the cool kids in the lunchroom!)
As the report says, Nate Anderson has been working on this one for a while, we discussed it when I was working on my profile of him for
@NYMag
. Looks like it could be a doozy.
The main worker voice in this story is delighted because she gets to work from Lake Tahoe. But for most people, permanent WFH will mean devoting a room in their home to an office, or renting a larger apartment--costs they can't write off if they're W2