war on peace the end of diplomacy and the decline of american influence, i m holding page 262 open with my finger. we get a big rip roaring argument about america giving up on diplomacy over time and what made the state department a weak enough institution but by the time trump got there to kill it, rex tillerson was an easy and effective tool for doing that job. this book will make ronan farrell a lots more enemies. nobody comes off great. but it does have a bunch of scoops. we learn, for example, the incredible detail on 262, how rex tillerson handled one particularly timely sensitive part of his job. quote, when the united states initiated strikes on syria, the administration entirely skipped the conventional step of notifying nato allies. tillerson received a flood of calls. an officer in the state department s operations center who spent months connecting tillerson s calls told ronan, quote, when news broke, alarmed
car. we checked with d.c. police. they say they do have two accident reports on file involving ronny jackson. one in 2013 and one in 2016, but we don t have any other information at all about those accidents or what caused them or how he was involved. we are still trying to find out more about that. we will keep you posted on that if we learn it. the white house for itsz part spent the day defending ronny jackson, reportedly pushing the senate to reschedule his confirmation hearing. but they are not making it easy for the senators who are in charge of this nomination going along if it s gonna. trying to give his nomination a boost last night, the white house gave reporters a stack of reports about ronny jackson s time working in the white house. in that stack of records was a whole bunch of good stuff, but also an inspector general report about the white house medical unit when he was one of its two leaders. it was written during the time he was in a leadership position there in 2012 a
costa and carol write, quote, the face-to-face discussions illustrated how rudy giuliani is functioning as trump s chief liaison and lead negotiator with the special counsel. the meeting renewed talks that had largely faltered since the resignation last month of john dowd, a veteran lawyer who had been serving as trump s lead outside attorney on the russia investigation. both giuliani and mueller were joined at the meeting by members of their teams. they met at mueller s office in southwest washington. giuliani pressed mueller for clarity on when the probe is expected to end. well, unless robert mueller s answer was, oh, some time in the next eight days, that would indicate that mr. giuliani s two weeks prediction might have been a little bit off. i should say, though, just as a separate matter as kind of my personal observation here, as part of this excellent new reporting tonight from the washington post, we are now experiencing a whole new round of renewed discussion about
he is not involved in the michael cohen case. we learned that right after we learned recently right after he took over the southern district of new york s job in january, mr. berman notified justice officials in washington he had a possible appearance of a conflict of interest in the michael cohen case. those officials at d.o.j. in washington reportedly determined that jeff berman shouldn t oversee the cohen investigation even as he took this job in the southern district of new york. now, what that conflict of interest is specifically, we don t know. again, the recusal process is opaque in part because it s hard to report on, but in part because there are rules around how much they re supposed to disclose about this stuff. but there is a question about, with the cohen case now getting super red hot and with rudy giuliani trying to negotiate an end to the mueller investigation a week from tomorrow, with the president promising that he s going to personally review documents that pers
allies called saying i would like to speak with secretary tillerson. it was sunday afternoon and the office was unoccupied. quote, we were told the secretary had a long weekend. he was going to go home and have dinner with his wife and call it a night. no calls. the operations officer exasperated said, we just bombed syria without telling our allies. you might have to do some phone calls, even from home. that floored me, end quote. ronan farrell s new book is called war on peace, the end of diplomacy and the decline of american influence. it s good in part because ronan knows what he s talking about on this subject. he is a former state department official. it is good in part because he s got a bunch of news scoops. and it s good in part because he s interviewed every living secretary of state and got them all to weigh in on the secretary of state disaster we are living through now that we will have to explain to the next generation