Dowd confided that weekend in another Trump adviser: “He’s beating the shit out of me. He’s abusive.”
Trump, meanwhile, was working to undermine Dowd. Just as Trump had found the counsel of his national security professionals tiresome, he grew frustrated with the people on his legal team. He wanted to shake things up. Without initially confiding in Dowd or his White House counsel, Trump started working to add muscle to his legal defense. He asked to interview Emmet Flood, an expert in impeachment and presidential power, who had been wary of representing Trump if he wasn’t going to be the final decision maker.
The final straw for Dowd came on March 19, when Trump announced he was hiring Joseph diGenova, a fiery former prosecutor and longtime critic of the Clintons, who had been alleging, in frequent appearances on Fox News, that Trump was being framed by FBI and Justice Department officials. DiGenova had the advantage of being a vocal, persuasive critic of the Mueller probe in the media. Trump wanted a television warrior as his lawyer, and he admired how diGenova savaged Mueller. He figured diGenova was primed to go on television night after night as his Mueller attack dog, just as the midterm election season was ramping up, with Republican control of the House on the line. But Dowd told colleagues that he saw the new hire as a grievous insult. He congratulated diGenova and publicly supported the appointment. Privately, however, he told a White House adviser that it was too much for him to bear. “DiGenova hasn’t tried a case in forty years,” Dowd said. “I’m not going to try a case with him.”
The morning of March 22, Dowd quit. He alerted the lawyers on the joint defense that he was resigning. Sekulow and Cobb knew Dowd was unhappy and that things were souring between Dowd and Trump; the two had been cursing at each other a lot. And they knew that Trump had been talking about adding more lawyers to his team, a potential demotion for Dowd. Still, they were caught off guard by Dowd’s rash decision.
Dowd issued a short, simple statement announcing his exit: “I love the President and wish him well.” But he left the legal team in a bind, and without a clear replacement. And he was the only Trump lawyer with a security clearance, meaning no one was left on the president’s personal legal team who could review classified information pertaining to the case.
Fifteen
CONGRATULATING PUTIN
In March, President Trump told other aides that he was considering firing his national security adviser, H. R. McMaster, and John Kelly, not a fan of McMaster’s style, leaped to line up replacements. Before long, news of the president’s intentions leaked to the media. The White House denied that McMaster was on the chopping block, but Trump again told aides McMaster was going to be fired, and the cycle repeated.
During this period, the mood inside the White House verged on manic. The president was emboldened, buoyed by what he viewed as triumphant decisions to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum, and the plans he was putting together for a historic summit in June with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
Tillerson was not the only recent casualty to be humiliated. On March 12, White House aides had witnessed the sudden firing of Johnny McEntee, the president’s personal assistant, booted out by Kelly and escorted from the White House grounds after his security clearance was revoked amid an investigation into his personal finances and links to online gambling. “Everybody fears the perp walk,” one senior White House official remarked. “If it could happen to Johnny, the president’s body guy, it could happen to anybody.”
On Sunday, March 18, this was the soft ground on which McMaster was standing when Vladimir Putin was reelected president of Russia. It was a frigid night in Moscow as Putin strode onto a stage erected just outside the Kremlin walls to accept his victory. The Russian government said Putin won in a landslide, with more than 75 percent of the votes, with high turnout thanks to an extensive propaganda campaign. All day, Russian state TV broadcast images of long lines of Russians waiting eagerly to cast ballots for Putin—at polling places from the beaches to the mountains to remote settlements in the Arctic. A Russian on the International Space Station was reported to have cast a ballot while in orbit.
“Success awaits us!” Putin told supporters. “Together, we will get to work on a great, massive scale, in the name of Russia.”
The boisterous crowd responded with chants of “Russia! Russia!”
Unsaid was the fact that the Russian election was anything but fair. The most popular opposition leader challenging Putin, Alexei Navalny, had been barred from the ballot. Another opponent, Communist Party candidate Pavel Grudinin, had been relentlessly attacked by the state media, which Putin and his cronies controlled, and finished a distant second with 12 percent of the vote. It was, as the BBC dubbed it, the election Putin “could not lose.”
Back in Washington, Trump monitored the election results and swelled with pride for Putin. He was impressed by the size of his victory. A mandate. Trump told McMaster that he wanted to call Putin to congratulate him. McMaster was used to hearing Trump toss impulsive ideas into the air to gauge his reaction. But he knew Trump was adamant about this one. He was calling Putin.
The next day, in their regular Monday meeting, McMaster tried gently to steer Trump away from the idea of congratulating Putin. He explained that the Kremlin would use the American president’s words to claim the world’s leading democracy had blessed their rigged election. McMaster suggested Trump condemn the Salisbury nerve agent attack. He also suggested Trump bring up the conflict in Syria to try to protect civilians from Bashar al-Assad’s attacks on rebel strongholds. Trump listened but mostly remained adamant about making the call, so McMaster reached out to Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, and set a time for a call between the two presidents on Tuesday, March 20.
Later that Monday, March 19, in a prep session ahead of the Putin call, Trump again told his advisers that he wanted to give Putin an attaboy on his election victory. McMaster had resigned himself to the high likelihood that Trump would do whatever he wanted on the call. This is how it went with Trump. “The call was Trump’s idea, and his whole point was to congratulate Putin,” said one White House adviser. “H.R. couldn’t stop him.”
McMaster made one last attempt to give his considered advice. He had his National Security Council staff prepare a three-inch-thick overnight briefing book for Trump, which the staff secretary delivered to the president’s residence late Monday evening. Notably, the briefing book included four five-by-seven-inch “cue” cards, the kinds used by students cramming for a test. The stock-grade cards, with the White House seal at the top, contained easy talking points Trump could use in the conversation. To ensure the president would not miss what it said, the first card had all capital letters and bold lettering: “DO NOT CONGRATULATE ON ELECTION WIN.”
It was the first time anyone on the White House career staff working on national security could remember a president being handed marching orders from the NSC in all capital letters.
On Tuesday morning, McMaster called Trump at his residence for a quick check-in before the call. McMaster did not reiterate the “DO NOT CONGRATULATE” instructions from the cards. He didn’t think he had to. After all, the key points were in all capital letters. How could Trump miss them? Shortly thereafter, the White House Situation Room placed the call, connecting the Kremlin to Trump’s residence. Trump opened his conversation with Putin as if greeting an old friend, congratulating him on his amazing election victory.
Trump ignored the first cue card in its entirety. Then he ignored the others. He did not say a word about what Britain had concluded was the Putin-ordered poisoning of a former KGB agent in England, declining to confront the Russian strongman in defense of America’s oldest ally. Trump and Putin spoke for roughly forty minutes, with Trump following his gut and riffing with Putin about how the two of them might generate economic deals between their two countries.
Putin had developed a knack for manipulating Trump, making him believe that the two of them could get big things accomplished if they ignored their staff
s and worked one-on-one. National security aides feared Putin knew how to feed the unusual combination of Trump’s ego and insecurity and to cultivate conspiracies in his mind. He told Trump his ideas were brilliant but warned him that he could not trust anyone in his administration in Washington to execute them.
“It’s not us,” Putin had told Trump. “It’s the subordinates fighting against our friendship.”
As he did reflexively when talking to foreign leaders, Trump invited Putin to come to Washington for a state visit. This was one of many Trump tics that befuddled McMaster. Typically invitations were extended strategically and only after considerable internal deliberation about the possible diplomatic and policy gains. But Trump invited everyone, creating headaches for his team. Some major migraines ensued when Trump invited the leaders of tiny nations, such as Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley of Trinidad and Tobago, and people deeply controversial in their own home countries, such as Brazil’s then-president Michel Temer, to drop by the White House whenever they were in town.
Trump had been scheduled to speak with Temer in March 2017, and at the time the Brazilian president was embroiled in a major corruption scandal. Before Trump and Temer’s call, White House aides foresaw what might happen and preventively urged Trump not to invite the Brazilian leader to Washington. Trump did it anyway. White House aides spent the next few weeks politely dodging calls from the Brazilian ambassador, who was trying to make good on Trump’s invitation and set up the visit. In the case of Trinidad and Tobago, Trump’s invite to Rowley forced the NSC staff to create polite ways to withdraw the offer, explaining that Trump was so busy he could not find time in his schedule to see him.
The morning of March 20, after hanging up with Putin, Trump made his way to the Oval Office. He was excited. He told McMaster he wanted to put out a statement right away. The president liked to dictate what he considered the historic successes of his conversations with foreign leaders for public distribution by the White House. Staffers tried to suggest edits, but it usually fell to McMaster to talk Trump out of ideas that would reveal too much or piss off Western allies. On this day, Trump was adamant about what he wanted the statement to say.
“I want Putin to come here,” Trump told McMaster.
“Yes, Mr. President,” McMaster said. “We’ll start working on it ASAP.”
“Let’s announce the invitation and put out a statement about it,” Trump said.
McMaster didn’t think Trump should publicly announce his invitation, much less have Putin visit Washington at all, but figured the situation could be managed. He explained to Trump that state visits or face-to-face meetings of this magnitude should be kept secret until closer to the event and after the two countries negotiated a concrete agenda. Trump seemed to relent, shrugging his shoulders.
McMaster instructed Fiona Hill, the Russia specialist on the NSC, to contact the Russian ambassador and start talks about a possible meeting. But he stressed that she should take her time. If she set up a meeting with the ambassador, they could say they were working on the visit the next time Trump asked. As McMaster was drafting and editing with his staff the White House’s statement on the Trump-Putin call, the Kremlin released its own readout of the call. The Russians almost always got their statements out before the Americans, which allowed them to shape the global media narrative on their terms. The Kremlin statement made clear what Trump had said.
“Donald Trump congratulated Vladimir Putin on his victory in the presidential election,” the statement began. It went on to say, “Special attention was paid to making progress on the question of holding a possible meeting at the highest level. In all, the conversation carried a constructive, businesslike character, and was oriented toward overcoming the problems that have piled up in U.S.-Russian relations.”
British diplomats, talking to their own sources, were incensed. They were hearing that Trump never raised the issue of the poisoning of the former Russian and British double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, who had defected to the U.K. They called their American contacts at the State Department and in the White House demanding an explanation. For her part, British prime minister Theresa May chose intentionally not to wish Putin well, still waiting for him to acknowledge the poisoning. Her spokesperson told reporters May wanted to have independent observers assess the Russian election before she commented on it.
The Russians had not exaggerated or misstated the substance of the call, as they often did, and Trump was hardly shy about confirming the truth. Sarah Sanders told White House reporters in the early afternoon that the Kremlin readout was accurate.
Later that day, The Washington Post first reported that Trump ignored his “DO NOT CONGRATULATE” instructions. The scoop posted at 7:16 p.m., and it blanketed cable news the rest of the night. Washington’s national security professionals and Russia hawks were outraged.
Late that Tuesday night, Fox’s Sean Hannity spoke with Trump by phone, part of their ritual of conferring each night after Hannity’s broadcast. Trump told aides that Hannity had a lead about the Judases in his midst: McMaster’s deputies.
A nor’easter rolled over the mid-Atlantic early Wednesday morning, March 21, dumping six inches of snow on the Washington region, the heaviest snowfall of the season. Metro shut down a large portion of its bus and subway service, and federal agencies in Washington closed, except for essential services. McMaster and other national security staffers reported for duty, and they received a frigid reception at the Oval Office. Trump was furious and demanded that McMaster find whoever shared the detail about the cue cards with Post reporters. McMaster told Trump he, too, was furious at the leak and told him he had already begun the hunt. The president made clear he wanted an answer soon. Hours, not days.
Trump and McMaster were not the only officials infuriated by the unauthorized leak. Kelly shared some of Trump’s frustration about the unrelentingly negative press coverage of the administration and was irate that confidential briefing materials had become public. He, too, directed a search for the sources. Kelly and the White House lawyers put the search in the hands of a trusted McMaster deputy who had never accessed or reviewed the classified notes, according to the White House’s digital system, which tracks who opened or reviewed sensitive documents. That deputy, ironically, was one of the people Hannity had accused of being a leaker.
On Capitol Hill, Republican lawmakers shared in the outrage. “A president’s staff shouldn’t leak,” said Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican who sometimes criticized Trump. “In cases of principle, you may need to resign. So resign. Do the right and honorable thing if you believe your conscience is compelled to do so and resign your position.”
Later that afternoon, Trump called McMaster back to his office.
“Did you figure out who did it?” the president asked.
“No, sir,” McMaster said. He laid out his strategy for the investigation. They had determined that roughly a hundred people would have had access to the notes, not counting more far-flung diplomatic staff, so it would take some time. He said they had one idea for catching the leaker, but White House lawyers worried it wouldn’t be foolproof and might risk identifying the wrong person.
“Well, I know who did it,” Trump announced, surprising McMaster and a handful of other aides in the room. “It was your guys.”
There is a dispute about whether Trump said their names aloud then or later. But in other conversations with senior White House staff, Trump would explain that Hannity had fingered Fernando Cutz and Ylli Bajraktari as the leakers.
“Get rid of them!” Trump bellowed. “This is fucking outrageous!”
McMaster, who steadfastly refused to fire people based on unfounded suspicions, tried to calm Trump down by saying neither man could be the leaker. “They would never do that, Mr. President,” McMaster said. “Never.”
The next day, March 22, the snowstorm continued to complicate commutes. Federal agencies were delayed in opening by two hours. McMaster was at his home at Fort McNair, on a peni
nsula on the edge of Washington where the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers meet. He had meetings that afternoon with his national security counterparts in the Quad, the strategic alliance between the United States, Australia, Japan, and India. He was hosting a dinner that night for them at his home.
At the White House, McMaster’s skeletal staff, those who had come to work that day, were concerned when they learned who was walking up the snowy main driveway to the West Wing just before 4:00 p.m. It was John Bolton. “He wasn’t being very discreet,” said one McMaster aide, noting that Bolton walked past television camera crews on his way in.
Bolton, a wily old hand from the George W. Bush administration who was known in those years for his hard-line neoconservative views and bureaucratic brawling, was being buzzed about as a contender to replace McMaster as national security adviser. Trump admired him in part for delivering what McMaster never did: fiery performances on Fox News defending the president.
McMaster’s aides were suspicious Bolton had come to pay Trump a visit. They asked Ivanka Trump and Hope Hicks, his communications director who was in her final days on the job, to find out what was happening. The NSC staffers wanted to try to stop Trump from firing McMaster without any warning. Ivanka and Hicks talked to the president and persuaded him not to tweet-fire McMaster, as he had Tillerson a week earlier. They argued that the military officer deserved more respect—at a minimum, the courtesy of a phone call. Amid this hubbub, Cutz felt he had to do something. For the first time in his years of working in the White House, he strode directly into the chief of staff’s office without making an appointment. He didn’t seem to realize this clock couldn’t be turned back.
“I need to see the chief right away,” Cutz told Kelly’s assistant.
Once inside, Cutz explained he couldn’t stomach seeing McMaster, a rock-ribbed professional and a role model, go down so that he, a relatively low-level staffer, could remain.
A Very Stable Genius Page 25