Donald Trump v. The United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President
by Michael S. Schmidt
View on GoodreadsNYT's Michael Schmidt's 2020 inside account of the Mueller probe and adjacent obstruction-of-justice questions — built around the specific officials (Rosenstein, McGahn, Comey, Mueller, Sessions, Whitaker, Barr) who variously tried to constrain or accommodate the president on those questions.
Core ideas
- The Rosenstein-and-McGahn period is the book's spine — Schmidt's reporting reconstructs the specific decisions inside DOJ to maintain the Mueller probe's independence over the president's repeated efforts to end or constrain it.
- The "Don't make the same mistake Nixon made" frame is operative throughout — the Trump-administration officials who fought hardest to maintain prosecutorial independence were operating with explicit Watergate-precedent consciousness.
- The Barr period is treated as the breakdown of the institutional resistance — once Barr arrived, the DOJ posture shifted, the Mueller report was released through the Barr summary frame, and the obstruction questions were effectively buried, which is where the book ends.
Published2020
Pages423
ISBN9781984854674
ReadMay 2026
