True Crimes and Misdemeanors Quotes

“That day was also the first time a case of COVID-19 was diagnosed in South Korea, which promptly began an orderly regime of testing that limited the immediate impact of the virus. In contrast, Trump that night addressed the growing threat with his customary salesman’s patter. “We have it totally under control,” he said. No, they didn’t, and Trump’s feckless indifference in those early days cost thousands of American lives.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“Trump did, in short, exactly what Mueller said he did. The two men—president and prosecutor—were like photo negatives of each other. Trump could not tell the truth, and Mueller could not tell a lie.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“In the trial and throughout Trump’s presidency, there was never any doubt about his character or his conduct—his dishonesty, his arrogance, his ignorance, and his narcissism.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“From the day he declared his candidacy, through the Russia scandal and his endless solicitude toward Vladimir Putin, and on into his cruel manipulation of the struggling democracy in Ukraine, Trump didn’t give a shit about anyone or anything but himself.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“The White House released the military aid to Ukraine after allegations of the link to the Biden investigation became public. In other words, the Trump administration released the aid only because it was caught linking the aid to the quest for political dirt.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“It wasn’t that Mueller was unable to reach a conclusion about whether Trump committed a crime but that under the circumstances he chose not to do so. In other words, Quarles said, Mueller could reach a determination, but he would not.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“Mueller had uncovered extensive evidence that Trump committed the crime of obstruction of justice—repeatedly.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“Certainly, Mueller found abundant evidence that Trump and his campaign wanted to collude and conspire with Russia, but they hadn’t been able to close the deal.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“It was the job of Trump’s lawyer to tell him not to do it. But that’s not what Giuliani did. To the contrary, Trump sent Giuliani to Ukraine, and he went. Together, the two men didn’t just advocate for collusion with Ukraine; they executed it.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“Instead, Giuliani pressed ahead, with Trump’s encouragement, to begin a full-scale investigation about Joe and Hunter Biden in Ukraine. If Giuliani had done anything else, Donald Trump would not have been impeached. For this reason, Giuliani’s work must rank among the most disastrous pieces of advocacy in the history of American lawyering.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“The president and first lady arrived a few minutes later, and Trump immediately walked up to Hutson, ogled her up and down, and said to Giuliani, “Great job, Rudy!” (Melania Trump, disgusted by her husband’s leering, walked off and refused to pose for photographs.)”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“By 2018, the world had become largely inured to Trump’s tweets—even with their racism and misogyny, their mindless belligerence, norm-shattering impropriety, and constant lies.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“It was the clearest evidence so far, according to many in the Mueller office, that the president had committed a crime in office—obstruction of justice.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“In 2013, Trump’s son Eric told the sportswriter James Dodson, “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.” (On Twitter, Eric Trump denied having made the remark.)”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“Trump had been lying for his entire adult life, and far from being brought down by this pervasive dishonesty, he had been elected president of the United States. Why change what was working so well? And in any event, what man in his eighth decade changes such a fundamental aspect of his character? Not Trump.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“As a presidential candidate, Trump continued working on a plan to build in Russia.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“On June 18, 2013, just after Trump announced that the Miss Universe pageant would take place in Russia, he tweeted, with a kind of desperate giddiness, “Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow—if so, will he become my new best friend?”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Trump told the Russians. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“But Comey and company came to realize—as others would soon learn in the crucible of Donald Trump’s presidency—that they had no idea of the magnitude of his flaws, of his narcissism, sociopathy, and ignorance. Trump’s only concern was his feral self-interest, his only belief was that those around him existed to serve him.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“Trump had never served in government, or the military. He had no experience with national security or terrorism issues. He had only ever worked for his own family business, where he consorted with the seediest of characters in New York real estate and earned a reputation for sharp practices, and worse. In other words, Comey realized, Trump was boss, stranger, novice, witness, possible security risk, potential subject of criminal investigation, and president-elect of the United States. How was the FBI director supposed to navigate all that?”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“This was especially true in the months leading up to the 2016 election, when the FBI conducted two politically explosive investigations: the first, about Hillary Clinton’s email practices at the State Department, became widely known, while the second, about possible Russian infiltration of the Trump campaign, never became public before Election Day.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“But Trump responded to the coronavirus with the same belligerent dishonesty that characterized his treatment of Mueller and impeachment. In the critical early days of the pandemic, when it might have been contained, he behaved with characteristic self-obsession, preferring to hound his enemies on Twitter rather than to learn the facts about the virus and protect the American people.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“The Trump of The Apprentice—steely, decisive, well versed in the ways of business and of the world—was a creation of the producers of the program.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“In the early 1990s, Trump made a disastrous foray into the gambling business in Atlantic City, and his empire nearly collapsed in multiple bankruptcies.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“Trump received his first four deferments from the Vietnam-era draft because he was a college student. In 1968, after he graduated from Penn and thus became ineligible for more educational deferments, he received a fifth—a medical deferment because of bone spurs.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“abuse of power regarding Ukraine had more grave consequences. He put Ukrainian lives at risk; he rewarded Russian aggression; he jeopardized American national security;”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“the phone call was the linchpin of the impeachment case against Trump, it was far from the only evidence”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“plain from his findings—that the president committed multiple crimes. In other words, if Mueller wanted to hear from Trump, he could have subpoenaed him; if Mueller thought Trump committed a crime, he could have said so. Instead, by hedging on both issues, Mueller undermined his otherwise remarkable work. — Like any bully, Trump was emboldened by the retreat of his adversary. This was apparent in the almost surreal confluence of events on July 24 and 25,”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“In a less polarized environment, the president and Congress would have responded to these findings with bipartisan outrage,”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

“To pass the buck to their constituents, as so many Republican senators did, was to shirk their constitutionally mandated duty. This”
― Jeffrey Toobin, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump