I found this interesting tidbit along with a companion piece by Gorka.

Gorka says he was told to cooperate with Wolff book
By Jonathan Easley
01/08/18 04:29 PM EST

Former White House adviser Sebastian Gorka says that he was instructed to cooperate with author Michael Wolff for the book “Fire and Fury” while he was working at the White House last year.

Writing in an op-ed for The Hill on Monday, Gorka said that he was at one point instructed to play ball with Wolff but that he declined because he thought the author was primed to damage the president.

“So, when I met Michael Wolff in [former chief of staff] Reince Priebus’ office, where he was waiting to talk [former chief strategist] Steve Bannon and after I had been told to also speak to him for his book, my attitude was polite but firm: ‘Thanks but no thanks’,” Gorka writes. “Our brief encounter reinforced my gut feeling that this oleaginous scribe had no interest in being fair and unbiased."

In a text to The Hill, Gorka did not say who had asked him to speak with Wolff but that it was not Trump or Bannon.

The only other person mentioned in Gorka’s op-ed is Priebus, who did not respond to a request for comment.

In a subsequent tweet, Gorka said the request to work with Wolff came "externally."

The White House has tried to downplay the access Wolff says he had to administration officials, even as the author claims to have been a fixture in the West Wing in 2017.

Wolff claims to have interviewed Trump on several occasions and said that his reporting is backed by more than 200 interviews with those closest to President Trump, as well as unfettered access to the West Wing.

“I literally kind of knocked on the door and said, ‘can I come in?’ and they said OK,” Wolff said Sunday on “Meet the Press.” “And I came in. I sat on the couch and that’s the point of view that I’ve written this book from.”

Trump has said he did not authorize anyone to interact with Wolff. The White House says the president and the author barely talked.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/stat...with-wolff-book

The White House has been in damage control mode over the claims in Wolff’s book, which paints a picture of chaos in the West Wing and questions Trump’s fitness for office.

The book has already destroyed the relationship between Trump and Bannon, who disparaged Trump’s son-in-law and son in the book

But many of the other aides and advisers quoted in the book have disputed Wolff’s account, claiming that he took them out of context or made up stories entirely.

“I can tell you unequivocally is that the allegations and insinuations in this book, which are a pure work of fiction, are nothing but a pile of trash through and through,” White House adviser Stephen Miller said on CNN on Sunday.

Trump’s lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter to Wolff’s publisher last week, but the publisher ended up moving the release date up to Friday. The book is now a best seller.

Attorneys for Wolff’s publisher fired back at Trump’s attorneys on Monday, calling the legal threats against the author “a gross violation of the First Amendment” and saying that publication of the book would continue.

Wolff’s lawyer Elizabeth McNamara said Wolff had been permitted “extraordinary access” to the Trump campaign and White House between May of 2016 and October of 2017 and that the more than 200 interviews with Trump and members of his inner circle informed Wolff’s reporting.



“We have no reason to doubt — and your letter provides no reason to change this conclusion — that Mr. Wolff’s book is an accurate report on events of vital public importance,” McNamara wrote. “Mr. Trump is the president of the United States, with the 'bully pulpit' at his disposal. To the extent he disputes any statement in the book, he has the largest platform in the world to challenge it.”

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-r...with-wolff-book

Don't believe Michael Wolff's book about Trump if you want the truth
By Sebastian Gorka, opinion contributor
01/08/18 12:00 PM EST

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill

When I worked in the White House, I was viewed as strange by many of my colleagues on Sean Spicer’s press team. Although, as a deputy assistant to President Trump, I could regularly be seen on the major news networks, standing on the North Lawn of the White House and discussing some aspect of the administration’s latest policy, I maintained a rather different relationship with the press than all of my other politically-appointed colleagues.

Unless we had a preexisting relationship, I didn’t trust any journalist. And if you came from an outlet that belonged to what President Trump calls #FakeNews, I really wasn’t interested in becoming your friend. To those few persistent journalists from news organs like the Washington Post who wouldn’t give up, I was upfront: Sorry, I don’t do “deep background” and I’m using my phone to record this conversation.

As a result, you’d never see Jim Acosta coming out of my office or Maggie Haberman buying me an espresso at Peet’s around the corner from the West Wing. So, when I met Michael Wolff in Reince Priebus’ office, where he was waiting to talk to Steve Bannon, and after I had been told to also speak to him for his book, my attitude was polite but firm: “Thanks but no thanks.” Our brief encounter reinforced my gut feeling that this oleaginous scribe had no interest in being fair and unbiased.

Now, the chattering classes are gripped in an hysterical fever over Wolff’s tell-all book, “Fire and Fury,” with Wolff actually saying that its publication will bring down the duly-elected president of the United States.

I refuse to buy the book of a man who so avowedly holds what, in a previous age, we would have called treasonous goals, but I have read the publicly released excerpts and therefore feel that we can all draw some practical conclusions.

First, Wolff is a partisan self-promoter with credibility issues the likes of which we haven’t seen in a very long time. We are used to Washington being divided, but the contents of this politically-motivated publication are so obviously false that the “swamp” has descended to a new unimaginable low with its release.

Not only is it replete with simple “mistakes,” such as President Trump having no idea who John Boehner is when they were previously golfing partners, it is built upon assertions that go counter to all that we know about the president.

The most obvious of these is that a man whose reputation for 50 years has been defined around the concept of winning, at everything he set out to do, had no intention of winning the election to the highest office in the land.

(An accusation that, ironically and critically, undermines an additional outrageous assertion that the book is being used to support, that there was in fact “collusion” between team Trump and the Russian government. What is the logic of conspiring with Moscow in an election, if you never intended to win?)

Second, at a time when the credibility of the inappropriately termed “mainstream" media is in tatters, its leading lights and editorial masters are doubling down on their hysterical counterfactual coverage instead of pausing to examine just how professionally and morally bankrupt they have become and what can be done about rebuilding their reputations.

Wolff actually admits on page 10 of his prologue that he cannot verify anything that he details in his book, and that what he has provided is a “notional truth,” the merits of which the reader will have to decide upon by themselves. With this one statement, Wolff has done more to illuminate the political left writ large than any right-wing op-ed writer ever could.

For Wolff and all the Trump haters who buy his book and endorse what is, in practice, a smear campaign, the philosophy is crystal clear: Facts don’t matter. It’s the narrative that is king. Trump must be incompetent or mentally unwell because, well, we want him to be. “Notional truth” is another phrase for my ideological “reality,” a phrase that George Orwell would have recognized instantly.

Lastly, and most important, by tying together a tissue of lies and half-truths which will progressively be debunked in the coming days and weeks, the author of “Fire and Fury” will in fact strengthen the position of President Trump and reinforce the public’s already remarkably high distrust of the media.

When CNN devotes almost all of its domestic coverage to the absurd accusations in the book, and Jake Tapper shuts down White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller on live television, while the Dow breaks 25,000 and young protesters are being killed on the streets of Iran, then the name #FakeNews is no longer just a rhetorical device.

We are just one week into 2018, yet it is clear that those who expected Hillary Clinton to win the presidential election still do not fully comprehend what happened in America on Nov. 8, 2016. This especially includes the majority of the American press. Their willful blindness and intransigence will empower President Trump, as he proceeds to implement the “Make America Great Again” agenda.

As he does so, I would like to remind my colleagues still inside the White House: You don’t have to be friends with each and every journalist who seeks you out. But if you do engage, remember that smartphones make excellent recording devices.


http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/3...-want-the-truth