President Donald Trump’s attempt to shut down a controversial book about his presidential campaign appeared to have backfired Thursday when the publisher announced the book will be released days early.
Michael Wolff tweeted Thursday that his book, Fire and Fury, will be released on Friday, Jan. 5, in response to legal actions by Trump’s lawyer. It was originally scheduled for release on Jan. 9.
The explosive book includes former White House strategist Steve Bannon revealing new details of a campaign meeting with Russian operatives, as first reported by The Guardian.
According to excerpts of the book, Bannon suggested the president was aware of Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner’s Trump Tower meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer, despite the president’s claim he had no knowledge of it.
“The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor — with no lawyers,” Bannon told Wolff. “Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately.”
“The chance that Don Jr. did not walk these jumos up to his father’s office on the 26th floor is zero,” Bannon said, according to the book.
The president issued a denial of Bannon’s claims, saying the former strategist “lost his mind” after being fired from the administration.
Trump’s lawyers issued cease-and-desist letters to Wolff and publisher Henry Holt & Co., seeking to stop the book’s distribution. In response, the publisher is releasing the book early, calling the work “an extraordinary contribution to our national discourse.”
Trump’s lawyer also sent a cease-and-desist letter to Bannon, saying he broke the terms of a “confidentiality and non-disparagement agreement” he signed when he joined the campaign.