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But Mr. Caputo was forced to resign in 2016 shortly after celebrating the firing of Mr. Trump’s first campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, by tweeting a celebratory “Ding Dong the witch is dead.” After leaving the campaign, however, he helped to raise money for a super PAC supporting the campaign, despite having clashed with other Trump advisers.
Mr. Caputo came under scrutiny from Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who investigated links between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia. A Russian business associate contacted Mr. Caputo in the spring of 2016, saying he wanted to help provide damaging information about Hillary Clinton, according to the Mueller report, citing interviews with both men. Mr. Caputo directed the Russian to Mr. Stone.
Throughout the investigation, Mr. Caputo echoed Mr. Trump’s claims that the inquiry was a politically motivated witch hunt. Mr. Caputo compared his questioning by investigators to a “proctology exam,” and he and Mr. Stone have claimed that the contact with the Russian was a setup by federal law enforcement officials to entrap them. But Mr. Caputo was never charged with a crime, and Mr. Stone, who lost a retrial bid on Thursday, was convicted on charges unrelated to the meeting.
The attention incited threats against him and his family, Mr. Caputo has said, while the legal fees forced him to drain his children’s college tuition fund.
During impeachment, Mr. Caputo again sought to forcefully defend Mr. Trump — as well as Mr. Manafort — by attacking their perceived enemies. In his book, he drew on his experience in Ukraine to try to undermine the case against Mr. Manafort and impeachment, while raising questions about the overlap between Mr. Biden’s diplomacy in Ukraine and his son’s position on the board of a gas company there.
Shortly after the release of the Mueller report, Mr. Caputo and his family traveled to the White House, where Mr. Trump posed for a photo with them in the Oval Office, and, according to Mr. Caputo’s book, dismissed Mr. Biden as “a joke” who was unlikely to win the Democratic presidential nomination.
“Summoned to the White House, talking with the president again, felt like the ending we were hoping for,” Mr. Caputo wrote.
