“It’s a mystery why Rudy Giuliani feels the need to re-litigate incidents the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney have concluded were not obstruction,” Burck said. “But they are accurately described in the report.”
Then Burck, with McGahn’s approval, took a dig at Trump, drawing attention to how McGahn had played such a key role in the nomination of judges—arguably Trump’s greatest political accomplishment.
“Don, nonetheless, appreciates that the president gave him the opportunity to serve as White House Counsel and assist him with his signature accomplishments.”
On Saturday afternoon, Flood called Burck back. He said he had a message to pass on from the president. Two days had passed since the report was released, and it had sunk into Trump just how much damage Burck’s clients had done to him in the report. Trump knew who Burck was. In a conversation two weeks earlier with Kraft, the president had told him that Burck was a great lawyer and that Kraft was in good hands. Trump now had a different perspective.
“The president wants you to know you’re a dirtbag and all the people hurting him are the dirtbags who hired you,” Flood said in his dry tone. “Consider this your speaking to.”
Two weeks later, Trump again told Priebus that Burck was a great lawyer.
★ ★ ★
MAY 25, 2019
ONE YEAR, FIVE MONTHS, AND NINE DAYS UNTIL THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
FRONT STEPS OF QUARLES’S HOUSE—I spent so much time with the obstruction section of the Mueller report that I would find pages of it covered in notes and highlights tucked between my sheets and comforter. I wrote many stories about its conclusions and talked obsessively to my colleagues about where Mueller had ended up. It was clear there were many unanswered questions, and it seemed as though there was a thread that ran through all of them.
It still made no sense why Mueller had not pursued an interview with Trump. The investigation turned on why the president took so many potentially obstructive actions that made it harder for the government to investigate Russian interference. Yet there was nothing in the report about whether Trump was a Russian agent or was potentially compromised by the Russians. On obstruction, the decision to not make a decision was viewed by many as a dodge. And Mueller had closed up his investigation before Flynn had been sentenced and his prosecutors had had a chance to try Roger Stone, who was Trump’s longtime confidant and the point person between WikiLeaks and the Trump campaign. All of these points lead to this question: Why did Mueller, whom we had made out as such a tough and thorough prosecutor, take such a weak approach as the investigation concluded?
We had studied similar investigations—like the ones conducted by Ken Starr of Bill Clinton and Lawrence Walsh of Iran-contra—and it seemed as if the personalities of those leading the inquiries had as much bearing on the final results as the facts themselves.
In trying to answer these lingering questions, I started to stitch together bits and pieces of my own reporting on Mueller over the previous year that I had never been able to fully run down or understand.
A sense that something might be amiss with Mueller had crept in during the summer of 2018. Time and again, as we reported on meetings between Mueller’s team and Trump’s lawyers about the president sitting for an interview, we were told that Mueller had been nowhere to be found. In the first year of the investigation, Mueller almost always showed up for the meetings with Trump’s legal team when the stakes were far lower. But it was odd that he had sort of ducked out just as the negotiations were hitting a fever pitch.
Mueller’s team had given Trump’s lawyers no indication of where Mueller had gone. I wondered what was going on. Maybe the prosecutors were holding Mueller back from the negotiations for strategic reasons, planning to deploy him at a crucial point. Or maybe we were overthinking it. Maybe Mueller was busy; after all, it was a sprawling investigation. And on top of that, his team was writing a report; maybe he was playing editor.
These are of course difficult and delicate questions to ask. But the question of where Mueller was only intensified as the investigation entered its final months. The inescapable sense was that more and more, at crucial times, he simply wasn’t there. When John Kelly went in for his interview in August, Mueller did not show. Then, by November, with the negotiations over the Trump interview at a standstill, Trump’s lawyers demanded a meeting with Mueller’s team and staffers for Rosenstein who were supervising Mueller. The meeting was convened in Rosenstein’s conference room at the Justice Department. Giuliani and Trump’s whole gang of lawyers showed. If there was a time for the prosecutors to use Mueller, this would have been the meeting. But, again, Mueller failed to show.
Not once during the investigation—including when his team indicted the Russians behind the hacking and disinformation—had Mueller held a press conference. Then, as the investigation concluded, there was no sign of Mueller. He had remained silent as his team sent the report to the Justice Department. He had allowed Barr to spin the conclusions without saying anything publicly. And when the report was finally released, he declined to stand with Barr at the press conference, opening the door even wider for the attorney general to sculpt the conclusions. We knew that Mueller’s team was upset with how the report had been portrayed. But Mueller still said nothing publicly. In Mueller’s career, he had testified before Congress more times than almost any other living American. Yet he was afraid to talk as the most consequential investigation he had overseen was being distorted by the president, the attorney general, and the Republicans in Congress?
By the end of May, about a month after the report had been released, the calls for Mueller to testify were becoming louder and louder. Senior Justice Department officials lobbied members of Congress to hold off on subpoenaing Mueller. They claimed Mueller was not going to say anything more than what he had written in the report, so there was no need for a hearing. Their insistence that Mueller not testify seemed curious to me. Why not let it all play out? Were they afraid he would say something that would tip the narrative against the president? Or were they trying to shield Mueller from something?
As the Justice Department sought to fend off Congress about a hearing, I heard more and more about Mueller and the questions percolating inside the Justice Department, the White House, and Mueller’s office about Mueller’s acuity. I learned the details about how in the March meeting with Barr, Mueller’s hands shook, and he struggled to articulate his team’s conclusions. But that information left us at a loss about what to do. Without having medical files or seeing Mueller speak and interact in the flesh, how could we write a story, and what would we say? A lot of those who were pushing the questions about Mueller’s command were on the Barr-Trump side of the equation. But it was unclear whether their talking about it was simply gossip about someone they had a strategic interest in diminishing or if it was an effort to deter Mueller from testifying.
I was at a loss. Mueller’s position was of such consequence that the state of his cognitive abilities was equally important. The only idea I had for examining this question was to just directly approach members of Mueller’s team and inquire. They knew there were questions about whether he would testify. If we told them how this was being pushed by the Barr-Trump side, maybe they would engage in the hopes of setting the record straight. I knew if we tried to reach out to anyone on Mueller’s team at the office, we would be rebuffed. But maybe we could try one of the most aggressive and rarely used moves in reporting: approaching someone at their home.
So one evening, I persuaded my colleague Adam Goldman, who had a great history of success with door knocks and was always willing to try to get anyone to talk, to take a drive to the home of Jim Quarles in Bethesda, Maryland. I was sort of scared to make the approach, as I had far less success in this area. Would he erupt at us for showing up at his house? I banked on the fact that along with everything I had reported on in the previous two years, I had learned th
at of all the folks on Mueller’s team Quarles was the most genial and thoughtful. In the worst-case scenario, maybe he would just tell us to leave. We knocked on the door of his tidy, fairly large house in a cul-de-sac. About a minute later, he came to the door, wearing sweatpants and what looked like a large football jersey.
“Hey, Mike Schmidt and Adam Goldman from the Times,” Goldman said.
He smiled.
“Not talking,” he said.
I tried to make small talk. He did not respond to anything. Goldman went on about how we were just trying to get the story right, and Quarles muttered something along the lines of: We just don’t talk. In other words, as the Mueller team, we don’t talk.
Our only hope was to keep him talking about anything, even the weather or the grass in the front yard. I made a joke about how ridiculous it was that we had come out there.
“Are we among many who have come out here to bother you?” I asked.
He said we were the first. I thought worse of my colleagues in the media who had not made a similar try.
I had to make a last-ditch effort. I thought that if our reporting was true, Mueller and his team were headed for a problem. If he testified and was diminished, it would undermine the report. And if he did not testify, it would only stoke questions about his tenure leading the investigation. So I threw it all out there: You know, I said, they’re saying all this stuff about how Mueller has lost it and there’s something wrong with him.
Quarles did not bite, gave a slight nod, and closed the door.
His reaction left me with no clues. But I did not want to give up. I thought we had to take another shot at someone on Mueller’s team. Goldman and I then found the nearby home address of Quarles’s investigative colleague Andrew Goldstein. We drove just a few minutes to his home. It didn’t look as if anyone was there. Then we saw who appeared to be his wife and children walk into the home. We waited a few more minutes and then walked up to his front door. The doorbell was broken, so we knocked. We could hear voices inside, but no one came to the door. At this point, I thought better of the entire ploy. Given that his children were there and that it would be potentially uncomfortable for them to see two reporters confront their father, I turned to Goldman and said this had gone too far, and we headed back to the car without knocking again.
At this point, I thought we had no choice but to put all of our cards on the table. That Saturday morning, I went to a coffee shop in my neighborhood and wrote a letter to Mueller’s chief of staff, Aaron Zebley. I thought that our only choice was to level with them, tell them what we knew, and hope they would engage, given that if there was some sort of problem with Mueller, they would eventually have to disclose it. I wrote three or four drafts of the letter and then called a cutout I knew who could get the letter to Zebley without having to go through the press office. That afternoon, I sent the letter on its way to Zebley.
Aaron:
I apologize for reaching out to you. We’ve hit on some fairly serious information that has put us in an unusual position. We’re trying to do everything to deal with it as delicately and fairly as possible. I don’t believe we can do that without trying to communicate directly with you and I need your help making sure we get it right.
Off the bat, I want you to know that I only know you by reputation but if you tell me there is nothing to the gist of this I will take what you say at face value. If there is indeed something to this, I urge you to deal with us, as it seems that this is building towards coming out and we are prepared to deal with it with great care.
Reporting on someone’s fitness is something we often try to avoid given the invasive and deeply personal nature of this issue. But under the current circumstances, there are few people aside from the president whose status is more important than Mr. Mueller’s given his outsized role in what has gone on over the past two years. In the past few days the narrative in the media has been that Mr. Mueller will decline to testify publicly to avoid the spectacle. While this may be true it is not the full picture of the decision to shield Mr. Mueller from the public. Through our reporting, we’ve learned that there are deep concerns among those close to Mr. Mueller that he lacks the mental acuity to do this. Mr. Mueller, we’re told, has good days and bad days and there’s a risk that a public hearing could undermine the public’s view of his fitness.
What we’ve learned builds on other reporting we have developed over the past year. We’re told that in the March 5 meeting with Barr and his aides that Mr. Mueller’s hands significantly shook and that he struggled to articulate his views. Starting last summer, Mr. Mueller was less and less involved in the interactions the special counsel’s office had with the Justice Department, the president’s lawyers and lawyers for witnesses. After initially participating in some of the negotiations about a potential Trump interview, Mr. Mueller faded from the discussions with the president’s lawyers. On the Justice Department side, you increasingly took the lead dealing directly with the DAG’s office. Those who did interact with Mr. Mueller said that it was as if “his fastball consistently landed three feet short of the plate.” We’re told that in the initial months of the investigation, it was clear that Mr. Mueller was “not the Mueller of his early FBI days.”
We’re not interested in chronicling every episode that may raise questions about Mr. Mueller’s status. Instead we are focused on the larger issue of why he may not want to testify publicly. We have indications at this point that Main Justice, the White House, the president’s lawyers and others are aware of this issue. And we have reason to believe other media outlets may know about it as well. We believe we are best positioned to deal with this in the most responsible and fair way. I’m available to talk anytime this weekend and would meet you wherever whenever if you’d like.
Thank you,
Mike Schmidt
That evening, I received a message back that what I had written was flat wrong. Mueller was fine. Then, a day later, Mueller’s spokesman reached out to me to say that what I had heard was wrong and that it was almost offensive that I asked the question. We had hit a dead end, because it was going to be pretty hard to write a story in the face of such a denial. If Mueller ever testified, we would learn the truth.
★ ★ ★
MAY 29, 2019
ONE YEAR, FIVE MONTHS, AND FIVE DAYS UNTIL THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
PRESS BRIEFING ROOM, JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C.—In the weeks following the Mueller report’s release, congressional Democrats sought to highlight its findings and amplify the portions most damaging to Trump. They clamored for the Justice Department to make two concessions: First, they wanted the entire report given to them unredacted, and second, they wanted Mueller to testify.
Adam Schiff, the California representative and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, went on television and said that Mueller had to testify if the American people wanted to hear the unfiltered version of what he found.
“He is going to testify,” Schiff said. “The American people have a right to hear what the man who did the investigation has to say and we now know we certainly can’t rely on the attorney general who misrepresented his conclusions.”
By the end of May, the Justice Department believed it had found a compromise that might dampen the Democrats’ demands. Mueller had continued to remain a department employee in the months after his investigation had concluded, but now he was going to officially close his office. Perhaps, Justice Department officials thought, if Mueller gives one final press conference, he could satisfy the desires for additional public comments.
So, in the late morning of May 29, Mueller stood behind a Department of Justice lectern and announced the closing of his special counsel office. It marked the first time he had spoken publicly since the investigation began two years earlier. For less than ten minutes, he read his prepared remarks off the podium and only occasionally looked up
. When discussing his decisions on obstruction of justice, Mueller suggested the president might have committed a crime.
“And as set forth in the report after that investigation, if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so,” Mueller said.
Mueller gingerly pointed out that while his team had declined to make a decision, there may be another way to hold the president accountable.
Citing the Justice Department guideline that a president cannot be indicted, Mueller said that “the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.”
And while he did not speak the word, it hung in the air all the same. “Impeachment.”
Mueller also tried to slow the calls for his testimony by saying that if called, he would offer nothing more than what had already been written in his report.
“I hope and expect this to be the only time that I will speak to you in this manner,” Mueller said. “There has been discussion about an appearance before Congress. Any testimony from this office would not go beyond our report. It contains our findings and analysis and the reasons for the decisions we made.”
Mueller’s report had been completed. The public had consumed it. It seemed like a natural time for Mueller to end his investigation. But by walking away at this point, Mueller was doing something that similar investigators—like Lawrence Walsh during the Reagan and Bush years—had shied away from. Walsh had remained as the independent counsel for more than six years, seeing his cases through their sentencing. By doing this, he ensured the independence of his investigation to the end. And while Mueller’s work seemed as if it were done, it really was not. That fall, Trump’s longtime political adviser Roger Stone was scheduled to go on trial for lying to Congress about his contacts with WikiLeaks about its stolen emails during the campaign. And Flynn had still not been sentenced for lying to FBI agents about his contacts with the Russian ambassador. Justice Department officials said that these cases would be handled by Mueller’s prosecutors who remained at the department to ensure continuity and that they came to a proper conclusion. But they would do so now without the structure or imprimatur of the special counsel’s office, giving the attorney general—who thought little of the special counsel’s work—more control over the directions of those cases.
Donald Trump V. the United States : Inside the Struggle to Stop a President (9781984854674) Page 42