Gregg Jarrett’s Witch Hunt is one of this year’s good books on the Russia hoax. Jarrett’s subtitle — The Story of the Greatest Mass Delusion in American Political History — posits that the hoax may have derived from something other than intentional wrongdoing, but Jarrett leaves no stone unturned to make out willful misconduct.
I find the book frustrating in certain respects. It lacks an index. It is argumentative. It may fail to raise or address counterarguments a few times along the way, but the book is too long as it is.
The book nevertheless provides an extremely useful, heavily footnoted account of most of what we now know about the Russia hoax. I recommend it after Andrew McCarthy’s Ball of Collusion and Lee Smith’s The Plot Against the President.
As he was finishing the book, Jarrett snagged an Oval Office interview with President Trump on June 25, 2019. He quotes from the interview occasionally throughout the book. One such quote appears on page 399 at the head of Jarrett’s Afterword, and as far as I am concerned it conveys the effectual truth of the case. Trump tells Jarrett:
Most guys would’ve crawled in a corner with their thumb in their mouth. Okay? Saying “Mommy take me home.” I found it to be an incredible challenge. What shocked me was the level of corruption. They really did try to take away an election.
And they still are.
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