In between these two sets of indictments, the first person to serve time as a result of the Trump-Russia investigation, Belgian-born lawyer Alex van der Zwaan, reports to prison for a thirty-day sentence.44 Van der Zwaan had, according to his plea deal, lied to Mueller’s team in November 2017 about his phone calls and emails with Trump deputy campaign manager (and later Trump-RNC liaison) Rick Gates.45 Special Counsel Mueller will announce, in March 2018, that Gates had “repeated contacts during the final weeks of the 2016 presidential race with a business associate tied to Russian intelligence . . . a person the F.B.I. believes had active links to Russian spy services at the time. . . . [Gates] told an associate the person ‘was a former Russian Intelligence Officer with the G.R.U.,’ the Russian intelligence agency.”46
After his February 2018 plea to one count of making false statements, Alex van der Zwaan begins serving his prison time in April.47 The case is considered significant, not because someone closely connected to a top Trump associate is imprisoned or because the lies van der Zwaan told and evidence he destroyed stemmed from Gates’s and Manafort’s actions in Ukraine in the aughts, but because van der Zwaan told “a knowing lie during an investigation of international importance,” according to Judge Amy Berman Jackson, and hence deserved his sentence. The facts already publicly known in the Trump-Russia investigation suggest that before Mueller’s investigation is complete, a similar allegation may be leveled at several Americans in Trump’s immediate orbit.
In August 2018, Paul Manafort is convicted of eight federal felonies, including five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud, and one count of failure to disclose a foreign bank account.48 The jury hangs—11 to 1 for conviction—on ten additional charges.49 While the trial does not directly implicate Trump’s 2016 campaign, the facts revealed during the course of the prosecution’s case in chief underscore that Manafort had no intention of being Trump’s campaign manager for free; instead, he was deeply in debt and hoping to use his work for Trump as a means of settling his debts with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. The trial thereby establishes a motive for collusion for the man running Trump’s presidential campaign from early April to mid-August 2016. Moreover, it gives Mueller enough leverage over Manafort to get Manafort’s cooperation in prosecuting other defendants in the Trump-Russia investigation, despite Trump’s dangling of a presidential pardon for Manafort in the press.50 As an op-ed in the New York Times will note after Manafort’s trial, “by speculating about [a Trump pardon of Manafort], the president and his surrogates have already acted improperly.”51
Later in August, W. Samuel Patten, an associate of Paul Manafort’s longtime Russian business partner Konstantin Kilimnik, pleads guilty to acting as an unregistered foreign lobbyist, admits to lying to Congress, and acknowledges facilitating the transfer of money from a Ukrainian oligarch to Trump’s inaugural fund.52 The case brings into even greater relief a growing controversy surrounding the tens of millions of dollars missing from the inaugural fund; $26 million of the more than $100 million raised for Trump’s inauguration was paid out to a firm run by Melania Trump’s top adviser, and a significant percentage of that $26 million went to a team run by Mark Burnett, creator of the program that made Trump a television celebrity, The Apprentice.53 According to the New York Times, Trump personally requested Burnett’s involvement with the inaugural festivities, a significant fact, given that multiple Trump associates have alleged that Burnett is still today protecting Trump from the disclosure of Apprentice outtakes in which Trump can be heard uttering misogynistic and racist slurs.54 Should Mueller’s investigation extend to possible corruption in the form of bribery or money laundering in the inaugural activities coordinated by Trump friend Thomas Barrack, who was lobbying Trump on Middle Eastern energy issues while managing the money for Trump’s inauguration, it could open the door to a more robust public consideration of both Trump’s pre-election payoffs to bury damaging information and his receipt of funds from foreign nationals during and after the 2016 presidential campaign.
Whether it is these indictments and convictions that rile Trump or something else, 2018 sees the president expressing increasing desperation in his public remarks on the Trump-Russia case, calling it (or, variously, individual elements of it) “rigged” 44 times on Twitter between January and August 2018, a “witch hunt” 106 times, and “illegal” 24 times.55
In an April 2018 interview, former FBI director James Comey implies that he perceives “consciousness of guilt” in certain of Trump’s actions since allegations he and his team colluded with the Russian government became public.56 The Washington Post has been even more forceful, publishing an article by Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist Eugene Robinson alleging that “Trump seems to be staging a cover-up.”57
Trump’s actions in 2018 will do much to further this impression among his critics and others in law enforcement. His fury at his enemies and anxiety over the loyalty of his allies lead to an erratic course of conduct that sees Trump courting potential allies and persecuting perceived enemies throughout the year in ways that may eventually produce criminal liability for him or, in the short term, hurt him politically. When former CIA director John Brennan becomes a vocal critic of Trump—calling Trump’s claims that he did not collude with the Russians “hogwash”—Trump revokes his lifetime national security clearance, an act of vengeance against a political critic that is unprecedented in American politics.58 He threatens to do the same to several other officials who have disagreed with him publicly, including former director of national intelligence James Clapper.59 As Brennan himself observes, writing in the New York Times in August, Trump began “[s]tep by step, from the moment 10 days into his administration that he fired the acting attorney general, Sally Q. Yates . . . [to oversee] the removal of top national security officials who have defied him or worked at senior levels of the Russia investigation. They include James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director; Andrew G. McCabe, the former F.B.I. deputy director; and Peter Strzok, the former F.B.I. counterintelligence agent who helped oversee . . . the Russia investigation.”60
In February 2018, the FBI also loses David Laufman, whom the New York Times calls “the top Justice Department official overseeing espionage investigations, as well as cases involving foreign lobbying and leaks of classified information,” for “personal reasons.” His exit is deemed “surprising”; the fact that he is mentioned in controversial anti-Trump text messages sent by Peter Strzok to former FBI attorney Lisa Page, and was in charge of “aspects of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election,” raises the possibility that he is another victim of the president’s withering public critiques.61 Other significant personnel developments at the FBI and DOJ from April 2017 through 2018, all involving individuals connected in some way to the Russia investigation, include Lisa Page, who resigns in May 2018 after being accused of texting controversial messages about Trump to and receiving controversial messages about Trump from FBI agent Peter Strzok; James Baker, the FBI’s general counsel, who is demoted in 2017 and then resigns in 2018, and is known to be a “close friend and longtime associate” of Trump enemy Comey (this fact leads to complaints, according to Business Insider, by “national-security experts and former intelligence officials,” who question the timing of Baker’s departure and “whether it was a politically motivated decision in response to pressure from President Donald Trump and his allies”); James Rybicki, also a close associate of Comey—in fact, his former chief of staff—who quits the Bureau in January 2018; Bill Priestap, the head of the FBI counterintelligence division and in a “pivotal leadership position,” per the Hill, in the Russia probe, who is called to testify before the House and remains “under fire from conservatives” throughout 2018, in part because of a “trip to London . . . in May 2016 . . . [that may be] connected to the Russia case”; and Mary McCord, the Justice Department’s lead attorney on the Russia investigation, who announces her resignation in April 2017, in the midst of her work, offering no public reason for
leaving besides telling her staff that “the time is now right for me to pursue new career opportunities.”62
In August 2018, Bruce Ohr’s name is added to the above list of federal officials hounded or punished by Trump, when the president, having already successfully pushed for Ohr’s demotion at the Department of Justice, engages in a public campaign to have him fired, even as he is also threatening to revoke Ohr’s security clearance—which, were it to happen, would make it impossible for Ohr to do his job. That Ohr’s role at the Department of Justice has long been to investigate and prosecute Russian organized crime, and that the Russia investigation has at certain points connected Trump to Russian organized crime, is difficult to ignore. Indeed, in September 2018, the New York Times will report that Ohr was at the head of an effort at the Department of Justice to “flip” Oleg Deripaska against Russian organized crime and expose “possible Russian aid to President Trump’s 2016 campaign.”63 The effort Trump launches to oust Ohr—tweeting about him and sometimes his wife, a Fusion GPS employee, thirteen times over the final three weeks of August 2018—must be understood in this context.64
In addition to investigating Russian organized crime and seeking to turn Russian oligarchs into informants, Ohr was also Christopher Steele’s primary contact at the FBI when Steele wanted to turn his raw intelligence over to federal law enforcement during the 2016 campaign. The two men had known each other for more than a decade before Steele was asked to research Trump’s Russian business ties by an anti-Trump Republican in 2015.65 According to CNN, when Steele gave Ohr the first few entries in what would become the “Steele dossier” at a breakfast in July 2016, the former MI6 agent told the Justice Department lawyer that “Russian intelligence thought they had the then-candidate [Trump] ‘over a barrel’ during the 2016 campaign.”66
Even DOJ and FBI officials much higher in the ranks than Ohr, and even those higher in the ranks and nominated by Trump himself, face Trump’s ire as he attempts to purge both institutions of those who persist in investigating his ties to Russia. Axios reports in January 2018 that Trump’s replacement for Comey at the FBI, Christopher Wray, “threatened to resign” if Attorney General Sessions fired Andrew McCabe, a plan of action the digital news outlet notes came “at the public urging of President Donald Trump.”67 Sessions fires McCabe anyway, doing so less than forty-eight hours before McCabe’s scheduled retirement.68 The decision denies the FBI’s second-in-command his early retirement benefits and a portion of his anticipated pension, and is now the subject of a lawsuit.69
Trump’s triumphant tweet after McCabe’s firing is characteristic of his public statements on social media throughout 2018 regarding the DOJ and FBI officials he most associates with the investigations of his conduct: “Andrew McCabe FIRED,” writes the president on March 17, “a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI—A great day for Democracy. Sanctimonious James Comey was his boss and made McCabe look like a choirboy. He knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI!”70
Trump’s pick for deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, also spends 2018 in professional uncertainty, with Trump “threaten[ing] to ‘get involved’ [in the Russia investigation] and fire [him],” according to the Daily Beast, and “considering firing” him, according to CNN.71 The threat comes as Trump’s closest allies in the House are preparing articles of impeachment against Rosenstein for what they say is his failure to turn over documents to them in a timely fashion; the documents they seek aim to prove a “deep state” conspiracy at the FBI and DOJ to frame Trump for impeachable offenses using fraudulent intelligence.72 Impeachment of the personal or political sort is not enough of a punishment for Christopher Steele, however, in the judgment of Trump’s congressional allies; in January 2018, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee unilaterally refer Steele to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution on the allegation that Steele misled federal investigators on whether he’d spoken to the media about the raw intelligence he’d compiled on Trump.73 While the referral does not lead to a prosecution, it successfully keeps Steele from testifying before Congress or traveling to the United States to assist federal investigators working on the Trump-Russia case.
These attacks come in the context of all the Republican-led congressional investigations of possible Trump-Russia ties shutting down, with the exception of one: the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which, per the New York Times, Trump spends the last few months of 2017 lobbying to have end its work as well.74 Moreover, Trump’s attacks are by and large against individuals who are likely witnesses against him in a federal investigation; his tweets apparently seek to intimidate them into silence, threaten them with professional punishment, or impugn their character following demotions or firings he encouraged—and may ultimately be regarded as witness tampering under federal law.75
Friendly witnesses can be tampered with also, of course, and Trump’s 2018 record of conduct on this score likewise requires some consideration. Knowing that Hope Hicks is an almost certain federal witness in any future legal or political proceeding against him, Trump in early August 2018 invites Hicks to travel to Ohio with him; during the trip the two have several private meetings.76 Soon afterward, it is revealed that Hicks has been offered a paying job on Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign.77 Hicks is not the only Trump associate or employee Trump offers a job. The Republican National Committee signs a $15,000 per month contract for “security services” with Trump’s former bodyguard Keith Schiller after he leaves the White House. That deal comes under scrutiny when former Trump adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman alleges that the White House is systematically pushing former aides to sign agreements of exactly this sort—and at exactly this pay scale—to silence them, even knowing that many of these aides will have to testify before Congress, Mueller’s grand jury, or both.78 And by 2018, the Republican National Committee is paying not just for the services of Keith Schiller, but at least half a million dollars in legal fees for Hope Hicks and others, according to the Washington Post.79
At various moments in the strange, chaotic sequence of events marking Trump’s second year in office, he will be accused of using pardons not just for political purposes, but to send a message to potential government collaborators among his set—most notably Roger Stone and Paul Manafort—that the reward for keeping quiet is a future presidential pardon and effective immunity for their past actions. After Trump pardons conservative firebrand Dinesh D’Souza for making illegal campaign contributions in 2014, Stone announces that the pardon is a message to Robert Mueller: “indict people for crimes that don’t pertain to Russian collusion and this [a pardon] is what could happen.”80 Stone has since said that he believes Mueller will indict him, but not for a crime pertaining to Russian collusion, which makes him part of a group that would benefit from what he perceives to be Trump’s largesse with pardons.81 Stone has made the same prediction with respect to Donald Trump Jr. as well.82 Meanwhile, in late August, Bloomberg will accuse Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani of being on “thin ice” legally—perhaps even guilty of obstruction—for “hinting at a presidential pardon for a key witness” in the Trump-Russia case, namely, Paul Manafort.83 Giuliani aside, many news outlets, and even some Republican politicians, hint or plainly assert in 2018 that Trump’s own public comments on the presidential pardon power could constitute new acts of obstruction.84
Throughout this bizarre, possibly illegal course of conduct, Trump vacillates publicly on whether he will cooperate with the Mueller investigation, though many in the media concluded from the beginning that he would not.85 Even so, he says twice in January 2018, “I am looking forward to it,” when asked about being interviewed by Mueller, adding—also twice—“I would do it under oath.”86 The result of these misdirections is that by August 2018, media outlets are writing articles with titles like “Trump’s Lawyers Can’t Talk Him Out of Talking with Mueller,” although Trump’s initial promise to do so had come fourteen months earlier, and in the meantime he has s
ecured the demotion, firing, or resignation of many of those he considered enemies at the DOJ and FBI and has even attempted to fire Mueller on two occasions.87 By mid-2018, Trump’s attorneys have outstripped even the president’s reluctance to speak to Mueller, arguing that Trump will have every right to ignore a Mueller subpoena as well as an interview request should he wish to do so.88
Whether Trump will speak to Mueller ranks, in 2018, as a mystery with little real mystery at all: the seemingly universal presumption is that Trump will not speak to Mueller voluntarily, possibly not even if compelled by a subpoena, whatever he may say on occasion about being willing to do so.
But many other 2018 mysteries remain unresolved. One of them is so significant yet unknowable that even top U.S. officials—on both sides of the political aisle—want to resolve it but cannot: what Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin said to each other at their hastily arranged “summit” in Helsinki in July.89 Only interpreters were present for the two-hour private conversation between the two men, which was then followed by a press conference. That conversation is cause for concern if what Trump said publicly at the post-summit press conference is indicative of what he said to Putin behind closed doors. As the Washington Post noted at the time,
American foreign-policy officials were stunned by Trump’s behavior [in Helsinki], which ranged from rejecting his intelligence community’s assessment that the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 election to considering, albeit briefly, handing over a number of current and former American diplomats for questioning by Russian authorities. His performance earned rebukes from lawmakers and former officials, and even a retort from his own Director of National Intelligence.90
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