DONALD Trump’s lawyers have sent a cease and desist letter to Steve Bannon, demanding he refrain from talking about the president and his family following the former White House strategist’s comments about the US President and his family in an explosive new book.

Trump lawyer Charles Harder said in a statement, “On behalf of our clients, legal notice was issued today to Stephen K. Bannon, that his actions of communicating with author Michael Wolff regarding an upcoming book give rise to numerous legal claims including defamation by libel and slander, and breach of his written confidentiality and non-disparagement agreement with our clients. Legal action is imminent.”

During the presidential campaign, Trump had all staff sign a nondisclosure agreement which required them to refrain from making any disparaging comments against the candidate, his family or the Trump campaign and organisation.

Earlier today, Trump hit back at Bannon in scathing comments, saying that when Bannon was fired “he not only lost his job, he lost his mind”.

The White House denied many of the allegations in Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House so far.
The former White House adviser, who left the White House to run Breitbart News, didn’t respond to requests for comment, but a source close to him reportedly did not deny his claims.

TRUMP RIPS INTO BANNON

Earlier, Donald Trump took an extraordinary swipe at Bannon, saying he had “lost his mind”.

His comments came after Bannon called a meeting between Mr Trump’s son Donald Jr and a group of Russians “treasonous” and “unpatriotic” in the book.

“Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind,” Mr Trump said in a statement.

“Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look.

“Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was. It is the only thing he does well,” he said.

“Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books.”

The extraordinary broadside is in contrast to Mr Trump’s comments when Bannon left the White House in August, calling him a “good man” and a “friend” who “gets very unfair press”.

The comments by Bannon in Wolff’s book, to be released next week, were published by The Guardian.
Bannon slammed a decision by Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort to take a meeting in Trump Tower with a group of Russians who claimed to have dirt on Hillary Clinton.

“The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor — with no lawyers. They didn’t have any lawyers,” Bannon told author Wolff, The Guardian reports, during an interview for his book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.
“Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad sh*t, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately,” Bannon said, according to the book.

The meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who had ties to the Kremlin, and other Russians was held in June 2016.

Bannon said Donald Jr will “crack like an egg” under the pressure of the ongoing investigation into Russian election meddling.

“They’re going to crack Don Jr like an egg on national TV,” he said. “You realise where this is going,” Bannon told Wolff. “This is all about money laundering. Mueller chose (senior prosecutor Andrew) Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to f**king Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr and Jared Kushner ... It’s as plain as a hair on your face.”

Bannon, who is not a fan of moderates Kushner or Ivanka Trump, said reports that federal prosecutors had subpoenaed records from Deutsche Bank could spell the end for Kushner and Donald Jr.

“It goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner s**t. The Kushner s**t is greasy. They’re going to go right through that. They’re going to roll those two guys up and say play me or trade me,” he said.

Bannon said Mr Trump and the White House should be more concerned about what is coming.

“They’re sitting on a beach trying to stop a Category Five,” he said.

The US President has constantly called the Russia investigation a “witch hunt”.

Bannon departed the White House in August and returned to his role at right-wing media outlet Breitbart News.

However, he still holds sway within the Republican Party and until today was believed to still have the president’s ear on certain matters.

Bannon successfully pushed for Roy Moore to be the Republican candidate to replace Jeff Sessions’ seat in Alabama over Luther Strange, who Mr Trump had backed.

However, Mr Moore was later accused of being a paedophile and Alabama voted for Democrat Doug Jones, the first Senate Democrat to represent Alabama in decades.

“Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country,” Mr Trump said in his statement.

“Yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than 30 years by Republicans. Steve doesn’t represent my base — he’s only in it for himself.”

White House issued a separate statement, trashing the book.

“This book is filled with false and misleading accounts from individuals who have no access or influence with the White House,” said press secretary Sarah Sanders. “Participating in a book that can only be described as trashy tabloid fiction exposes their sad desperate attempts at relevancy.”

IVANKA’S PRESIDENTIAL AMBITION

Meanwhile, one of the excerpts from the book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, published in New York magazine, suggests that Ivanka Trump and her husband had their own private ambitions after getting into the White House.

The president’s daughter, reportedly made a deal with her husband Jared Kushner, about which of them would one day run for president.

According to the book, the “first woman president” would not be Hillary Clinton.

Wolff wrote: “The first woman president, Ivanka entertained, would not be Hillary Clinton; it would be Ivanka Trump.”

Wolff’s book also documents lots of infighting among staff and reportedly often featured a group including Kushner, Ivanka and economics adviser Gary Cohn, who went up against a faction led by the President’s former senior counsellor Steve Bannon.

Wolff quotes Richard Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, as saying: “It is a war between the Jews and the non-Jews.”

Bannon, the former White House strategist, also once called Trump’s daughter and White House adviser Ivanka “dumb as a brick”.

Bannon’s quote is detailed in an excerpt provided to the Wall Street Journal.

MELANIA IN TEARS

The book also claims that Melania Trump was “in tears” when her husband Donald Trump won the US election.

According to the yet-to-be published book, the now-First Lady “was in tears — and not of joy” because she never expected her husband to win.

But Melania’s communications director Stephanie Grisham denied the claims.

“The book is clearly going to be sold in the bargain fiction section,” Grisham said.

“Mrs Trump supported her husband’s decision to run for President and in fact, encouraged him to do so. She was confident he would win and was very happy when he did”.