But what could McCabe say? “It’s always a good idea to visit your people at the FBI,” McCabe said.
“Do you think it would be a good idea for me to come down now?” Trump asked.
“Come whenever you want,” McCabe said halfheartedly.
Trump turned to McGahn. “Don, what do you think? Do you think I should go down to the FBI and speak to the people?”
“If the acting director of the FBI is telling you he thinks it’s a good idea for you to come visit the FBI, then you should do it,” McGahn said, deftly putting the onus back on McCabe.
Trump turned back to McCabe. “Is that what you’re telling me?”
The question hung in the air. Trump and McGahn stared at him. McCabe realized that he was being maneuvered into “inviting” Trump to speak at the FBI, which was no doubt how it would be portrayed. But to say no probably meant he, too, would be fired. That put too much at risk. Losing his job over a visit from Trump wasn’t worth it.
A visit would be fine, McCabe said.
“FBI people love me,” the president continued. “At least 80 percent voted for me. Who did you vote for?”
No one in a position of authority had ever asked McCabe that question. He was completely unprepared. As the silence lengthened, he stammered something along the lines of “I played it down the middle,” which even he knew was a nonanswer.
Trump gave him an odd, sideways look. McCabe had told him all he needed to know.
The discussion turned to the logistics of the visit: Trump would come that Friday, May 12; McCabe told him the Hoover Building’s spacious open courtyard would accommodate the largest crowd. “Make sure that courtyard is full,” Trump said.
* * *
—
THE NEXT MORNING, McCabe, Baker, and Lisa Page arrived on Capitol Hill for a previously scheduled worldwide threats briefing—McCabe’s first appearance in Congress as acting director, and his first ever in a public hearing. Comey was supposed to have done that, and McCabe had considered backing out. But he wanted to send a message that the FBI was functioning smoothly despite the upheaval.
He knew he’d be asked about Comey’s firing, which would thrust him into the awkward position of either dissembling to support the White House narrative or being direct, which would contradict it. He’d practiced answering the question the night before and that morning with Page. “You’ve got to defend us,” she pleaded. “You have to defend him.”
McCabe wasn’t prepared for the media circus that awaited him as he, Baker, and Page got out of the car. McCabe was suddenly the object of intense curiosity. Reporters shouted questions at him as he tried to maneuver through the crowd to the hearing room. Senator Dianne Feinstein could barely get through the crowd. “Finally, a gentleman,” she said when Baker stepped aside so she could pass.
When they got into the room, McCabe took his seat at the table with Coats and Pompeo. They faced what seemed a wall of photographers stationed just feet away as camera flashes popped. McCabe was dazed. No one had prepared him for this.
Martin Heinrich, Democrat of New Mexico, was the first to bring up Comey’s firing. “We’ve heard in the news claims that Director Comey had lost the confidence of rank and file FBI employees. You’ve been there for 21 years. In your opinion, is it accurate that the rank and file no longer supported Director Comey?”
It was exactly the question McCabe had been rehearsing with Page. He decided to be direct, even at the risk of further offending the president.
“No, sir, that is not accurate,” he said. “I can tell you, sir, that I worked very, very closely with Director Comey from the moment he started at the FBI. I was his Executive Assistant Director of National Security at that time; then worked for him running the Washington Field Office; and of course I’ve served as Deputy for the last year. I can tell you that I hold Director Comey in the absolute highest regard. I have the highest respect for his considerable abilities and his integrity, and it has been the greatest privilege and honor of my professional life to work with him.”
He continued, “I can tell you also that Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day. We are a large organization. We are 36,500 people across this country, across this globe. We have a diversity of opinions about many things. But I can confidently tell you that the majority, the vast majority, of FBI employees enjoyed a deep and positive connection to Director Comey.”
Later in the hearing, Senator Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican, asked if “the dismissal of Mr. Comey in any way impeded, interrupted, stopped, or negatively impacted any of the work, any investigation, or any ongoing projects at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“As you know, Senator, the work of the men and women of the FBI continues despite any changes in circumstance, any decisions,” McCabe assured him. “So there has been no effort to impede our investigation to date. Quite simply put, sir, you cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing, protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution.”
* * *
—
AFTERWARD, SANDERS doubled down on her earlier claim, now suggesting that she herself had spoken to FBI employees: “I have heard from countless members of the FBI that are grateful on the president’s decision, and we may have to agree to disagree.”*
Sanders later told lawyers for Mueller that her reference to “countless members of the FBI” was a “slip of the tongue” and her assertion that rank-and-file FBI agents had lost confidence in Comey was a comment she made “in the heat of the moment” that was “not founded on anything.”
But it’s implausible that Sanders would have experienced multiple such slips of the tongue. It seems more likely that she heard the claims from Trump, given how closely her remarks mirrored his. Some at the FBI have speculated that Trump was repeating hearsay from Giuliani, who was in regular contact with disgruntled former agents, but the claim had no factual basis.
But McCabe had come through his first public trial by fire. Baker was impressed by how McCabe rose to the occasion, and Page was proud of him for defending the bureau and telling the truth about morale.
McCabe had always been the consummate anonymous Washington insider. He’d spent over twenty years in the capital cultivating anonymity. No one recognized him. That night he and his wife had dinner at Fiola, an Italian restaurant close to FBI headquarters. When he got up after paying the check, everyone in the restaurant gave him a standing ovation.
* * *
—
SANDERS’S ONGOING STATEMENTS pinning the Comey firing on Rosenstein had prompted another wave of press calls to the Justice Department, where Sessions and Rosenstein remained conspicuously silent. But her repeated insistence that it was Rosenstein, not Trump, who initiated Comey’s firing was deeply troubling to both. Both knew it was untrue. More worrisome, it put Rosenstein in legal jeopardy: if this was all his idea, then he might be accused of obstructing the Russia investigation.
Both Sessions and Rosenstein complained repeatedly to McGahn and others on his staff that the White House was disseminating a false narrative. There’s no indication that Sessions or Rosenstein threatened to go public with what had really happened, but they wouldn’t have needed to; their objections would have been enough to suggest the possibility.
McGahn and his staff also knew that Trump’s version wasn’t true; they’d seen the letter Miller had drafted laying out the real reasons. Finally McGahn agreed that the story the White House was pushing—that the Justice Department had initiated Comey’s firing—was “factually wrong” and asked his staff to work with the communications staff to correct the record.
But Trump took matters into his own hands. He told McGahn’s staff that his communications team “could not get the story right,” so he was “going on Lester Holt” to say what really happened, referring to the NBC Nightly News anchor. “N
ever forget, no one speaks for me but me,” Trump said just before the interview. The communications people “don’t know what they’re talking about. But I do, believe me,” Trump said.
At the White House, Holt and Trump sat in chairs facing each other in front of French doors flanked by flags. Trump immediately blasted Comey as “a showboat, he’s a grandstander, the FBI has been in turmoil. You know that, I know that. Everybody knows that. You take a look at the FBI a year ago, it was in virtual turmoil, less than a year ago, it hasn’t recovered from that.”
Trump did, in an important sense, correct the record that he had largely created, saying Rosenstein’s recommendation was irrelevant, and the reason he fired Comey was Russia—not his handling of the Clinton investigation. “Oh I was gonna fire [Comey] regardless of recommendation,” Trump said. Rosenstein “made a recommendation but regardless of recommendation I was going to fire Comey knowing, there was no good time to do it. And in fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.” He repeated, “This was an excuse for having lost an election.”
“Okay, are you angry with, angry with Mr. Comey because of his Russia investigation?” Holt asked.
“I just want somebody that’s competent. I am a big fan of the FBI, I love the FBI.”
Trump said he knew firing Comey wouldn’t end the Russia investigation. “Look, let me tell you. As far as I’m concerned, I want that thing to be absolutely done properly. When I did this now I said, I probably, maybe will confuse people, maybe I’ll expand that, you know, lengthen the time because it should be over with, in my opinion, should have been over with a long time ago. Because all it is, is an excuse, but I said to myself, I might even lengthen out the investigation but I have to do the right thing for the American people. He’s the wrong man for that position.”
Holt asked why Trump mentioned in his letter that Comey told him three times he wasn’t under investigation.
“Because he told me that,” Trump said. “I had a dinner with him. He wanted to have dinner because he wanted to stay on. We had a very nice dinner at the White House.”
“He asked for the dinner?”
“A dinner was arranged, I think he asked for the dinner. And he wanted to stay on as the FBI head. And I said I’ll, you know, consider and we’ll see what happens. But we had a very nice dinner. And at that time he told me you are not under investigation. Which I knew anyway.
“Then during a phone call he said it. And then during another phone call he said it. So he said it once at dinner and then he said it twice during phone calls.”
And did you ask, “Am I under investigation?”
“I actually asked him, yes. I said, ‘If it’s possible would you let me know am I under investigation?’ He said, ‘You are not under investigation.’”
“Did you ask him to drop the investigation?”
“No. Never.”
Trump had now confirmed what many had suspected: that Rosenstein’s memo was a pretext and Trump had fired Comey because of Russia. Any lingering doubts about whether to open a case against Trump vanished. For why would the president have gone to such lengths to conceal his real motive, unless he knew what he had done was wrong?
* * *
—
TRUMP MIGHT HAVE thought he’d dispatched Comey and thereby rid himself of the Russia investigation, but Comey himself had other ideas. Once he was fired, it was obvious that the Justice Department needed to appoint a special counsel to oversee the Russia investigation. A special counsel would remove it from direct political influence and keep it one step further from the White House. But after the events of that week, starting with his betrayal by Sessions and Rosenstein, Comey no longer trusted the Justice Department’s leadership to do the right thing. As Comey later put it, “Something was needed that might force them to do the right thing”—like a news article suggesting Trump’s real intent in firing Comey.
Two of Comey’s closest confidants—Columbia law professor Daniel Richman and his friend Ben Wittes—furious at how Trump was spinning Comey’s firing, asked if Comey “would try to stop us” if they talked to the press.
Still exhausted by recent events, Comey said he didn’t care. “Do what you think is right,” he said.
The result was an explosive article in The New York Times on May 11. Relying on two “associates” of Comey’s as sources, the Times reporter Michael Schmidt described in considerable detail and accuracy Comey’s dinner with Trump on January 27:
The conversation that night in January, Mr. Comey now believes, was a harbinger of his downfall this week as head of the FBI, according to two people who have heard his account of the dinner.
As they ate, the president and Mr. Comey made small talk about the election and the crowd sizes at Mr. Trump’s rallies. The president then turned the conversation to whether Mr. Comey would pledge his loyalty to him.
Mr. Comey declined to make that pledge. Instead, Mr. Comey has recounted to others, he told Mr. Trump that he would always be honest with him, but that he was not “reliable” in the conventional political sense.
As Comey had hoped, the article triggered a new wave of calls for a special counsel. The attorneys general of nineteen states and the District of Columbia sent a much-publicized letter to Rosenstein: “As the chief law enforcement officers of our respective states, we view the President’s firing of FBI Director James Comey in the middle of his investigation of Russian interference in the presidential election as a violation of the public trust. As prosecutors committed to the rule of law, we urge you to consider the damage to our democratic system of any attempts by the administration to derail and delegitimize the investigation.”
The Times account drew vehement denials from the White House. “We don’t believe this to be an accurate account,” Sanders told the Times. “The integrity of our law enforcement agencies and their leadership is of the utmost importance to President Trump. He would never even suggest the expectation of personal loyalty, only loyalty to our country and its great people.”
In a Fox News interview with Jeanine Pirro, Trump himself flatly denied asking Comey for loyalty: “No. No, I didn’t. But I don’t think it would be a bad question to ask.” He denied it to Spicer, too, but added, “Who cares?”
* * *
—
TRUMP ALSO RESPONDED with a barrage of tweets. “Russia must be laughing up their sleeves watching as the U.S. tears itself apart over a Democrat EXCUSE for losing the election,” he tweeted late on May 11. Early the next morning, he followed up with “Again, the story that there was collusion between the Russians & Trump campaign was fabricated by Dems as an excuse for losing the election”; and then “When James Clapper himself, and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt, says there is no collusion, when does it end?”*
But he saved his most provocative tweet for James Comey: “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”—an apparent reference to the Times story and the conflicting accounts of what was said at the dinner.
The tweet set off a frenzy of speculation: Had Trump secretly taped his former FBI director? Trump and the White House coyly refused to say.
* * *
—
IN THIS HIGHLY charged environment, the former attorney general William Barr weighed in to defend Trump’s ouster of Comey and lend his support to Rosenstein’s reasoning. Writing in The Washington Post, Barr ignored his earlier praise for Comey’s decision in the same newspaper. He now argued that Comey’s “basic misjudgment” about how to handle the Clinton investigation “boxed him in, compelling him to take increasingly controversial actions giving the impression that the FBI was enmeshed in politics.”
“Once Comey
staked out a position in July,” Barr continued, “he had no choice on the near-eve of the election but to reopen the investigation when new evidence materialized. Regrettably, however, this performance made Comey himself the issue, placing him on center stage in public political discourse and causing him to lose credibility on both sides of the aisle. It was widely recognized that Comey’s job was in jeopardy regardless of who won the election.”
And “no matter how far along the president was in his own thinking, Rosenstein’s assessment is cogent and vindicates the president’s decision.”
* * *
—
ON FRIDAY MORNING McCabe had his first meeting with Rosenstein in his new capacity as acting director. It was a routine discussion with staff members present, but afterward McCabe asked to speak to Rosenstein alone.
When the others left, they stayed in their seats on opposite sides of the conference table. McCabe told Rosenstein he needed to help him coordinate requests to interview witnesses in the Russia investigation now that multiple congressional committees were pursuing the issue. Typically, the FBI needed to have the first—and in some cases the only—access to key witnesses to protect the investigation. “I need your help on this,” McCabe said.
Rosenstein said fine, no problem, but he didn’t seem to be really concentrating.
His gaze shifted toward the closed door to the room, somewhere off in the distance. His eyes looked glassy. His voice wavering, his eyes teared up. He said he couldn’t believe what was happening. The White House was trying to make it look as if it were his idea to fire Comey. That wasn’t true. The president had asked him to write the memo only after announcing that he was firing Comey. Rosenstein was obviously struggling to keep his emotions in check.
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