The report by special counsel Robert Mueller on President Trump and Russian involvement in the 2016 election left many unanswered questions, among them what was going on inside the FBI when, unbeknownst to the public, the agency was conducting criminal investigations of both presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Trump, just months before balloting. In a new book, “Deep State: Trump, the FBI, and the Rule of Law,” Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter James B. Stewart ’76 , a New York Times columnist and New Yorker staff writer, offers a vivid, fly-on-the-wall account of the events that led to Mueller’s appointment by Rod Rosenstein ’89, and its aftermath. Stewart weaves together the strands of incidents that began with Clinton’s handling of State Department emails and ends with the findings of Mueller’s inquiry — an investigation the president has called part of a “deep state” conspiracy against him. Stewart spoke with the Gazette about Mueller’s perceived failures, the Trump administration’s growing Ukraine scandal, and the president’s ongoing battle with the nation’s top law enforcement agencies.