Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon said in an interview published Wednesday that he does not deny any of the information contained in New York media writer Michael Wolff’s tell-all book about the Trump White House.
“The book has been authorized then I don’t deny anything from what is inside,” Bannon told the right-leaning French news outlet Valeurs Actuelles. A translation of the interview was published by BuzzFeed News.
“The book is what it is. The reader can judge what he reads,” he said, according to BuzzFeed.
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The book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” casts President Trump’s White House as chaotic and quotes Bannon speaking critically of Trump and his family.
Among Bannon’s claims in the book is that a controversial 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer was “treasonous” and that Trump himself was likely told about the meeting — a claim that the White House denies.
Bannon told Valeurs Actuelles, however, that his “treasonous” comment was made in reference to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort — not Trump Jr.
Bannon, who left the White House in August, previously claimed in January that his comments in Wolff’s book were “inaccurate.”
“I regret that my delay in responding to the inaccurate reporting regarding Don, Jr., has diverted attention from the president’s historical accomplishments in the first year of his presidency,” he said in a statement.
Bannon’s quotes in “Fire and Fury” sparked outrage from the White House and from Trump, and led to his ouster as the executive chair of Breitbart News.