Under Siege: My Family's Fight to Save Our Nation

Throughout Under Siege, Eric Trump refers to a number of scandals and events which marred the first Trump Presidency. The first Trump term was defined by overlapping disputes that ranged from counterintelligence and ethics questions to two impeachments and the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. The most sustained scrutiny came through Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Mueller documented a “sweeping and systematic” operation by Russia that included a social media-influence campaign run by the Internet Research Agency (indicted in 2018) and hacking operations by officers of Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU (indicted in July 2018). Mueller’s report did not establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, but it detailed extensive contacts and laid out episodes the team analyzed for possible obstruction of justice. A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee inquiry later underscored counterintelligence risks, including campaign consultant Paul Manafort’s sharing of polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the committee identified as a Russian intelligence officer.

Volume II of the Mueller Report examined the president’s actions toward officials and witnesses and described multiple episodes analyzed for obstruction, while declining to render a prosecutorial judgment because of Department of Justice policy against indicting a sitting president. It also emphasized that the report did not exonerate the president. These episodes included efforts to narrow the scope of the probe after the firing of FBI Director James Comey, attempts to have the special counsel removed, and directions to subordinates that, if carried out, could have impeded the investigation. The report’s legal framework left further accountability to Congress. In his book, Eric refers to these events by his father’s chosen moniker: the Russia Hoax.

The first impeachment arose from a separate set of events in 2019. After a July 25 call with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, the House of Representatives alleged that President Trump had solicited foreign interference in the 2020 election by conditioning a coveted White House meeting and congressionally appropriated military aid on Ukraine’s announcement of investigations. On December 18, 2019, the House approved two articles—abuse of power and obstruction of Congress (House Resolution 755). On February 5, 2020, the Senate acquitted Trump on both counts. The votes were 48-52 and 47-53, short of the two-thirds needed for conviction.

The most violent controversy of the term culminated on January 6, 2021, when a pro-Trump crowd breached the US Capitol as Congress met to certify the Electoral College count. A House Select Committee later described a multi-part effort to overturn the election that included pressuring state officials, proposing alternate slates of electors, urging the vice president to reject certified votes, and summoning supporters to Washington while repeating false fraud claims. The committee’s final report faulted Trump for failing to act for hours as violence unfolded. The Justice Department, meanwhile, opened the largest criminal investigation in its history. By September 2024, it reported more than 1,500 defendants charged across nearly all 50 states, including hundreds accused of assaulting or impeding police.

Those events led to the second impeachment. On January 13, 2021, the House adopted a single article charging “incitement of insurrection,” passing 232-197 with 10 Republicans joining Democrats. The Senate trial concluded on February 13, 2021, with a 57-43 vote to convict—10 short of the required two-thirds—after which several senators, including Republican leader Mitch McConnell, said the former president bore responsibility while arguing the Senate lacked authority to convict a president no longer in office. Whatever the constitutional debate, the outcome left the former president with the historical distinction of being the first president impeached twice.

Other persistent controversies shaped the public narrative around Donald Trump’s presidency. Early immigration actions produced the so-called “travel ban,” which faced multiple injunctions before the Supreme Court upheld the third version (Presidential Proclamation 9645) on June 26, 2018, in Trump v. Hawaii. A “zero tolerance” border enforcement policy led to large-scale family separations; congressional and inspector-general reporting in 2018 put the number of separated children in the thousands and found that agencies lacked adequate systems to track and reunite families, prompting intense litigation and policy reversals. Emoluments lawsuits alleged unconstitutional financial benefits from foreign and state governments patronizing Trump-branded properties; the Supreme Court ended the cases as moot after Trump left office, vacating lower-court rulings and leaving the constitutional questions unresolved. Throughout the term, rhetorical controversies—most notably the 2017 Charlottesville remarks in which a clash between white supremacists and counterprotestors famously led the president to declare that there were “good people on both sides”—fueled criticism and counter-narratives that further polarized perceptions of the presidency. Eric Trump dismisses the majority of these scandals as evidence of a politically motivated campaign against his father.