Quotes from Jeffrey Toobin

With regard to Ukraine, Giuliani steered Trump to disaster, in probably the greatest failure of lawyering in the history of presidential scandals. In other words, no Giuliani, no impeachment.

Still, for someone who lied as much as Trump did, he was a remarkably transparent figure. He never really pretended to be anything other than what he was—a narcissistic scoundrel. Yet he survived.

It may be an overstatement, though not much of one, to say that James Comey was responsible for both the election of Donald Trump and the appointment of Robert Mueller.

The Trump campaign was disorganized in the best of circumstances, and its policy apparatus was an especially neglected corner. ("Policy" on the campaign

The Trump campaign was disorganized in the best of circumstances, and its policy apparatus was an especially neglected corner. ("Policy" on the campaign was whatever Trump happened to say on any given day.)

As for his news conferences about the virus, Trump boasted, as thousands of his fellow citizens were dying, that "the ratings are through the roof according to, of all sources, the Failing New York Times, 'Monday Night Football, Bachelor Finale' type numbers.

The brief devoted little attention to defending Trump's actual conduct. Nor, really, did Trump's lawyers deny what he was alleged to have done.

Crossfire Hurricane was a counterintelligence operation—to find out what Russia was doing, not to find out what the Trump campaign was doing. In other words, in the summer of 2016, the FBI was investigating Russian efforts to manipulate individuals within the Trump campaign, but not the Trump campaign itself.

The closest he came to doing business in Russia was in 2007, when he signed a distribution deal for his Trump-branded vodka to be sold there. (It flopped in Russia, as it did elsewhere.)

For Trump, his presidency was more about him than what he could accomplish. For this reason, the only verdict that has ever mattered to Trump is the one rendered on Election Day.

In October 2015, a time when he had already been running for president for several months, Trump signed a nonbinding letter of intent to license the Trump name to a potential office tower in Moscow.

Trump's psychological deficits—his narcissism, his lack of empathy, his short attention span—were almost comically conspicuous, and so, too, was his tendency to project his deficits onto others.

called, in her era, the generation gap.

Thanks in part to the tutelage of Roy Cohn, his first lawyer and the one he admired most, Trump approached the courtroom with his customary cynicism. All that mattered was winning, regardless of what norms, or people, he had to trample in the process.

The emails spoke for themselves. They showed that a close adviser to a leading Russian oligarch family offered the help of the Russian government to Trump in the 2016 election. The candidate's son welcomed that assistance.

The Times story caused a sensation, not just because the emails contradicted Don junior's explanations but because they offered the clearest proof yet of coordination—collusion—between the Trump campaign and Russia.

In most circumstances, the opportunity to represent the president of the United States is highly coveted, the kind of assignment that would lead many lawyers to find a way around conflicts. But Washington's top lawyers formulated reasons to say no to Donald Trump.

Attorney-client privilege covered only conversations between lawyers and clients, so Jared and Ivanka's presence meant that the conversations with Trump's lawyers would not be privileged. But no one seemed to care, least of all the president.

Of course, in a close election, it is never possible to identify with precision the individual factors that tip the balance. But it appears likely, if not certain, that Comey cost Clinton the presidency.

So?" Weissmann asked the agent when Manafort was gone. "That man is evil," the agent said.

Through sheer repetition of the Trump gloss on the Trump Tower story, it lost much of its ability to appall and outrage.

McVeigh then drove the 1,300 miles to Arkansas, where he met up with Nichols, and they looked at property they might buy together, perhaps to start a blueberry farm.

The Trump Tower meeting told the Russians a great deal about the Trump campaign, and it told the Mueller investigation a lot, too.

But Trump could never process any interest except his own, and he regarded all executive branch employees as working for him personally.