Gregg Jarrett - Witch Hunt: The Story of the Greatest Mass Delusion in American Political History

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

G EORGE O RWELL , W HY I W RITE, 1946

The late George Orwell was a remarkably eclectic author who penned many incisive books, both fiction and nonfiction. In his seminal novel Nineteen Eighty-Four he warned that Big Brother is watching you. Published in 1949, his prophetic words became synonymous with abuse of power and the ubiquity of government surveillance. The Orwellian vision was a cautionary nightmare that came to life. It still haunts us today. More than we know. Evidence of this can be found in the pages of Witch Hunt .

Orwell was controversial, to say the least. But, for me, his assessment of the writing process is well stated. It is not a satisfying or even rapturous endeavor, as some might imagine. Like Orwell, I find it to be grueling, wearying, and debilitating, without a speck of pleasure in it. A daily root canal would be preferable. Skip the Novocain.

Orwell confided that he often wrote because there is some lie that I want to expose. That, too, is the reason I wrote this book and the one that preceded it. The compulsion to expose a lie and unravel the truth is what drove me. I felt an urge to right a wrong. In a way, it became my demon that needed exorcising.

I am certain that my literary agent, David Vigliano, grew tired of the missives I sent his way blaming him for my misery. He had convinced me to write this second book when I was dead set against it. In retrospect, I am most grateful that he did. He was tolerant and a good sport about it. David was also a constant source of sage advice. With his unflagging humor, he lifted my spirits when they sagged. This occurred rather frequently, which is a poor reflection on me. To David, I wish to express my utmost gratitude.

Rare is the editor who can satisfy a prickly author during the seemingly endless editing process. Eric Nelson, executive editor at HarperCollins, managed to achieve this. I submitted a manuscript that was twice the length he wanted, yet he managed to apply judicious cuts with a scalpel when a chainsaw was probably merited. As before, Eric was instrumental in shaping the content of the book. He contributed meaningful insights that helped frame the narrative. Many thanks to Eric and his associate, Hannah Long. Theresa Dooley at Harper has been a wonderful publicist.

Unlike with The Russia Hoax , I sought assistance for Witch Hunt . I enlisted the help of Glenna Whitley, who is an extraordinary writer and investigative journalist in Dallas, Texas. She supplemented my notes research and columns with her own considerable research and crafted the last three chapters. She also updated and revised what I had originally written in my critical analysis of the media. She assembled the that can be found in the Appendix. Her work was a valuable piece of the puzzle. This book could not have been completed on time without Glennas excellent contributions. I am indebted to her.

Here at Fox News, I thank especially my friends and colleagues at the networks website. Lynne Jordal Martin, Greg Wilson, and Morgan Debelle Duplan gave prominence to my opinion columns. Gregg Re, an editor and lawyer, lent an extra set of eyes to the original manuscript and recommended clarifications that proved helpful. Kimberley Sialiano solved my computer woes whenever they arose. Outside of Fox, I am most appreciative to several former FBI officials and federal prosecutors who gave freely of their time to answer my many questions. Victoria Toensing, former deputy assistant attorney general in the Criminal Division at the Justice Department, was notably helpful.

My sincere thanks to Sean Hannity for his continuous support and friendship, along with Porter Berry, Tiffany Fazio, Robert Samuel, Alyssa Carey, Christen Bloom, Andrew Luton, Stephanie Woloshin, Haley Caronia, and Lynda McLaughlin. Grateful am I, too, for the kind words and encouragement from Rush Limbaugh and David Limbaugh. Thanks to Jon Sale, former assistant Watergate prosecutor, as well as Joe diGenova, former independent counsel, for reviewing the book.

Finally, but most importantly, I wish to thank my wife, Cate, and our two daughters, Grace and Liv. They are an indispensable part of my life and career. Their love and devotion are an inspiration to me every single day.

Most guys wouldve crawled in a corner with their thumb in their mouth. Okay? Saying Mommy, take me home. I found it to be an incredible challenge. What shocked me was the level of corruption. They really did try to take away an election.

What went on in this country with our intelligence agencies and the FBI is unprecedented in American history. It should never, ever happen to another president again.

A UTHOR S INTERVIEW WITH P RESIDENT D ONALD J. T RUMP , O VAL O FFICE , W HITE H OUSE , J UNE 25, 2019

I n civil society, power to act for the benefit of the many is vested in the few. We instill our public trust that this power is dispensed for the common good without passion or prejudice. Such faith is an indispensable necessity to sound governance. Democracy fails when that trust is breached for personal gain or political design. It failed here.

Witch Hunt is the story of ambitious and unscrupulous people in high positions of government who abused their authority. They sought to subvert the rule of law and undermine the democratic process. They weaponized their powers to influence a presidential election, undo the result they did not like, and extrude the elected president from office. Our intelligence community and the FBI were at the heart of this illicit and unprecedented scheme.

Their cudgel was collusion. It was nothing more than a cleverly conjured-up lie. There was never any evidence of a treasonous conspiracy hatched by Trump and Putin in the bowels of the Kremlin. It was all a hoax, contrived to masquerade as the truth. Yet the hoax gained popular currency because Democrats and the media drove the fictive narrative with ferocity. They were convinced that Trump was an illegitimate president. To them, it was inconceivable that he had won the highest office in the land, absent some sinister plot to steal the election. Many people across the United States believed it. They accepted without question or challenge that Trump was a poseura Russian agent disguised as a US president. The carefully crafted hoax begot the witch hunt, a series of investigations designed to sully and destroy him.

There are many villains in this morass of misbegotten deeds. Clinton ally John Brennan, who was CIA director in the summer of 2016, instigated and fueled the hoax by collecting foreign source information on Trump that proved to be utterly bogus. Undeterred, he exploited those phony tips to create an interagency task force, which was fundamentally a spying operation, despite US laws prohibiting his agency from targeting US citizens domestically. That was why some members of the Trump campaign were lured overseas, where Brennans cabal could spy on them more freely and where undercover informants, such as Stefan Halper, could be deployed without limits. James Comey, Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, and others at the FBI were in on the task force and eagerly used it as the foundation to open the Bureaus Trump-Russia collusion probe, dubbed Operation Crossfire Hurricane. Intelligence from the United Kingdom, Australia, and Italy was mined, with timely contributions by James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, who was Brennans favorite collaborator. They were all virulently opposed to Trump and strong supporters of Clinton.

Of course, the centerpiece of the hoax was the anti-Trump dossier composed by exBritish spy Christopher Steele and commissioned by the Clinton campaign and Democrats but cloaked behind a double firewall of payments that allowed them to smear Trump and influence the election. Based on either Russian disinformation or fabricated hearsay from anonymous Moscow sources (or both), those garbage documents were unverifiable, as Steele admitted. The artifice also allowed the FBI to gain retroactive access to all of Pages electronic communications with the campaign. No evidence of a criminal conspiracy with Russia was ever found.