by Bob Woodward
“Okay,” Trump said, “I like it. This makes sense. Let’s do it.”
Kushner walked out with Mike Lee, who seemed surprised and delighted. “So he said yes!”
“No, no, no, no,” said Kushner. “That’s a soft yes.”
“What do you mean?” Lee asked.
“Well,” Kushner said, “now I have to bring in the people who totally disagree with this and who are going to tell him this is a bad idea. He’s going to side with them. And then we’re going to have a debate on both of them.”
Kushner said he had developed this conclusion about Trump’s famously frequent reversals and changes of mind: “With the president, there’s a hundred different shades of gray. And if people try to get a quick answer out of him, it’s easy. You can get him to decide in your favor by limiting his information. But you better be sure as hell that people with competing views aren’t going to find their way to him. And when that happens, he’s going undo his decision.”
This was an asset, as Kushner saw it: “He almost uses his ability to read people and keep people off balance as his best filter to determine when somebody is trying to pull something on him. He knows that he’s kind of the final funnel before a decision. He’s very good at kind of knowing when somebody is bullshitting him.”
In 2018, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan had a simple question: How do we get the president not to change his mind again?
Guys, Kushner said to the Republican leaders, shifting blame away from Trump, “it’s not that he changes his mind. It’s that he wasn’t staffed correctly. People weren’t giving him all the facts and so he found out different facts. So you can’t try to trick him into making a decision and then expect that he’ll hold to that decision.”
Kushner believed Trump’s mindset from his years in real estate was: “You make a deal. There’s still a lot of details to work out. So you could always change your mind if the details don’t fall into place.”
His solution: “Make sure that the president has all the information on the front end so that he doesn’t change his mind later.”
Where others saw fickleness or even lies, Kushner saw Trump’s constant, shifting inconsistency as a challenge to be met with an ever-adapting form of managing up. Incomplete information, inadequate staffing—the appearance of impulsive decision making was all someone else’s fault, according to Kushner.
John Kelly had a less flattering assessment. “Crazytown,” Kelly said.
TWENTY-ONE
Dan Coats launched the new year, 2019, with an updated National Intelligence Strategy and an old proposition: “This strategy is based on the core principle of seeking the truth and speaking the truth to our policymakers.”
The strategy warned about “weakening of the post-WWII international order and dominance of Western democratic ideals, increasingly isolationist tendencies in the West and shifts in the global economy.” It also decried “Russian efforts to increase its influence and authority” that “are likely to continue and may conflict with US goals and priorities in multiple regions.”
Coats’s “truths” were built on many of the old themes that Trump rejected.
A week after releasing the strategy, Coats gave his Worldwide Threat Assessment publicly before the Senate Intelligence Committee on January 29. He identified climate change as a security threat. Russia’s relationship with China was “closer than it has been in many decades.” North Korea was “unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capabilities.”
Coats said intelligence officials didn’t believe Iran was developing a nuclear weapon—a direct contradiction of one of Trump’s core national security arguments.
Everything he said was based fully on intelligence, but Coats could not have more conspicuously stuck his finger in the president’s eye.
Fred Fleitz, president of the Center for Security Policy, a right-leaning Washington think tank, appeared on Fox Business and suggested that Coats ought to be fired, saying the intelligence service “has simply evolved into a monster that is basically second-guessing the president all the time.” Lou Dobbs, host of the show Fleitz appeared on and Trump’s friend and supporter, tweeted Fleitz’s quote and suggestion.
The next day the White House canceled the daily intelligence briefing, the PDB. Trump tweeted:
“The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong!” He added, “Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!”
* * *
On February 7, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr said that after a two-year investigation, his committee had found no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. “If we write a report based upon the facts that we have,” Burr said, “then we don’t have anything that would suggest there was collusion by the Trump campaign and Russia.”
Trump celebrated on Twitter, and he asked Coats to help. “Richard Burr said that he hasn’t seen any evidence of that. Is this something you can do? You’re head of intelligence. It would have a major impact. Others have said it. Why can’t you say it?”
“Mr. President,” Coats replied, “that’s not something I can do. It’s not part of my job.” His connection to the FBI was the intelligence-gathering side. He had nothing to do with the side of the FBI that did criminal investigations, he repeated once again.
* * *
Chris Ruddy, the CEO of Newsmax and one of Trump’s closest confidants, said in a February 18 interview on CNN: “I’m hearing from sources around the White House there’s just general disappointment of the president with Director Coats. There’s a feeling that maybe there needs to be a change of leadership in that position coming up.”
A front-page story in The Washington Post on February 20, citing sources familiar with the matter, reported that Trump was “frustrated,” “enraged” and “increasingly disenchanted” with Coats and was considering removing him.
After several days of reading about himself in the news, Coats came home and told Marsha, “I’m going to write my resignation letter and take it to Trump and say, ‘I quit.’ ”
“I think you ought to give it to him, and let him make the decision,” she advised.
Coats wrote out a letter, brief and to the point, saying, I cannot do this job effectively without your confidence and support. I am offering my resignation so that you can find someone who will better be able to serve you. He tried to strike the same tone that his friend Mattis had adopted two months earlier.
Coats offered no warning to Trump he was submitting a resignation letter. He did not want to be another Jeff Sessions, the attorney general Trump had regularly and publicly trashed, who had left in the fall of 2018. Sessions had been just one of many hounded out of high administration positions by Trump’s vicious tweets. Coats wanted out on his own terms.
Coats went to the Oval Office to see Trump alone and handed the president his resignation letter.
I keep reading senior White House officials have said that I am not loyal and not a team player, Coats said.
No, no, Trump said.
Coats mentioned someone who had been quoted in the media.
I don’t even know that guy, Trump said.
Coats tried another name.
I hardly know the guy, the president insisted.
I’m not going to go through this, Coats said. It could be a thousand cuts. Most of the published reports come from anonymous sources only cited as senior White House officials or Trump friends. He had seen this before. When Trump was unhappy with someone, out came the endless undermining and criticism.
Trump dismissed this. The White House sources were fake, he said. “I didn’t say that.” Coats did not believe the president’s denials for a minute.
Trump took Coats’s letter, seemed to read it carefully, and handed it back.
Suppose I don’t accept this? Trump asked. Can I not accept this?
Clearly that was possible. Giving Trump a c
hoice had been Marsha’s point.
“Would you be willing to stay on?” Trump finally said. “I’m asking you. This is a tough time for you to announce your resignation.” The Mueller report into Russian election interference was reported to be coming out soon. If Coats left, his departure would be misinterpreted. “It’s the wrong timing for this.”
Coats paused. Okay, he finally said. But I can’t keep having this chatter coming out of the White House and your friends that you don’t have confidence in me. “I can’t do my job effectively if I have all these leaks and all these things coming about what you think of me and the intelligence community.”
No, no, Trump said. You’re doing a good job. Let’s work this out. We’ll go forward.
At some point in the future, Coats said, he would want to step down.
Don’t you want to do it the right way? Trump asked, apparently implying there was a way to resign so it would not appear that Trump had fired him. Don’t you want to leave in a more positive way? Let’s work it out.
Coats finally agreed. After about ten minutes he left with his unaccepted resignation letter in hand.
Paradoxically, he felt relief. He had effectively put conditions on staying. And at least they had had a talk—not laying all the cards on the table, but more intimate than ever before. Trump had been the one who asked him to stay. Coats could see how his resignation could be misused as the Mueller investigation was supposedly winding down. The interpretation would be that Coats knew something and he wanted to get out before the big expected revelations from Mueller. It would be unfair to create that perception, since Coats knew nothing about the coming Mueller report.
But Coats continued to harbor the secret belief, one that had grown rather than lessened, although unsupported by intelligence proof, that Putin had something on Trump. How else to explain the president’s behavior? Coats could see no other explanation. He was sure that Trump had chosen to play on the dark side—the moneyed interests in the New York real estate culture, and international finance with its corrupt, anything-to-make-a-buck deal making. Anything to get ahead, anything to make a deal.
Coats realized that Trump had been able to make a deal with him, a raw political deal—hold that resignation for now, we’ll do it later, soon, but without a tweetstorm against you. He had played into Trump’s protection racket.
Coats saw how extraordinary it was for the president’s top intelligence official to harbor such deep suspicions about the president’s relationship with Putin. But he could not shake them.
Pence did not want to hear talk about Coats resigning. “Look, we need to support the president,” Pence told Coats. “Let’s look on the positive side of things that he’s done. More attention on that. You can’t go.”
Coats saw Pence was on a mission—stay the course.
TWENTY-TWO
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein kept tight control over Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. He aggressively wielded Justice Department regulations giving him authority to overrule Mueller on any “investigative or prosecutorial step” to maintain leverage over the investigation. The existence of that authority was sufficient; he never formally had to exercise it.
The general public perception continued to be that Mueller was on to another Watergate that could end the Trump presidency. “It’s Mueller Time” was a rallying cry so popular it became a T-shirt slogan.
In reality, however, it was Rosenstein time. He oversaw the investigation with diligence and an iron hand, continuing to send a deputy for biweekly meetings with Mueller and his team.
Mueller’s prosecutors were mindful that Trump could order Rosenstein to fire Mueller. If Rosenstein refused, Trump could fire Rosenstein and find someone who would get rid of Mueller.
The president’s campaign of public intimidation, tweets and claims the investigation was a “witch hunt” rattled many on Mueller’s staff. The whole investigative atmosphere was stay in your lane, no mission creep. After Trump’s controversial 2017 meeting with Putin in Hamburg where he confiscated the translator’s notes, they debated—but only in jest—about subpoenaing the translator’s notes. They knew if they dared, they would be fired.
After a long internal debate, Mueller decided not to issue a formal subpoena to Trump to compel his testimony. There was a belief that if they asked for the subpoena, the legal battle in the courts would take months, even a year. Or Trump could fire Mueller in response.
Mueller told his prosecutors they should not stretch themselves too thin. If they tried to get it all, they could wind up getting nothing.
Aaron Zebley, Mueller’s deputy, told the prosecutors he had the “pen,” on the final report, meaning he had Mueller’s authority as final editor. One overriding consideration, Zebley said, was to make sure the report was a definitive account so no conspiracy theories, no “grassy knoll” theories, would emerge as had happened after the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy. But it was a last-minute rush and debate among the senior prosecutors. The result was a compromise that is one of the most confusing lines in the history of high-profile investigations: “While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
* * *
Trump and Senator Lindsey Graham played a round of golf at Trump’s West Palm Beach, Florida, club on the morning of Sunday, March 24. Trump was worried because Attorney General Bill Barr, who had replaced Sessions in early 2019, was expected to release a letter summarizing the Mueller report. Barr had served as attorney general for President George H. W. Bush and held a strong, sweeping view of presidential power.
Before releasing the letter, the attorney general called Graham to give him a heads-up. Mueller’s investigation had been historic and lengthy—19 lawyers, some 40 FBI agents and other professionals, 2,800 subpoenas, 500 search warrants, 500 witnesses.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Barr said.
“What?” Graham asked.
“After two fucking years he says, ‘Well, I don’t know, you decide,’ ” Barr said.
“What do you mean?” Graham asked.
“Well, there’s no collusion,” Barr said. Mueller had found no evidence that Trump or his aides had worked illegally with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election. That was great news.
But Barr said Mueller’s report was “convoluted” on the critical question of whether Trump had obstructed justice. He had not reached a conclusion.
Barr sent a copy of the letter to Graham’s Senate office and one of his staffers called Graham with a more complete summary of the findings. The letter was addressed to Graham as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and three other congressional leaders.
The core finding of the Mueller report, according to Barr’s letter, was that “… the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
For the president and his allies, this was cause for serious celebration—no evidence of working with the Russians.
The second conclusion on obstruction of justice was less sweeping but still legally exculpatory, Graham saw. After all, Mueller’s report stated that while it did not “conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
Graham had served six years as an Air Force lawyer and several as the chief Air Force prosecutor in Europe. Although Mueller was operating under a long-standing Department of Justice policy that a sitting president could not be charged with a federal crime, Graham felt the phrase “does not exonerate” was gratuitous. It was not the job of prosecutors to exonerate. They had to decide whether to charge or not to charge. Mueller’s language smacked of then–FBI director James Comey’s 2016 announcement in the Hillary Clinton email investigation that he would not recommend charges, but that her conduct was “extremely careless.”
Mueller wrote in his report that “fairness concerns” prevented him from even reaching a j
udgment that the president committed crimes when no charges could be brought. Ordinarily, a person accused of a crime has a right to a fair, public trial and can use that process to clear his or her name. However, Mueller wrote, “a prosecutor’s judgment that crimes were committed, but that no charges will be brought, affords no such adversarial opportunity for public name-clearing before an impartial adjudicator.
“The concerns about the fairness of such a determination would be heightened in the case of a sitting President, where a federal prosecutor’s accusation of a crime, even in an internal report, could carry consequences that extend beyond the realm of criminal justice.”
Mueller concluded he had the option to state in his report that he was confident, after a thorough investigation, that Trump clearly did not commit obstruction of justice. “Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment,” the Mueller report states.
Barr said in his letter that while Mueller had not reached legal conclusions about alleged obstruction, he and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein “have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”
The full report with grand jury redactions would be released later, Barr said.
For practical purposes, the Mueller investigation was over, Graham believed. There would be sniping, criticism and second-guessing. The full report undoubtedly would dwell on incidents that were not pretty and would show Trump scheming and teetering on the edge of misconduct. But even if Mueller’s report itself did not exonerate Trump, the essentials of exoneration were there in Barr’s letter: no further indictments, no criminal charges of the president, no continuing investigation.