Comey’s firing triggered the outcome Bannon was worried about: the appointment of a special counsel. Bannon threw himself into setting up a war room to contain Robert Mueller’s investigation. “Goldman Sachs teaches one thing: don’t invent shit. Take something that works and make it better,” Bannon said, explaining how he consulted with Bill Clinton’s former lawyer Lanny Davis about how the Clintons responded to Ken Starr’s probe. “We were so disciplined. You guys don’t have that,” Bannon recalls Davis advising him. “That always haunted me when he said that,” Bannon told me. Bannon said he grew increasingly disillusioned that Trump wasn’t taking the investigation seriously. He told Trump the establishment was trying to nullify the election and he was in danger of being impeached.

The relationship between Kushner and Bannon worsened through the spring. At one point, Bannon said, Trump called an Oval Office meeting to broker peace. Attending were Bannon, Kushner, and Ivanka Trump. She blamed Bannon for the leaks.

“She’s the queen of leaks,” Bannon argued back.

“You’re a fucking liar!” Ivanka said.

Trump tried to adjudicate, but the meeting did little to diffuse tensions.

The mouth on that young lady!