Deep State

by James B. Stewart

  And immediately after: “How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”

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  WITH SESSIONS’S RECUSAL from anything involving the Trump campaign, Rod Rosenstein’s confirmation hearing on March 7 took on sudden significance, because, if confirmed as deputy attorney general, Rosenstein would be in charge of the Russia investigation. Democrats seized the occasion to renew their call for the appointment of a special counsel, but Rosenstein said he needed to know the facts before making that decision. He noted, however, that Lynch hadn’t recused herself in the Clinton email case.

  The Republican senator and Judiciary Committee chair, Charles Grassley, said he wouldn’t schedule a vote on Rosenstein until Comey briefed Congress on the Russia investigation. So two days later, after extended discussions with Justice Department officials about what he could say, Comey briefed the so-called Gang of Eight—the congressional leaders who, in strict confidence, receive classified intelligence briefings—and confirmed, for the first time, that the Russia investigation existed. He identified the four subjects—Flynn, Page, Manafort, and Papadopoulos—and said that at that juncture Trump himself was not a subject.

  Within days, Trump was in a “panic/chaos” about the Russia investigation, according to notes from McGahn’s office dated March 12. Four days later, a Gang of Eight member, Richard Burr, chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who had advised Trump during the campaign on national security matters, provided Comey’s testimony to the White House. According to notes from McGahn’s office dated March 16, Burr identified “4–5 targets”: “Flynn (FBI was in—wrapping up)→DOJ looking for phone records”; “Comey→Manafort (Ukr + Russia, not campaign)”; “Carter Page ($ game)”; and “Greek Guy.”

  On March 20, Comey gave a similar briefing to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired by a fierce Trump partisan, Representative Devin Nunes of California. In contrast to his Senate testimony, the hearing was public. Nonetheless, in consultation with the Justice Department, Comey had decided to confirm the existence of the investigation as being in the public interest—but not to say whether Trump (or anyone else) was being investigated. This was in part to protect Trump, because once Comey said publicly that the president was not personally under investigation, he’d have to correct the record if he ever was, much as Comey had to notify Congress once Clinton was again under investigation.

  “As you know, our practice is not to confirm the existence of ongoing investigations, especially those investigations that involve classified matters, but in unusual circumstances where it is in the public interest, it may be appropriate to do so as Justice Department policies recognize. This is one of those circumstances,” Comey began, and proceeded to confirm “that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts. As with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed. Because it is an open ongoing investigation and is classified, I cannot say more about what we are doing and whose conduct we are examining.”

  Comey spent much of the ensuing five and a half hours fending off questions about who was being investigated, including Trump himself.

  Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Select Intelligence Committee, asked whether it was true that Trump’s phones at Trump Tower had been tapped.

  “With respect to the President’s tweets about alleged wiretapping directed at him by the prior administration, I have no information that supports those tweets and we have looked carefully inside the FBI,” Comey responded. “The Department of Justice has asked me to share with you that the answer is the same for the Department of Justice and all its components. The department has no information that supports those tweets.”

  Comey’s testimony infuriated Trump. The next day, he was “beside himself,” according to notes from McGahn’s office. Not only had Comey failed to state that Trump himself wasn’t being investigated, but he’d left the distinct impression that he was. (It was lost on Trump that saying he wasn’t under investigation generated an obligation to say if he was.)

  Perhaps even worse, Comey had undercut Trump’s claim that his phones had been tapped. Comey had made him “look like a fool,” Trump said.

  And thanks to his “bombshell” confirming the conversation, Comey was all over the TV news broadcasts and the front pages. This was exactly the kind of grandstanding that so irked Trump, that had prompted his earlier comment that Comey “was more famous than me.”

  Trump called McGahn repeatedly that day to vent about Comey and threatened to fire him. The president got “hotter and hotter, get rid?” according to notes taken by McGahn’s chief of staff. McGahn had a lawyer in his office research whether a president needed cause to fire an FBI director. (He concluded that he didn’t but neglected to tell the president that.) McGahn spent much of the day running interference with the Justice Department and discouraging Trump from acting on his impulse to call the department himself and demand a statement that he wasn’t under investigation.

  The president was consumed with the issue throughout the week, complaining to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, “I can’t do anything with Russia, there’s things I’d like to do with Russia, with trade, with ISIS, they’re all over me with this,” and to the NSA director, Michael Rogers, that “the thing with the Russians” was “messing up” his ability to get things done. He also asked Rogers if he could do anything to refute the stories. The issue even overshadowed Trump’s effort to overturn Obamacare, one of the signature promises of his campaign. That Friday, House Republicans abandoned efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act after failing to come up with enough votes, even though they had a majority.

  At about 8:15 a.m. on March 30, Trump finally called Comey, notwithstanding the repeated warnings about direct contact with the FBI director. The president began with a comment that Comey was getting more publicity than he was (which Comey considered a joke, showing how much he underestimated Trump’s resentment at being upstaged). “I hate that,” Comey said.

  Then Trump said he was trying to run the country but the “cloud” of “this Russia business” was making that difficult. He said it had cost him the health care vote.

  He again denounced the Steele dossier. He had nothing to do with Russia and had a letter saying he derived no income from Russia “from the largest law firm in D.C.” As for consorting with “hookers,” “Can you imagine me, hookers?” He had a “beautiful wife,” and all this had been “painful” for her. He was going to sue Christopher Steele.

  Comey listened; he’d heard variations of all this before.

  Finally Trump asked what he could do to “lift the cloud.” Comey said the FBI was moving as quickly as it could, and if it found nothing, Trump would have “our Good Housekeeping seal of approval.” But the bureau needed to do its work unimpeded.

  Trump claimed to agree, but returned to how hard this was making his job. He was being tough on Russia, ramping up production of oil (thereby driving down prices and Russia’s oil revenues) and renewing America’s nuclear weapons (“ours are 40 years old”).

  Trump wanted to know why Congress had held a hearing the previous week and why Comey had testified. Comey said he hadn’t volunteered for the task but that legislators from both parties demanded it; Grassley had even threatened to block Rosenstein’s confirmation. Comey assured Trump that he’d briefed the congressional leadership in greater detail, making clear—as Comey had told Trump before—that the president wasn’t under investigation.

  That was
clearly what Trump wanted to hear. “We need to get that fact out,” he said. And although he, Trump, hadn’t done anything with the Russians, if one of his “satellites” had, it would be good to find out. But, he said again, it would be good to get out that the FBI wasn’t investigating him.

  Trump abruptly turned to the subject of McCabe, someone he hadn’t brought up again, because Comey had assured him he was an honorable guy.

  “He is an honorable guy,” Comey responded.

  But “McAuliffe is close to the Clintons and gave him money,” Trump said.

  Comey had no idea why Trump was bringing up McCabe now (although McCabe’s recent refusal to correct the Times story might well have been on his mind). Comey said McCabe was a professional, not motivated by politics, and was, indeed, an “honorable guy.”

  Trump returned to his main theme: he was trying to make deals for the country, and this “cloud” was making it difficult. He hated going to the upcoming G7 meeting with it hanging over him. Again, he said Comey should find a way to get out the fact that he wasn’t being investigated.

  Comey said he’d see what he could do, then called the acting deputy attorney general, Dana Boente, for guidance about how to respond. He also told Boente, as he had so many times, that he was uncomfortable taking calls from the president about an ongoing investigation.

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  ON APRIL 7, Trump’s nominee Neil M. Gorsuch was confirmed as a justice of the Supreme Court, fulfilling a Trump campaign pledge to replace Antonin Scalia, who had died in February 2016, with a similarly reliable conservative justice. The New York Times called Gorsuch’s confirmation a “triumph” for Trump and said the president “now has a lasting legacy: Judge Gorsuch, 49, could serve on the court for 30 years or more.”

  In a statement, Trump hailed Gorsuch as “a deep believer in the rule of law.”

  But Trump didn’t take much time to savor his victory or reward his allies and staff, like McGahn, who had helped make it happen. Instead, he fretted about Comey.

  Just four days later, on April 11, shortly before 8:30 a.m., Trump called Comey again. Trump’s patience was wearing thin. There were no pleasantries this time, or even pointed comments about Comey’s celebrity. Trump wanted to ask what Comey had done about his request to publicize the fact he wasn’t under investigation. Comey said he’d sought guidance from Dana Boente at the Justice Department but hadn’t heard back.

  “Who’s that?” Trump asked.

  Trump reminded Comey that he was “trying to do work for the country, visit with foreign leaders, and any cloud, even a little cloud, gets in the way of that. They keep bringing up the Russia thing as an excuse for losing the election.”

  Comey suggested Trump have people in the White House contact the Justice Department about a statement, which was the proper channel, rather than coming to him.

  Trump seemed to agree but then added, “Because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal, we had that thing, you know.”

  Comey didn’t immediately respond. He didn’t ask Trump what “thing” he meant. He again urged Trump to have someone contact the Justice Department.

  The two turned to a few other matters, and then Trump told Comey, unconvincingly, that he was doing a “great job.”

  It was the last time they spoke.

  NINE

  “I KNOW YOU TOLD ME NOT TO”

  A few hours after speaking to Comey, Trump taped an interview with another friendly network host, Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business, in which he both hinted ominously about Comey’s future and signaled that his preoccupation with the Clinton email case was far from over, however magnanimous he’d seemed right after the election.

  “People are still wondering, though, they’re scratching their heads, right, so many Obama-era staffers are still here,” Bartiromo said, before singling out Comey. “Was it a mistake not to ask Jim Comey to step down from the FBI at the outset of your presidency? Is it too late now to ask him to step down?”

  “No, it’s not too late, but, you know, I have confidence in him,” Trump answered. “We’ll see what happens. You know, it’s going to be interesting.”

  Trump seemed to suggest that Comey’s and Clinton’s self-interests had aligned in the email investigation, both exonerating Clinton and turning Comey into a celebrity. “Don’t forget, when Jim Comey came out, he saved Hillary Clinton,” Trump said. “People don’t realize that. He saved her life, because—I call it Comey 1. And I joke about it a little bit. When he was reading those charges, she was guilty on every charge. And then he said, she was essentially OK. But he—she wasn’t OK, because she was guilty on every charge. But Hillary Clinton won—or Comey won. She was guilty on every charge.”

  “Yes,” Bartiromo agreed.

  Trump continued, “Director Comey was very, very good to Hillary Clinton, that I can tell you. If he weren’t, she would be, right now, going to trial.”

  “Are you going to push that?”

  “I don’t want to talk about that,” Trump said.

  Afterward, the White House communications director, Hope Hicks, suggested references to Comey be cut from the interview, but Trump disagreed, saying he wanted them left in. They were included when the interview broadcast the next day, prompting widespread speculation about Comey’s future. Aaron Blake in The Washington Post described the remarks as “a half vote-of-confidence and a half you-better-watch-your-back to Comey. ‘We’ll see what happens’ isn’t exactly promising that Comey will be around forever.”

  Only later that afternoon did Trump disclose to Priebus, McGahn, and others that he had defied instructions not to talk to Comey about the Russia investigation and had done so twice. “I know you told me not to, but I called Comey anyway,” the president said.

  Trump said Comey agreed he could make a statement that Trump wasn’t under investigation as long as the Justice Department approved, and, as Comey had suggested, he told McGahn to make some calls. Comey would be testifying in Congress on May 3; that might be the ideal time. His failure to do so, Trump warned McGahn, would be “the last straw.”

  McGahn called Dana Boente, who relayed his conversation with Comey, saying the calls from Trump had made Comey uncomfortable. Nor was Boente eager to have Comey make a statement defending Trump. He thought it could backfire politically and would only lead to more calls for a special counsel. That, of course, was not what Trump wanted to hear.

  In any event, it was soon no longer Boente’s problem: Rosenstein was confirmed as deputy attorney general on April 25 and assumed oversight of the Russia investigation.

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  EVEN AS TRUMP was blaming Comey for “saving” Clinton, Clinton supporters increasingly blamed him for her narrow loss, with a growing body of data to support their argument.

  On May 3, Nate Silver, the widely respected statistician, analyst, and founder of the FiveThirtyEight website, published a lengthy analysis of the 2016 presidential election, stating flatly that “Hillary Clinton would probably be president if FBI Director James Comey had not sent a letter to Congress on Oct. 28.”

  While Silver didn’t dismiss other factors, “the impact of Comey’s letter is comparatively easy to quantify. At a maximum, it might have shifted the race by 3 or 4 percentage points toward Donald Trump, swinging Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida to him, perhaps along with North Carolina and Arizona. At a minimum, its impact might have been only a percentage point or so. Still, because Clinton lost Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by less than 1 point, the letter was probably enough to change the outcome of the Electoral College.”

  Clinton reached a similar conclusion in an interview with Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s international anchor, at a women’s conference in New York, her first extended public remarks since her loss. “If the election had been on October 27th, I’d be your president. It wasn’t,” Clinton said.
“It wasn’t a perfect campaign,” Clinton said. “There is no such thing. But I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28th and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off. And the evidence for that intervening event is I think compelling, persuasive.”

  Clinton’s comments, which drew widespread media attention, were on Comey’s mind the next day, when he made yet another appearance in Congress, this time before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The committee chair, Charles Grassley, introduced Comey with a comment sure to get under Trump’s skin: “As the old saying goes, for somebody as famous as you, you don’t need any introduction.”

  In her opening comments, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, echoed Clinton’s comments: “I join those who believe that the actions taken by the FBI did, in fact, have an impact on the election.” Comey responded, “Look, this is terrible. It makes me mildly nauseous to think that we might have had some impact on the election. But honestly, it wouldn’t change the decision. Everybody who disagrees with me has to come back to October 28 with me and stare at this and tell me what you would do. Would you speak or would you conceal? And I could be wrong, but we honestly made a decision between those two choices that even in hindsight—and this has been one of the world’s most painful experiences—I would make the same decision.”

  Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, asked a series of questions about the Russia investigation. “Have you ruled out anyone in the campaign that you can disclose?”

  Comey said he wasn’t “comfortable” answering that.

  “Have you—have you ruled out the President of the United States?”