Donald Trump V. the United States : Inside the Struggle to Stop a President (9781984854674)
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From the Oval Office, the president berated McGahn, pushing him to call the Justice Department to find out why Comey refused to say he was not under investigation. McGahn relented, calling Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente to try to get more information. Boente replied that putting out a statement specifically saying that Trump was not under investigation was a bad idea because of the perception it would create, calling into question whether the president was picking at an investigation that involved his own associates.
Trump continued to go after McGahn viciously, in any number of ways, from there. While most televisions were tuned to the Comey testimony, on the other side of the Capitol that day, in the Senate, Neal Gorsuch’s confirmation hearing had begun in the Judiciary Committee. Trump watched some of that hearing and saw McGahn sitting behind the nominee. Trump told McGahn he couldn’t go back the next day, because he needed to get to the bottom of the Russia investigation.
Never one to be discreet with his displeasure, Trump began in the days after the hearing to talk openly in the Oval Office about getting rid of Comey. The talk became ranting, which alarmed the president’s aides, who believed that dismissing the FBI director would be a grave mistake. Those fears led at least one White House official to take extreme measures to protect Trump from himself.
At one point, Trump spoke directly with one of McGahn’s deputies about his frustration with Comey. Uttam Dhillon was a longtime Washington lawyer who had worked under Comey when Comey was the deputy attorney general a decade earlier in the Bush administration. Dhillon heard the president out and then told him that in order to dismiss the FBI director, he would need to show cause, and further, if he wanted to fire Comey, he should wait until after the Justice Department’s inspector general had completed its ongoing investigation into Comey’s handling of the Clinton email matter. Afterward, Dhillon went to junior lawyers in the White House counsel’s office and asked them to produce a memo about whether the president needed cause to dismiss the FBI director. Contrary to what Dhillon had told the president, the research showed that the president in fact did not need cause to do so. He could fire the FBI director for any reason or no reason at all. But Dhillon was so concerned about the possibility that Trump might actually fire Comey during an ongoing investigation into Trump’s associates that he never went back to the president to correct the record. He decided it was better to let the commander in chief remain misinformed about his own legal authorities.
★ ★ ★
MARCH 30, 2017
FORTY-EIGHT DAYS UNTIL THE APPOINTMENT OF SPECIAL COUNSEL ROBERT S. MUELLER III
THE FBI DIRECTOR’S OFFICE AT BUREAU HEADQUARTERS, WASHINGTON, D.C.—Comey’s disclosure about the investigation into Trump’s campaign, coupled with how he had let the question dangle about whether Trump himself was under investigation, gave momentum to Democratic attacks on the president and legitimized their questions about his credibility. Was there fire to go with all that smoke? Trump watched the cable networks go into overdrive on the Russia question. Leading the charge was Congressman Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who regularly appeared on television to stoke questions about connections between the Trump campaign and the Russians.
“I can’t go into the particulars, but there is more than circumstantial evidence now,” Schiff said in an interview with Chuck Todd on MSNBC.
“You have seen direct evidence of collusion?” Todd asked.
“I don’t want to go into specifics, but I will say that there is evidence that is not circumstantial, and is very much worthy of investigation,” Schiff said.
The coverage—and the prospect that Trump himself might be under investigation—enraged Trump. He had made his closest political ally, Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, and Sessions had recused himself from the investigation. Comey had rebuffed Trump’s overtures for loyalty, ignored the president’s request to stop investigating Flynn, and, most important, refused to say publicly what he had told Trump in private: that the president was not under investigation.
McGahn knew firsthand that Trump’s frustrations were building but warned the president against having any further contact with Comey. But Trump did not care about such sensitivities and had been listening less and less to McGahn, whom he blamed for his inability to stop Sessions from removing himself from any matters related to the Russia investigation. Wasn’t it the attorney general’s job to protect the president?
Ten days after Comey testified, Trump again took matters into his own hands and called the FBI director. The president believed that he was his own best advocate as well as being the world’s best salesman. He had won an improbable election. How could winning over Comey be harder than that?
Comey had adopted a strategy of avoidance for dealing with Trump. The less he talked to him, the less likely the president was to say or ask him to do something improper. If Comey kept his head down, maybe Trump would learn to leave him alone.
But at 8:13 a.m. on Thursday, March 30, here was Trump again on the line. An operator for the secure switchboard at the White House—known by the code name Royal Crown—connected the president with Comey, who was in his office at the FBI.
Trump started the call by talking about the metric most important to the president: media attention. The president noted that Comey had recently received more press than the president himself.
“I hate it,” Comey replied.
Trump then brought up what bothered him: He was president, he had a country to take hold of, and the Russia investigation was making that difficult. A recent House vote on repealing Obamacare had failed, Trump said, because of the cloud hanging over his presidency.
Trump reiterated that he had nothing to hide about his connections to Russia, adding that he had a letter from the largest law firm in Washington stating that he had no business ties to the country. And he complained again about the Steele dossier, saying that the accusations in it were so tawdry that he was personally hurt and was looking for revenge.
“Can you imagine me, hookers? I have a beautiful wife and it has been very painful,” Trump told Comey.
Trump claimed he was bringing a personal lawsuit against the British former spy who wrote the dossier, Christopher Steele.
The president then reeled off a list of denials to specific intelligence contained in the dossier—including the allegation that Trump had had prostitutes urinate on a bed Obama slept in in the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow. It was clear to Comey that the dossier was still lodged under Trump’s skin. The president said that when he traveled to Russia in 2013 for the Miss Universe pageant, he assumed that he had been recorded in his hotel room. Others on the trip would attest that he had done nothing wrong, he said.
Comey was still being kept in the dark by his underlings at the bureau about how the FBI had been told by the dossier’s main subsource a month and a half earlier about how much of it was rumor. The FBI director explained to Trump that the bureau was running down the leads about the dossier as quickly as possible and that if it looked as if Trump were interfering with that work, it could undermine the integrity of the bureau’s investigation.
Trump agreed and then showed Comey another one of his insecurities: the perception that he was in Putin’s pocket. Trump boasted about how he was actually a problem for Russia because he wanted to increase American oil production and update America’s forty-year-old nuclear weapons stock.
Comey could hardly believe what he was hearing. In short order, the president had held forth about hookers, the attractiveness of his wife, and suing a British spy. But Trump was just getting started. Now he wanted to get back to what was truly bothering him: Comey’s disclosure of the investigation ten days earlier. Trump simply couldn’t understand why he would do that.
Comey responded in a measured voice, saying that he had not volunteered the information.
Trump wanted to know who was beh
ind it. Instead of asking about a rival Democrat, he asked about an ally. Was it the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes?
Comey said it had been all of the congressional leadership, particularly the Senate Republicans, and singled out Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who had been holding up Rosenstein’s nomination to be the deputy attorney general until he got the information he wanted on the Russia investigation.
Trump was on a mission, and it didn’t seem as if he would relent anytime soon. Comey needed to deflect and buy some time. He tried to reassure the president by saying that the bureau was not investigating him and that he had made that clear to members of Congress in his briefings.
Trump immediately seized on this, telling Comey that he wanted that information made public. With Trump seeing his best opportunity in his presidency to change the narrative, he mentioned to Comey several more times how great it would be to get it out there that he was not under investigation.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Comey said.
But even before Comey hung up the phone, he knew he wouldn’t be able to do what Trump had asked. Investigations are not siloed, static events—investigators follow the facts where they lead, and an investigation of one figure can easily lead to the investigation of another. And so Comey wanted to avoid saying publicly that Trump was not under investigation. In addition to the many practical reasons, such a pronouncement would have made it look as if he were taking an action to please the president. No FBI director wants to be put in that position. And while it was true at that precise moment that Trump was not under investigation, Comey was not convinced that would be the case for long. Comey planned to confer with Rosenstein after he was confirmed, in order to determine whether to move forward with opening such an investigation. If Comey were to come out publicly and say Trump was not under investigation, and then he did come under scrutiny, Comey might have to correct the public record and explain the discrepancy. Given his experience with the Clinton investigation, Comey understood better than any other American the problems created by weighing in about whether a high-profile politician was, or was not, under investigation.
To try to stall Trump, Comey did the same thing McGahn had done ten days earlier: he called the acting deputy attorney general, Dana Boente. Comey told Boente about his conversation with Trump and asked for his guidance on what to do.
But Boente, whom Comey saw as genial but unwilling to take a tough stance on any issue that might run up against the president, offered Comey no guidance on the call, and they would never talk about the matter again. Comey decided against following up with Trump in the days after the call, hoping the president would get the hint and go away or become distracted by something else.
★ ★ ★
APRIL 11, 2017
THIRTY-SIX DAYS UNTIL THE APPOINTMENT OF SPECIAL COUNSEL ROBERT S. MUELLER III
THE FBI DIRECTOR’S OFFICE, WASHINGTON, D.C.—No such luck.
Despite being told by McGahn to stop calling Comey, Trump called the director again twelve days later.
Comey missed the call. At 8:26 a.m., Comey called him back.
“What did you do with my request?” Trump said.
“I passed it on to the acting deputy AG,” Comey said.
“Who is that?” Trump said.
“Dana Boente,” Comey said. “I haven’t heard back from him.”
Trump was growing more agitated because Democrats were using the questions about his ties to Russia to weaken him politically. Trump proclaimed to Comey that the Russia questions were all part of the Democrats’ made-up arguments to excuse Clinton’s loss.
The president went on again about why he needed the word to get out that he was not under investigation, saying it was interfering with his ability to do his job, particularly on the world stage.
Comey’s tactics on the previous call had only stalled the president, but they had not deterred him. Now he was on the phone again, asking for the same thing. Comey tried a different approach: teaching the president what is appropriate contact between the president, the White House, and the FBI.
Comey reminded Trump that requests from the White House about the FBI’s work were supposed to go through the Justice Department and that Comey wanted to follow that process. The FBI director was seeking to do two things: First, by holding back on saying no to Trump’s request, Comey hoped to avoid seeming openly defiant—anything to avoid conflict and confrontation with the president. Second, by redirecting him to the Department of Justice, Comey wanted Trump to learn that he needed to make his case to officials at the department, not to him.
It was another extraordinary moment in government in the time of Trump: The FBI director, an appointee who works at the pleasure of the president, was telling the president how the executive branch should function.
“Maybe I’ll just have Don McGahn call over there,” Trump told Comey about the Justice Department.
“Sir, that’s exactly what you should do—exactly how it should work, you should have the White House counsel call the leadership of the Department of Justice, and that’s the way it should work,” Comey said.
Then the president tipped his hand, reminding Comey of their dinner at the White House in the first week of the administration, when Trump had asked for Comey’s loyalty and intimated that his job might be in jeopardy.
“Because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal, we had that thing, you know,” Trump said.
With his bracing tendency to say the subtext out loud, Trump had just made a mistake. The comment affirmed Comey’s belief that with his ingratiation campaign Trump had sinister motives and was scheming to steer the FBI away from legitimate investigations that could hurt him. In response to Trump’s comment he said nothing, just repeating that all requests from the White House should go through the Justice Department.
Trump ended the four-minute call by telling Comey he was doing a great job.
Hours later in the Oval Office with McGahn, Trump seemed to relish announcing that he had called Comey twice in the past two weeks about the Russia investigation. Trump proudly told McGahn that Comey was willing to put out a statement that he was not under investigation if Boente approved it.
McGahn had warned Trump against talking to Comey. But now that Trump had done so twice, McGahn figured the best way to contain and pacify Trump was to contact Boente and ask whether he and Comey were actually considering putting out such a statement, as Trump had claimed.
The acting deputy attorney general told McGahn it was a bad idea. The political flames around the Russia investigation were just too hot. Boente said if he put out a statement, it could create the appearance of a conflict, and there might be calls for a special counsel to be appointed.
And nobody wanted that.
★ ★ ★
MAY 3, 2017
FOURTEEN DAYS UNTIL THE APPOINTMENT OF SPECIAL COUNSEL ROBERT S. MUELLER III
SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE ROOM—Seven months had passed since Comey had reopened the Clinton email investigation just eleven days before the election. But he still had not answered questions about it publicly. The day had come for that. On May 3, he would testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. While the occasion was supposed to be a routine oversight hearing, everyone knew it would be about emails and the Russia investigation. And McGahn knew that Trump would be closely monitoring Comey’s statements about whether he was under investigation.
From the outset of the hearing, Comey found himself on the defensive and under harsh questioning from the Democrats, particularly Senator Dianne Feinstein, who channeled the anger of the Left at Comey. Comey thought she was deliberately ignoring everything they discussed at their private meeting during the transition to perform for the cameras. Feinstein accused Comey of taking a huge gamble by sending the letter to Congress about reopening th
e investigation of Clinton without knowing if the Weiner laptop actually contained anything new, which, it had turned out, it didn’t.
She said the episode had damaged the reputation of the bureau, and she demanded to know why his treatment of the Clinton investigation had been so “dramatically different” from his treatment of the investigation into links between the Trump campaign and Russia, which had been ongoing and which Comey had kept secret.
Comey was as practiced in public testimony as any official in Washington and prided himself on his ability to stay cool under questioning. But for the first time in his career, he became unglued. He raised his voice, waved his hands, and grimaced. In his raw state, he answered questions bluntly and spoke personally about his decision to reopen the Clinton email investigation.
“It makes me mildly nauseous to think that we might have had some impact on the election,” he told the committee. “But honestly, it wouldn’t change the decision.”
In the exchange with lawmakers, Comey was asked directly if Trump was under investigation. “So potentially, the president of the United States could be a target of your ongoing investigation into the Trump campaign’s involvement with Russian interference in our election, correct?” asked Richard Blumenthal, the Democratic senator from Connecticut.
“I just worry—I don’t want to answer that, that, that seems to be unfair speculation,” Comey answered. “We will follow the evidence, we’ll try and find as much as we can and we’ll follow the evidence wherever it leads.”