The Apprentice Quotes

“Putin was a new modern “strongman,” Peskov said, an archetype who was spawning imitations across the globe. “People around the world are tired of leaders that are all similar to each other. There’s a demand in the world for special sovereign leaders, for decisive ones who do not fit into general frameworks,” the Kremlin spokesman explained. “Putin’s Russia was the starting point.” Others that fit the mold included Viktor Orban in Hungary, Xi Jinping in China, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, and Recep Tayyip Erdog˘an in Turkey.”
― Greg Miller, The Apprentice

“Rosenstein listed seven former top Justice Department officials who had similarly denounced Comey and closed with a devastating assessment: “The FBI is unlikely to regain public and congressional trust until it has a director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them.”
― Greg Miller, The Apprentice

“In one, a former Clinton campaign adviser lamented that “her instincts can be terrible.”
― Greg Miller, The Apprentice

“And then there are those—CIA officials among them—who suspect that Russia’s leverage on Trump, and the collusion between them, has always been hiding right in front of us.”
― Greg Miller, The Apprentice

“Outraged British officials described the attempt to kill the Skripals as the first use of a nerve agent on European soil since World War II. Initially”
― Greg Miller, The Apprentice

“He grasps his armchair intently with his left hand and gestures with his right as he describes his recollection of a Soviet comedy classic called Gentlemen of Fortune. “There’s a scene in which the main character turns up in the jail cell and a second character—some kind of ogre—tells him: Your place is by the piss bucket!” Putin says. “Well, in essence, as crude as it may sound, this, in fact, was how Russia was treated after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. They keep trying to show us our place. Well, we don’t like this place.”
― Greg Miller, The Apprentice

“He left government briefly, taking a $400,000-a-year job with a Boston-based law firm in 1993, but was deeply unhappy and two years later called U.S. attorney Eric H. Holder Jr., who later became attorney general under President Obama, and asked for an assignment he found far more gratifying—prosecuting Washington, D.C., homicides. “I love everything about investigations,” he said years later. “I love the forensics. I love the fingerprints and the bullet casings and all the rest that comes along with doing that kind of work.”
― Greg Miller, The Apprentice

“The president made clear that he was bothered that the cloud was still hovering “because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal.” Then, in a cryptic reference to their tense dinner in the Green Room, Trump said, “We had that thing, you know.” Comey didn’t know, but the president’s meaning seemed obvious. Trump was remembering his demand for loyalty and Comey’s counteroffer of “honest loyalty.” The gap in their understandings of that Green Room compromise was about to have serious consequences. It was the last time the two men would speak.”
― Greg Miller, The Apprentice

“Cohen-Watnick noticed that unmasking requests weren’t being reviewed by lawyers before they were submitted, nor was anyone keeping detailed records at the White House of who was asking for names of Americans and why. Requests were approved seemingly routinely, almost never denied, under long-standing policies that seemed surprisingly lax.”
― Greg Miller, The Apprentice

“able to substantiate them or cross the publication threshold. Now, because of Comey’s conversation at Trump Tower, news organizations had reason to reconsider. Salacious memos circulating in Washington were one thing; the director of the FBI briefing the incoming president on those allegations was news and word leaked swiftly. Comey had in effect triggered the launch.”
― Greg Miller, The Apprentice

“if any—the Russian operation had.” Clapper’s answer was less than satisfying for the president-elect, but it seemed to bring a sigh of relief from his team, whose main concern seemed to be ensuring that no part of the report suggested that any factor other than the candidate’s own strategic vision and charisma had accounted for his triumph. Comey later marveled at their myopic focus.”
― Greg Miller, The Apprentice

“that Comey argued that it might be better if only one person had that conversation with the president-elect. Brennan, who had been more reluctant than the others to include the Steele material, saw no reason to give the document additional credence by sending an intelligence official in to talk about it with Trump. At one point, he pulled Clapper aside, telling him, “You don’t want to go anywhere near it.” Assigning Comey this task, however, created other risks. With”
― Greg Miller, The Apprentice

“Left unsaid was that he had also signed a secret intelligence memorandum, a “finding,” authorizing the NSA, CIA, and U.S. Cyber Command to carry out a covert operation involving the deployment of implants in critical Russian networks that in this case could function like bombs, exploding key nodes of Russian infrastructure when detonated. The plan would take more than a year to implement and was aimed at putting the United States in position to inflict immediate damage in the event of a cyber conflict with Moscow. It would be up to Donald Trump to use it—or not.”
― Greg Miller, The Apprentice

“Clinton waited until the next morning to deliver her remarks. The delay enabled her to compose herself and a touching, uplifting speech.”
― Greg Miller, The Apprentice

“this manner, the Russians figured out a vast, coordinated way to curate the news consumption of Americans by selectively highlighting stories that served Putin’s divisive agenda.”
― Greg Miller, The Apprentice

“Few outside of Silicon Valley understood that while the private political bent of many of those in the technology industry was liberal, its animating ideology was capitalism”
― Greg Miller, The Apprentice

“when approached about signing the October 7 statement, Comey refused. The reason he cited—that the White House had waited too long and it was now too close to the election for the FBI director to be speaking publicly about anything related to the election—would in hindsight be hard to understand, particularly given the news he was about to make in two weeks’ time regarding Clinton’s emails.”
― Greg Miller, The Apprentice

“Comey may have understood the stakes, but he failed to anticipate how disastrous his own decisions would be for the bureau and, ultimately, himself. His handling of the Clinton email probe would itself come under investigation and serve as a pretext for his firing. And Comey’s tendency to entrust a small team at bureau headquarters for the most politically charged investigations—rather than employ a nearby field office—created a hidden vulnerability that would erupt a year later. It meant that one agent—Strzok—was heading the two most high-profile cases the bureau was handling.”
― Greg Miller, The Apprentice

“Instead, within days of the bureau’s receipt of the Australian report on Papadopoulos, Comey convened a team of advisers referred to internally as “the skinny group”—because membership was so slender—and began mapping out a probe that would again pull the bureau into the minefield of presidential politics.”
― Greg Miller, The Apprentice

“She then, unprompted, offered to arrange a meeting with Australia’s high commissioner to the United Kingdom (a term used instead of ambassador among members of the British Commonwealth). Even that title understated Alexander Downer’s stature: the scion of a dynastic political family in Australia, he had been the country’s foreign minister until 2007, finishing an eleven-year term that was longer than any in the country’s history. His father had also been high commissioner to the United Kingdom, and his grandfather was one of the signatories of Australia’s constitution, a document that was partly drafted in 1897 in a ballroom of the family’s North Adelaide estate, a landmark still known as Downer House. “He’s a great contact,” Thompson said. “He’s”
― Greg Miller, The Apprentice

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the thirty thousand emails that are missing,” Trump said, referring to the messages that Clinton had deleted from her private server. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” There was a hush in the hotel lobby, broken by the exclamation of a single editor: “Holy shit.” Hours later, GRU hackers for the first time launched spearphishing attacks against private email accounts used by Clinton’s personal office and seventy-six addresses associated with the campaign.”
― Greg Miller, The Apprentice

“The establishment was almost empty on the humid afternoon of July 26 when Tom Hamburger, a reporter for The Washington Post, settled into a quiet corner. One of the more seasoned members of a distinct Washington breed, investigative reporters who specialize in digging through thick stacks of campaign finance reports and finding sources privy to backstage maneuvers, Hamburger had worked at the Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal, where he toiled alongside Glenn Simpson before the latter’s departure from the news business to found Fusion GPS.”
― Greg Miller, The Apprentice

“Two speakers in particular tapped into this mood, all but endorsing mob rule: Michael Flynn and Donald Trump. While at DIA, behind the scenes, Flynn had encouraged”
― Greg Miller, The Apprentice

“Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,” Sater wrote to Cohen in an email touting the project.”
― Greg Miller, The Apprentice