The Shadow President

by Michael D'Antonio

  * * *

  The Pences sent out a general Christmas message on social media that said he planned a “tender Indiana Christmas. We’ll be with Karen’s family on Christmas Eve; we’ll be sitting around the Christmas tree at the governor’s residence on Christmas Day; and then, the really special event is that our son, Michael, who is a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps will be getting married at the governor’s residence … we’ll have a small, little intimate ceremony just for immediate families. So it’s going to be a very special time as it is for every Hoosier family.”

  As the Pences celebrated, the transition team in Washington labored to fill six hundred executive positions at the White House, about half of which needed Senate confirmation. That confirmation process could have begun anytime after the November 8 election, but the task of matching people to jobs was proceeding very slowly. As 2016 came to an end, the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan Washington group, said that the incoming administration would be lucky to have a cabinet selected by the time Trump and Pence were sworn in. Prior administrations had averaged one hundred key jobs confirmed by the Senate on Inauguration Day.7

  The difficulties Trump confronted staffing his administration were not evident in Pence’s schedule. True to the laid-back style of his first days as governor, he took time to relax and hardly seemed focused on the job at hand. Then, in the last days of the year, events unfolding in Washington would draw him into a controversy that would plague the new administration every day for the foreseeable future.

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  On December 29, President Barack Obama issued an executive order from his Christmas retreat in Kailua, outside Honolulu, where he was spending his final vacation as president. It read:

  Today, I have ordered a number of actions in response to the Russian government’s aggressive harassment of U.S. officials and cyber operations aimed at the U.S. election. These actions follow repeated private and public warnings that we have issued to the Russian government, and are a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm U.S. interests in violation of established international norms of behavior.

  All Americans should be alarmed by Russia’s actions. In October, my Administration publicized our assessment that Russia took actions intended to interfere with the U.S. election process. These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government. Moreover, our diplomats have experienced an unacceptable level of harassment in Moscow by Russian security services and police over the last year. Such activities have consequences. Today, I have ordered a number of actions in response.8

  Some of the actions Obama ordered were classified and, no doubt, were taken in the murky realm of cyber defense. The visible actions included the expulsion of thirty-five Russian diplomats and the closure of two Russian annexes in the United States. Obama said that other actions would be taken, some of which could be clandestine. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress generally supported the sanctions, although, predictably, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, among other Republicans, said the measures were overdue and said Obama was showing weakness.

  Trump, spending the holiday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, had learned of Obama’s impending action a day ahead of time. On that day, Pence and his family had celebrated as planned the wedding of his son, Michael, to Sarah Whiteside at the governor’s mansion. The couple had met while attending Purdue University. The bride was a mental health coordinator with the Indiana State Division of Mental Health and Addiction and was said to be a former aide to the Indiana Democratic Party.

  The next day, as Obama’s actions were revealed, Trump practically yawned in response. “I think we ought to get on with our lives,” he said. “I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on. We have speed, we have a lot of other things, but I’m not sure we have the kind, the security we need.” This passive and incomprehensible statement tracked with the larger point he had expressed many times before. He doubted reports of Russian hacking, insisting despite ample evidence to the contrary that he wasn’t helped in the election by their interference.

  Whether by design or good fortune, Mike Pence was out of view as Trump offered his very unpresidential response to the sanctions. Mary Matalin, a popular conservative pundit and former aide to former vice president Dick Cheney, noted sarcastically that Pence always managed to be away from Trump at moments when it was better to be at a remove. “He is always in the right place at the right time, discreet, dedicated, and freakishly absent from tumultuous events,” she said.9

  Members of the transition team, including people who should have been very close to Pence, reacted quickly to President Obama’s announcement of Russian sanctions. Within hours, General Flynn’s deputy, K. T. McFarland, wrote a series of emails that included warnings that Obama’s actions could be a problem for relations between Trump and Russia, “which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to him.” When it became known, McFarland would say that rather than indicating she knew such a thing had taken place, she was simply repeating the language used by Democrats. This may or may not have been true. What was incontestable, though, was the fact that rather than demonstrating concern about the sanctity of U.S. elections, the transition officials worried that a focus on Russian hacking would be a tool to delegitimize Trump’s victory.10

  The concern held by intelligence officials, however, went to the heart of American democracy. By now, wrote then FBI director James Comey, the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence had reached a clear consensus:

  Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered an extensive effort to influence the 2016 presidential election. That effort, which came through cyber activity, social media, and Russian state media, had a variety of goals: undermining public faith in the American democratic process, denigrating Hillary Clinton and harming her electability and potential presidency, and helping Donald Trump get elected.11

  In her emails, McFarland said that her boss, Flynn, was scheduled to speak with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States. Flynn already had a relationship with Kislyak, and, in fact, some transition aides had warned Flynn previously about such contacts because they were almost certain to be intercepted by U.S. intelligence. Pence did not publicly say whether he was in touch with Flynn or anyone else during the Christmas holiday, nor whether he was aware of McFarland’s message or the subsequent chain of emails. However, they were so widely distributed that any claim that Pence was bypassed is hard to believe. He was the top transition official and the president’s second. If incoming presidential advisors Reince Priebus, Stephen Bannon, and Sean Spicer were informed—and they were—then Pence almost surely received notice.

  As the Trump team digested Obama’s sanctions, Thomas P. Bossert, another transition official, distributed an email to top officials in the transition and said their task should be to “defend election legitimacy now.” He sent copies of his message—and one from McFarland—to a host of top Trump players, including Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer, and Flynn. The only key transition player—other than Trump—not mentioned as a recipient was Mike Pence.

  On December 30, McFarland spoke with Flynn, who was on vacation in the Dominican Republic. Soon afterward, Flynn phoned Kislyak. It was later reported that Flynn called the Russian ambassador on orders from a “very senior transition official.”

  Following the chain of command, Pence was Flynn’s superior and in charge of the transition. If Pence had not issued the order to call Kislyak and that report is true, the chain of command would have extra links. Trump himself, of course, would be the ultimate “senior transition official.” Others could have included Kushner or Bannon. Flynn eventually testified to the FBI that his chat with Kislyak was a social call. He said he wished Kislyak happy holidays and may have expressed condolences for the plane crash that killed the members of the R
ussian Army Choir en route to entertain troops in Syria.

  One of the most confounding elements of Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak was that, as an intelligence officer, he should have known that telephone communications with Russian officials in the United States would be monitored by security officials. It would be equally odd that these contacts on a matter so concerning to the president-elect would have been kept secret from Pence, who was both the incoming vice president and the head of the transition.

  On the day Flynn and Kislyak spoke, December 30, Russian president Vladimir Putin offered a mild response to Obama’s sanctions. “We regard the recent unfriendly steps taken by the outgoing U.S. administration as provocative and aimed at further weakening the Russia-U.S. relationship. This runs contrary to the fundamental interests of both the Russian and American people,” he said. “Although we have the right to retaliate, we will not resort to irresponsible ‘kitchen’ diplomacy but will plan our further steps to restore Russian-U.S. relations based on the policies of the Trump Administration.”12

  Delighted by Putin’s reaction, Trump took to Twitter, which would become his main mode for communicating with the world: “Great move on delay (by V. Putin) - I always knew he was very smart!”

  While Trump tweeted, Pence left Indianapolis to headline a $2,700-per-ticket Illinois fund-raiser at the venerable Chicago Club. With the help of a security cordon, he was able to bypass about 150 protesters who had gathered to draw attention to the Russia hacking controversy. No mention was made of the demonstration at the private event. Pence “was very upbeat,” said Jim Dirken, Republican leader in the Illinois House. “We raised a lot of money for the Republican National Committee.”

  Pence returned to Washington after the new year, where he finally did react to the warning about Russian hacking by saying that, as always, he agreed with Trump. The president-elect had often responded to the issue by casting doubt on the American intelligence community, charging that President Bush had gone to war in Iraq on the basis of faulty intelligence. (In fact, U.S. intelligence got the facts right: Saddam Hussein was not building a bomb. But Bush acted on cooked-up raw intelligence with pressure from his vice president, Dick Cheney.)13

  Although this claim was not the view shared by most Republicans, Trump’s argument made for a nice sound bite. Pence echoed it, saying, “Given some of the intelligence failures of recent years, the President-elect made it clear to the American people that he’s skeptical about conclusions from the bureaucracy,” Pence said. “I think the American people hear him loud and clear.”14

  Perhaps Trump had been loud and clear, but Pence recently had heard evidence that the intelligence community had gathered on Russian influence in the election. The information had been provided by the directors of the top four U.S. intelligence agencies, including James Clapper, the director of national intelligence; Admiral Mike Rogers of the National Security Agency; John Brennan of the CIA; and James Comey, the FBI director. At a meeting that Pence attended at Trump Tower in New York, they presented classified and categorical evidence that Russia had hacked into the U.S. election and that Vladimir Putin was personally responsible for authorizing this activity.

  In addition to Pence, the Trump briefing was attended by the president-elect, Michael Flynn, and K. T. McFarland, Flynn’s designated deputy as the new national security advisor. Long after the meeting, Clapper made two observations about the ninety-minute Trump Tower meeting: “Pence very astutely prompted us to clarify points on several occasions; I was impressed by the way he actively consumed the intelligence we were providing.” He said that Trump also asked questions, and when they were done, he went on to say, “I believe everyone in the room realized that the evidence—particularly from signals intelligence and cyber forensics—to attribute the influence operation to Vladimir Putin and the Russian government was overwhelming.”15

  Clapper told Trump and the others that the intelligence community “had neither the authority nor capabilities to assess what impact—if any—the Russian operation had” on the outcome of the election.16 Despite Clapper’s clear position, Trump would continue to call the Russian investigation a witch hunt, and Pence would claim falsely, despite Clapper’s denial and analysis of Pence’s astuteness, that the intelligence community had determined that the Russian activity did not affect the election outcome. Pence could have seen himself merely as supporting the president, not as evading the truth, which in fact he was doing. Clapper later concluded that Russian interference did affect the presidential election. He wrote in his 2018 memoir, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence, that “of course the Russian efforts affected the outcome. Surprising even themselves, they swung the election to a Trump win. To conclude otherwise stretches logic, common sense, and credulity to the breaking point.” Whether or not Pence thought or understood this was true at any point, neither he nor Trump pushed for an investigation or promoted efforts to prevent the Russian government from continuing to interfere in future U.S. elections.

  After a few days of meetings, Pence made one more trip to Indianapolis, on January 9, for the inauguration of his successor as governor. Eric Holcomb had been a congressional and United States Senate staffer but had not held office until Pence picked him to replace the retiring lieutenant governor, Sue Ellspermann. Once in office, Holcomb would move quickly to reverse some of his predecessor’s decisions and to take action where Pence had done nothing. Citing his belief that Keith Cooper had been wrongfully convicted, Holcomb would grant the pardon Cooper requested. The new governor visited East Chicago and declared the state of emergency that Pence had rejected. And he opened up the limited needle exchange program so that local officials across the state could fight the spread of HIV among intravenous drug users. In the same time period, the Republican-dominated legislature would overturn a series of vetoes Pence had issued in the final months of his governorship. The lawmakers didn’t explain themselves, but Scott Pelath, the Democratic House minority leader, said, “The Mike Pence legacy came to a very quick end today, probably the shortest one in Indiana gubernatorial history.”17 Legislatively, Pence was disappeared by his own party.

  In private, many Republicans said that Pence had been a middling governor who accomplished little. That would hardly matter to a man who had been lucky enough to be selected by Donald Trump, who then, in turn, was lucky enough to win the presidential election. However, in the moment, Indiana was in a swoon over its new favorite son, so there was nothing to be gained by criticizing him. Pence was, himself, so busy he would have been hard-pressed to focus on what folks in Indiana thought of him. By the time Pence returned to Washington once more, his close associate Michael Flynn had told Donald F. McGahn II, attorney for the transition organization (and eventually White House counsel), that he was being investigated by the FBI. (They were probing, at the very least, his lobbying on behalf of the Turkish government without properly notifying American authorities.)

  On January 12, the truth of Flynn’s contacts with Russian authorities emerged as David Ignatius of The Washington Post reported that Flynn had spoken to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on December 29, the day when he supposedly extended a single holiday greeting from the Dominican Republic. Noting the time line in connection to Obama’s sanctions announcement, Ignatius, a veteran analyst on intelligence matters, had a basic question: “What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the U.S. sanctions?”

  Ignatius noted that the Logan Act of 1799 bars U.S. citizens from correspondence intending to influence a foreign government about “disputes” with the United States. Though two people had been indicted under the act in the nineteenth century, no one had ever been prosecuted under its provisions. However, in this case, Ignatius raised the possibility that the spirit of the law had been violated. He had contacted the Trump transition team but had not received an answer to his request for comment.18

  Future White House press secretary Sean Spicer, already serving as spokesman for Trump, confirmed that Kislyak
and Flynn had spoken but said that it was an innocuous phone call. “They exchanged logistical information,” Spicer said. “That was all.” Abandoning the holiday greetings scenario, Spicer indicated that the chats might have centered on a proposed conversation between Trump and Putin. He did not indicate who had been his source for this notion or who else knew about the communications between Flynn and Kislyak.

  Only after Spicer’s declarations did Mike Pence emerge as the Trump team’s pinch hitter. With this mission in mind, he agreed to appear on the January 15, 2017, edition of CBS’s Face the Nation with John Dickerson. Pence marked the occasion by dressing in a white shirt, blue suit, and plain red tie. Not content to let the colors signal his patriotism, he fixed a little American flag pin, the ubiquitous accessory of politicians nationwide, to his lapel.

  With his motorcade gliding toward the CBS News studio on M Street in northwest Washington, Pence could reflect on the fact that members of the incoming Trump administration—and almost certainly Trump himself—would be watching and evaluating his performance. Face the Nation, first aired in 1954, had helped to set the American political agenda ever since. It might have lost some of its power in an era when cable channels and the internet gave people hundreds if not thousands of news options. However, it was the kind of program Donald Trump had grown up watching, and as the most media-savvy presidential candidate in history, he surely cared about Pence’s performance.

  As Pence waited in a chair across the table from Dickerson, CBS aired a video of Trump talking about the Russia issue. On tape, Trump said, “I think it was disgraceful, disgraceful that the intelligence agencies allowed any information that turned out to be so false and fake out. I think it is a disgrace. And that is something that Nazi Germany would have done and did do.”