Deep State

by James B. Stewart

  For as long as I am the Acting Attorney General, the Department of Justice will not present arguments in defense of the Executive Order, unless and until I become convinced that it is appropriate to do so.

  About five hours later, at a little past 9:00 p.m., Yates received a hand-delivered letter from the White House. It contained just one sentence:

  I am informing you that the President has removed you from the office of Deputy Attorney General of the United States.

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  THE NEXT DAY, Trump nominated Rod Rosenstein, the U.S. attorney in Baltimore, to replace her. Appointed to the post by President Bush in 2005, he was the country’s longest-serving U.S. attorney and survived the controversial 2006 purge of U.S. attorneys implemented by Bush’s attorney general, Gonzales. Rosenstein had an illustrious résumé: Wharton and Harvard Law School, where he was editor of the Law Review. Given his long tenure in Baltimore, he was well known within the FBI and generally regarded as a nonpartisan, competent prosecutor. His wire-rim glasses and slight build gave him something of a professorial appearance.

  Comey had known Rosenstein for over fifteen years, and as deputy attorney general Comey had helped choose Rosenstein in 2005 to be the U.S. attorney in Baltimore. For his part, Rosenstein considered Comey “a role model,” Rosenstein has said. “His speeches about leadership and public service inspired me.” On October 27—the day before Comey sent his letter to Congress—Rosenstein had invited Comey to speak to lawyers in his office about ethics and leadership, and Comey also talked about his decision to announce the results of the Clinton investigation at a press conference without giving the Justice Department advance notice. Rosenstein didn’t express any misgivings about Comey’s approach. On the contrary, he praised Comey’s leadership and thanked him for setting an inspiring example.

  Later, at a lunch with his friend Benjamin Wittes, Comey described Rosenstein as a “solid,” if not brilliant, “career guy,” which, coming from Comey, was faint praise. “Rod is a survivor,” Comey explained, and survivors have to make compromises. “So I have concerns,” he said—especially given the kinds of compromises Rosenstein might be asked to make in a Trump administration.

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  ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 5, the conservative Fox News host and bestselling author Bill O’Reilly interviewed the president as part of the network’s pregame Super Bowl show, a slot all but guaranteed to be a ratings blockbuster. It was a largely friendly interview, as Trump had expected when he agreed to do it. But then O’Reilly, a fervent anticommunist, turned to the subject of Russia.

  “Do you respect Putin?” O’Reilly asked.

  “I do respect Putin,” Trump answered.

  “Why?”

  “Well, I respect a lot of people,” Trump said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to get along with them. He’s a leader of his country. I say it is better to get along with Russia than not, and if they help us in the fight against ISIS, which is a major fight, and Islamic terrorism all over the world, major fight, that’s a good thing. Will I get along with him? I have no idea.”

  “He’s a killer though. Putin is a killer,” O’Reilly asserted.

  “There’s a lot of killers,” Trump said. “What, you think our country is so innocent?”

  Comey didn’t watch the program, but he saw the coverage and much of the outrage it inspired. It struck him as consistent with Trump’s puzzling indifference to Russian interference in the election. Trump seemed to be “doubling down” on his reluctance to criticize the Russian government.

  Three days later, on February 8, Priebus invited Comey to the White House for a “meet and greet,” as Priebus put it, a “chance to get acquainted.” As Comey was waiting outside the West Wing, Flynn, of all people, passed by, looking lean and still tan from his Christmas trip to the Dominican Republic. He offered Comey a few tips on staying fit.

  Once alone, Priebus and Comey ranged over a variety of topics, starting with the travel ban. Because it wasn’t an FBI focus, Comey didn’t purport to be an expert, but he took issue with Yates, agreeing with Priebus that presidents have wide latitude when dealing with border security and the ban didn’t, on its face, discriminate against Muslims.

  Priebus turned to the Steele dossier and wanted to know how something so salacious had ended up in Comey’s briefing to the president. Comey said portions of the intelligence had been corroborated by other sources; he “thought it very important that it be included” and “the incoming president needed to know the rest was out there.” Comey added that at their recent dinner the president had expressed interest in having him investigate the “golden showers thing” but that Comey didn’t want to create a narrative that they were investigating him.

  Like Trump, Priebus was troubled by so many leaks. Comey explained that all presidents were “plagued” by them, and Priebus wanted to know if the FBI had ever caught a leaker. The bureau had, but “it was a rare thing because it almost always turned on our willingness to go after reporter records.”

  Then Priebus asked, “Is this a private conversation?”

  Comey said it was.

  “I want to ask you a question and you can decide if it’s appropriate to answer,” Priebus said. “Do you have a FISA order on Mike Flynn?”

  Comey was silent as he pondered the question. The question was, of course, inappropriate. On the other hand, it was an opportunity to drive home the point he had repeatedly tried to make, which was that the White House and the FBI needed to keep a distance.

  So he told Priebus that he would answer: there was no FISA order on Flynn. In the future, however, all such requests should go through the Justice Department. The FBI director would typically inform the attorney general and deputy, who, if appropriate, would notify the president. Direct communication with the FBI risked looking like improper interference with an investigation.

  Priebus said he understood that and it was helpful.

  “I understand your dinner with the President went well,” he said, shifting topics again, adding that Trump wanted Comey to stay on as director. Comey explained that while the president could fire him at any time, he had a ten-year term, so there was no need to announce that the president had decided to keep him.

  Priebus also expressed sympathy that people were holding Comey responsible for Trump’s victory over Clinton. Her team had totally “misplayed” his final decision and “should have pushed it harder as good news.” In any event, he added, “it wasn’t the Russians’ fault that she failed to campaign in Michigan,” and it wasn’t Comey’s fault “that she set up her email the way she did.”

  “And it wasn’t my fault that Huma Abedin forwarded emails to Anthony Weiner,” Comey added.

  Why wasn’t it “gross negligence”? Priebus wanted to know. So Comey reviewed, yet again, the basis for the decision and the lack of proof on the question of intent.

  After about twenty minutes, Priebus asked if Comey wanted to drop in on the president. Comey wondered if Priebus had absorbed anything he’d just said.

  “No, no thanks,” Comey said. Surely the president was too busy.

  “Sit,” Priebus insisted. “I’m sure he’d love to see you. Let me see if he’s in the Oval.”

  To Comey’s dismay, Trump was. Priebus brought Comey in; Spicer was just leaving, and they shook hands. Trump remained seated behind his large desk.

  Trump, too, touched on the email investigation, musing that if Comey had charged Clinton, Trump might have run against Bernie Sanders. He wondered what that would have been like. And he again asked if Comey’s deputy (he didn’t seem to remember McCabe’s name) had a “problem” with him, given how tough he’d been on him during the campaign. “The number two guy at the FBI took a million dollars from the Clintons,” Trump asserted. Comey let that pass (which was false on three counts: it was his wife, not McCabe, who got the mo
ney; it wasn’t a million dollars; and it didn’t come from the Clintons). But Comey came to McCabe’s defense, saying he was a “pro.”

  Had McCabe ever brought up Trump’s attacks? Trump asked.

  “Never,” Comey said. He repeated that “Andy McCabe is a true pro” and “you’ll come to value him.” He said if McCabe had it to do over, he’d probably urge his wife not to run, but nonetheless the “guy put everything aside and did his job well.”

  Priebus brought up the dossier, and Trump repeated that it “really bothered him” if Melania had any doubts about it. He seemed eager to expand on his earlier denial: he hadn’t stayed overnight in Russia and the “hookers thing is nonsense,” although Putin had told him “we have some of the most beautiful hookers in the world.”

  Priebus kept trying to say something, but Trump ignored him.

  The mention of Putin seemed to remind Trump of his recent interview with O’Reilly, whose question about Putin had been a “hard one,” Trump said.

  “What am I going to do?” he asked. “Say I don’t respect the leader of a major country I’m trying to get along with?”

  Priebus and Comey said nothing.

  “I gave a good answer,” Trump said. “Really, it was a great answer. I gave a really great answer.” He looked at Comey.

  “You think it was a great answer, right?”

  There it was again, Comey thought—the loyalty test. Trump didn’t seem to need an answer; silence would be acquiescence enough.

  Comey wasn’t going to give it to him.

  “The first part of your answer was fine, Mr. President,” he said. “But not the second part. We aren’t the kind of killers that Putin is.”

  Comey saw Trump’s jaw clench and a shadow pass over his face. Trump thanked Comey for stopping in, and Priebus wordlessly showed him out of the Oval Office.

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  ON FEBRUARY 8, Sessions was confirmed by his fellow senators as attorney general after a hard-fought process that focused on Sessions’s civil rights record and his willingness to stand up to Trump. (Sessions said repeatedly that he wouldn’t be a “rubber stamp.”) He’d also faced some grilling about any ties to Russia. “I’m not aware of any of those activities,” he said. “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.” And in response to a written question—“Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?”—he answered no.

  Sessions was immediately thrust into the middle of the festering Flynn situation. Despite Yates’s visits to the White House, and the sense of urgency she thought she’d conveyed, nothing had been done about Flynn. But the day after Sessions’s confirmation, The Washington Post published a detailed account of what had been mentioned in the Ignatius column, which was that Flynn “privately discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia with that country’s ambassador to the United States during the month before President Trump took office, contrary to public assertions by Trump officials.”

  “Flynn on Wednesday denied that he had discussed sanctions with Kislyak. Asked in an interview whether he had ever done so, he twice said, ‘No,’” the report continued.

  But now Flynn backtracked. A day later, on Thursday, his spokesman told the Post “that while he had no recollection of discussing sanctions, he couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.”

  Continuing press coverage of Flynn and Kislyak was only keeping the Russia story alive, and Trump was upset. In a private meeting in the Oval Office, Trump grilled Flynn on the conversations; he even corrected Flynn on one of the exact dates, indicating he’d had a detailed briefing on the encounters. When Trump pressed him about what was discussed, Flynn conceded he “might” have discussed sanctions.

  The day after the Post story, McCabe was at a White House briefing when McGahn asked him to stop by. McGahn’s secretary led McCabe to the vice president’s office, where Pence, Priebus, McGahn, and some staff members were waiting. Priebus said they wanted to see what evidence the FBI had gathered about Flynn, and, he said, “We want to see it right now.”

  McCabe obviously wasn’t carrying it with him. He called Jim Baker to discuss the request, and someone at the FBI brought the material over. They regrouped in the White House Situation Room, and Pence started reading the file. “Oh, this is fine. No problem with this,” he muttered as he read. “Fine, fine, fine.” Then he got to the actual transcript of the call. His tone changed abruptly. He shook his head in disbelief. “This is totally opposite, and it’s not what he said to me.” Pence handed the materials back to McCabe and thanked him.

  Afterward, Pence and Priebus concluded Flynn had lied to the vice president and others. It was inconceivable Flynn could simply have forgotten what was obviously the entire point of his initial and follow-up calls with Kislyak.

  Priebus and McGahn told Trump he had to fire Flynn, a recommendation McGahn memorialized in a memo.

  The next day, Flynn joined Trump for the weekend at Mar-a-Lago, where Trump hosted Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe. (After North Korea fired a ballistic missile that same weekend, Trump and Flynn worked out an official response to the test from the dining terrace of the club, prompting national security concerns.)

  Sunday night, Flynn flew back with Trump on Air Force One. But for some reason, Trump still didn’t fire him. Instead, he asked him directly if he’d lied to the vice president. Flynn prevaricated: he might have forgotten some of the details, but he didn’t think he’d lied. That seemed to satisfy Trump. “Okay. That’s fine. I got it,” he said.

  The next day, dismayed that Trump had failed to deliver the message, Priebus told Flynn point-blank that he had to resign. Flynn asked to see the president so he could say goodbye. Priebus ushered him into the Oval Office.

  Trump got up, hugged Flynn, and shook his hand. “We’ll give you a good recommendation,” he said. “You’re a good guy. We’ll take care of you.”

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  FLYNN ANNOUNCED HIS resignation the next day, still avoiding any concession that he’d lied. “Unfortunately, because of the fast pace of events, I inadvertently briefed the Vice President Elect and others with incomplete information regarding my phone calls with the Russian Ambassador,” his resignation letter said. “I have sincerely apologized to the President and the Vice President, and they have accepted my apology.”

  And he effusively thanked Trump for his “personal loyalty.”

  Trump tweeted the next morning that the “real story” was leaks coming out of Washington.

  At that day’s press briefing at the White House, Sean Spicer offered a somewhat less sanitized version. “The President was very concerned that General Flynn had misled the Vice President and others,” he said, adding that given sensitive national security concerns, “the President must have complete and unwavering trust for the person in that position. The evolving and eroding level of trust as a result of this situation and a series of other questionable instances is what led the President to ask for General Flynn’s resignation.”

  Flynn was furious over Spicer’s comments, which he thought went far beyond the approved talking points by mentioning “other questionable instances.”

  At the Justice Department, career officials remained mystified that it had apparently taken a Washington Post article to prompt action, when Yates had told McGahn everything he needed to know weeks earlier, including that Flynn was a security risk. They suspected Trump would have done nothing but for the publicity.

  As the Washington Post article noted, “The White House appears to have let its repeated false statements about Flynn stand for weeks after that notification from Yates, and has yet to account for what it did with the warning she conveyed. The disclosures about Flynn have added to the swirling suspicion about the Trump adm
inistration’s relationship with Moscow—suspicion based in part on Trump’s repeated expressions of admiration for Russian president Vladimir Putin.”

  As Spicer was delivering his press briefing, Trump had lunch at the White House with Chris Christie and his wife, Mary Pat. After giving up his run for the Republican nomination, the New Jersey governor had endorsed Trump and had seemed in line for a top cabinet post or chief of staff. Then Trump had replaced Christie as head of his transition team, reportedly at the behest of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. So it must have been awkward when Kushner joined them at the table.

  At some point in the conversation, Trump brought up Flynn. “Now that we fired Flynn, the Russia thing is over,” Trump said.

  Christie laughed. “No way,” he said. “This Russia thing is far from over.” We’ll “be here on Valentine’s Day 2018 talking about this.”

  Kushner said that was “crazy.”

  “What do you mean?” Trump asked. “Flynn met with the Russians. That was the problem. I fired Flynn. It’s over.”

  Kushner chimed in: “That’s right, firing Flynn ends the whole Russia thing.”

  On the contrary, Flynn will be “like gum on the bottom of your shoe,” Christie said.

  As if to prove the point, that very moment Flynn called Kushner to vent his anger over Spicer’s remarks. Seemingly oblivious to conventional courtesies, Kushner took the call at the table and carried on a conversation. “You know the President respects you,” Kushner assured Flynn as the others listened. “The President cares about you. I’ll get the President to send out a positive tweet about you later.” As he spoke, Kushner turned toward Trump, who nodded in agreement (though he didn’t tweet about Flynn that day).

  When conversation resumed, Christie reminded Trump that he was both a former prosecutor and himself the subject of a major investigation.*