In six chapters from the
Washington Post online and at
Amazon (plus
audio analysis), you can get the major points from Robert Mueller's investigation. It's a good outline.
Excerpts:
Chapter 1: This Russia thing is far from over
The investigation that shadowed the first two years of President Trump’s administration began quietly during the 2016 campaign. U.S. intelligence agencies suspected Russia was behind efforts to sway American voters, such as WikiLeaks’ release of hacked Democratic emails. The FBI began examining ties between Trump associates and the Russian government.
[...]
The first test came in late December 2016. Barack Obama was still president. With just weeks to go until Trump’s inauguration, the Obama administration announced it was imposing sanctions on Russia in response to its interference in the campaign.
Trump’s advisers were concerned the fallout would hurt the United States’ relationship with Russia. The president-elect saw the move as an attempt to embarrass him by suggesting his election was not legitimate.
[...]
Michael Flynn, the incoming White House national security adviser [...] spoke by phone to his deputy, K.T. McFarland, who was with the president-elect and other advisers at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private Florida estate.
McFarland told Flynn that the president-elect’s team didn’t want things with Russia to heat up.
Flynn immediately called [Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey] Kislyak.
They discussed the sanctions — and Flynn asked Russia not to escalate the situation. It was a highly unorthodox request. Flynn was not yet representing the U.S. government.
The next day, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a statement saying Russia would not retaliate.
[...]
On Jan. 12, 2017, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reported that Flynn and Kislyak had spoken on the day the sanctions were announced. Ignatius wrote that it was unclear what they had discussed, but he questioned whether Flynn had said something to undercut the Obama administration.
The revelation caused a stir. Trump was already facing questions about Russia’s interference in the election, and now it appeared his incoming national security adviser might have secretly undermined Obama’s attempts to hold the Russians accountable.
Trump called incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus.
[...]
Priebus called Flynn and told him he needed to “kill the story.” The “boss” was angry about The Post column.
Flynn directed his deputy, McFarland, to call Ignatius and inform The Post columnist that no discussion of sanctions took place.
McFarland made the call, even though she said later that she knew it was not true.
Flynn then told other Trump advisers, including Vice President-elect Mike Pence, that he had not discussed sanctions with Kislyak.
In a round of media interviews, Pence, Priebus and incoming press secretary Sean Spicer denied that Flynn and Kislyak had discussed sanctions.
Senior Justice Department officials were alarmed by their statements, especially the one by Pence. The United States routinely monitors communications of Russian officials. The Justice Department officials knew what Flynn said about his conversations with Kislyak was not true. They feared Flynn’s lies gave Russia leverage over him.
[...]
Four days later, Flynn was interviewed by FBI agents in his White House office.
He lied about his conversations with Kislyak, the agents determined.
On Jan. 26, senior Justice Department officials Sally Yates and Mary McCord met with White House Counsel Donald McGahn at the White House. They warned him that Pence’s public statements defending Flynn were not true and could make Flynn a target of blackmail by the Russians.
Yates also revealed that Flynn had been interviewed by the FBI.
[...]
McGahn immediately told Trump about the Justice Department warnings and that Flynn had been interviewed.
Trump told McGahn, Priebus and senior adviser Stephen K. Bannon to look into the situation — and to keep it quiet.
The next day, Jan. 27, Trump invited FBI Director James B. Comey to dinner at the White House.
[...]
Over dinner, Trump attempted to extract a promise [of personal loyalty].
[...]
Days later, [...] Flynn acknowledged to Trump that he might have discussed sanctions with Kislyak.
On Feb. 9, The Washington Post broke the news that Flynn had in fact discussed sanctions with Kislyak before Trump took office, despite the denials from the vice president and top Trump aides.
[...]
On an Air Force One flight from Mar-a-Lago to Washington on Feb. 12, Trump asked Flynn whether he lied to Pence. Flynn told him that he might have forgotten details, but he did not think he lied.
[...]
The next day, Priebus told Flynn he had to resign.
[...]
The following day, Feb. 14, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie came to the White House to visit Trump.
[...]
Toward the end of lunch, Trump asked Christie to call Comey and tell him the president “really” liked him, adding: “Tell him he’s part of the team.” Christie thought the suggestion was a bad idea and would put Comey in an uncomfortable position. He decided not to pass along the message.
At 4 p.m. that day, the president met with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Comey, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and other officials for a homeland security briefing in the Oval Office.
At the end, Trump asked to speak to Comey alone. Sessions and Kushner tried to stay, but the president excused them.
[...]
Comey [...] did not commit to “letting Flynn go” — which he saw as an inappropriate directive to end the investigation.
[...]
About a week later, Bannon and Priebus told McFarland that the president wanted her to resign as deputy national security adviser, but they suggested that she could be appointed ambassador to Singapore.
At Trump’s direction, Priebus asked McFarland to put in writing that Trump did not direct Flynn to talk to Kislyak. She refused, saying she did not know whether that was true. She consulted a White House lawyer for advice, who also urged her not to write the letter. He was concerned it could be seen as a quid pro quo for the ambassador position.
McFarland resigned her White House post as requested, but did not write the letter. Trump still nominated her for the ambassadorship, but she ultimately withdrew her name from consideration amid questions about her interactions with Flynn.
By that point, McFarland must have understood that any position in the Trump administration was going to be fraught with inappropriate and perhaps illegal
quid pro quos and requests, but she stayed on, was shuffled out of the National Security position and was nominated by Trump as Ambassador to Singapre in May of 2017. McConnell was smart enough not to bring her nomination to a vote (begging the question: what did McConnell know, and when did he know it?). McFarland withdrew her name from nomination on February 2, 2018.
On March 31, the news broke that Flynn was offering to cooperate with congressional investigators. In exchange, he wanted immunity.
[...]
Around that time, Trump asked McFarland to pass a message to Flynn.
The president felt bad for Flynn, Trump told McFarland. He should stay strong.
Chapter 2: The president fires the FBI director
As FBI Director James B. Comey prepared to testify to Congress in May, Trump saw an opening: The president told his advisers that he wanted Comey to state publicly that Trump was not a subject of the investigation, as the FBI director had previously told him in private. If Comey did not make such a statement, Trump said, it would be the last straw for the director.
[...]
In his May 3 testimony, [Comey] confirmed that the FBI was investigating Russia and the 2016 election [and] under questioning from Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), he refused to rule out that the president was under scrutiny as part of the case.
[...]
Later that day, Trump met with White House Counsel Donald McGahn, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Sessions’s chief of staff, Jody Hunt. McGahn told Trump that Comey had declined to answer questions about whether Trump was under investigation. The president grew angry and blamed his attorney general, who had removed himself from overseeing the probe because he and other Justice Department officials believed his role in Trump’s campaign could be a conflict of interest.
[...]
Sessions told the president that he had no choice. If Trump wanted a fresh start at the FBI, Sessions said, he should consider replacing Comey.
[...]
That Friday night, Trump dined at his golf course in Bedminster, N.J., with son-in-law Jared Kushner, adviser Stephen Miller and other aides and family members.
The president told them he wanted to remove Comey and had ideas about how to announce the decision in a letter. Trump began dictating as Miller took notes.
Based on those notes and further input from Trump, Miller prepared a letter that weekend firing Comey. To avoid leaks, the president was adamant that no one at the White House be told of the plan. He made it clear he wanted the letter to begin by stressing he was not under investigation.
Some of Trump’s aides were concerned. [...] If it appeared Trump was dismissing Comey because of the Russia investigation, it could look like he was trying to meddle with the probe.
McGahn tried to stall. He noted that Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein had also expressed displeasure with the FBI director and would visit the White House later that day. Shouldn’t Trump consult the two Justice Department officials, who were Comey’s supervisors, before moving forward?
At 5 p.m., Trump and several White House officials met with Sessions and Rosenstein. The president said he had watched Comey’s testimony. Something was “not right” with the FBI director. Trump told them Comey should be removed and asked Sessions and Rosenstein what they thought.
Sessions noted that he had previously recommended that Comey be replaced.
Rosenstein said he had concerns with how Comey handled the Clinton email investigation.
Trump distributed copies of the letter he had drafted. McGahn suggested Comey be allowed to resign, but Trump was adamant: He needed to be fired.
Trump asked Rosenstein to draft a memo recommending Comey’s removal; he wanted it first thing in the morning.
Rosenstein said that he did not think the Russia investigation should be mentioned because it was not the basis of his recommendation. Trump said he would appreciate him including it anyway.
[...]
The next morning, May 9, [a letter from Sessions was] delivered to the White House [...] recommending Comey’s removal and a memo from Rosenstein titled “Restoring Public Confidence in the FBI.” The memo argued that Comey had made “serious mistakes” in the handling of the Clinton matter and was unlikely to change his ways.
[...]
[Trump] decided to present Comey’s firing as the result of a recommendation by the department.
[...]
In her daily notes, McGahn’s chief of staff, Annie Donaldson, described a fear that the handling of Comey’s firing could lead to the end of Trump’s presidency.
[...]
Trump asked Miller to draft a new cover letter, but insisted it still have language noting that Comey told the president he was not under investigation in the Russia probe. McGahn and Priebus objected, but Trump insisted.
[...]
Comey learned of his firing while meeting with FBI staff members in Los Angeles. Suddenly, the words “Comey resigns” were stripped across TV screens on the back wall of the room, stopping the FBI director mid-sentence. He initially thought it was a prank.
Then the TV chyrons changed. They read: “Comey Fired.”
[...]
The story exploded. Trump’s critics accused him of trying to hinder the Russia probe, and even his allies seemed worried. Watching the wall-to-wall coverage in the hours after he fired Comey, the president grew unhappy.
Trump called New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and told Christie that he was getting “killed” in the press. What should he do?
Christie encouraged Trump to draft Rosenstein to defend his decision.
That same night, the White House press office called the Justice Department: It wanted to put out a statement saying it was Rosenstein’s idea to fire Comey. Rosenstein told his colleagues that he didn’t want to be involved in putting out a “false story.”
Trump then called Rosenstein directly and said he was watching Fox News. The coverage had been great, he said, but he wanted Rosenstein to do a news conference.
Rosenstein said that would be a bad move. If asked, he said, he would tell the truth: that firing the FBI director had not been his idea.
But the White House pushed ahead. Press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters gathered in the White House driveway that night that the decision to fire Comey had come from Rosenstein.
Privately, Trump told a different story the next day, May 10, when he met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office.
The president also told the Russian officials he wasn’t concerned about Moscow’s interference in the 2016 campaign. The United States does the same in other countries, Trump said.
Later that morning, Trump called Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe. With Comey gone, McCabe was in charge. Trump told him that he had received “hundreds” of messages from FBI employees supporting his decision to fire Comey.
In a meeting at the White House that afternoon, Trump told McCabe that at least 80 percent of the FBI had voted for him in 2016. Then he asked a strange question: Whom had McCabe voted for in the election?
McCabe was stunned. FBI directors are supposed to be nonpartisan. He dodged the question, responding that he always played it right down the middle.
[...]
It wasn’t true. [Press Secretary Sarah] Sanders would later tell the special counsel’s office that the statements about rank-and-file FBI agents losing confidence in Comey were made “in the heat of the moment” and were not based on fact.
Sessions and Rosenstein each spoke to McGahn and expressed concern that the White House was promoting a false narrative that Rosenstein had initiated Comey’s firing.
[...]
They decided to work with the press office to get out a correct account.
Before they could, however, the president himself explained his real reasons for firing Comey. The next day, in a May 11 interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, Trump said he had the Russia investigation in mind.
[...]
Meanwhile, the New York Times broke the news that Trump had tried to get Comey to pledge him his loyalty.
Now it looked like the president might have fired the FBI director because he rebuffed Trump’s efforts to control the investigation.
Trump, again, was furious.
And by now, Comey's response is famous: "Lordy, I
hope there are tapes."
Chapter 3: Mueller's arrival pushes Trump to the brink
Days later, the Russia investigation took a new and more dire turn for the president.
Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who had been in charge of the probe since Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself, was unnerved by how the president pushed out Comey, and the criticism he and the Justice Department faced in the aftermath. He decided to appoint a special counsel [Robert S. Mueller III, a former FBI director who had served presidents of both parties and was widely respected on both sides of the aisle] to take over the investigation – putting it at arm’s length from the Justice Department and Trump’s control.
[...]
Trump immediately understood the threat posed by a special counsel.
“Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked.”
“How could you let this happen, Jeff?”
“You were supposed to protect me.”
“Everyone tells me if you get one of these independent counsels it ruins your presidency. It takes years and years and I won’t be able to do anything. This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
Trump told Sessions he should resign as attorney general. Sessions agreed to submit his resignation, leaving a seething president in the Oval Office.
[...]
[I]nstead of accepting [Sessions'] resignation, Trump asked his attorney general several times whether he wanted to leave his job.
Sessions said he preferred to remain, but that the decision was up to the president. Trump said he wanted the attorney general to stay on.
But the president did not return Sessions’s resignation letter.
White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and senior adviser Stephen K. Bannon learned that Trump had kept Sessions’s letter. They grew worried the president could use it as leverage over the Justice Department.
Priebus told Sessions that the letter was a “shock collar” that Trump could use whenever he wanted.
Trump has “DOJ by the throat.”
Priebus and Bannon agreed they would try to get the letter back from the president.The following day, Trump left for the Middle East.
Aboard Air Force One, the president took Sessions’s letter out of his pocket and showed it to adviser Hope Hicks and other senior aides, asking what he should do about it.
Later during the trip, Priebus asked the president for the letter so he could return it to Sessions. Trump told his chief of staff that he didn’t have it. Trump said the letter was back at the White House, somewhere in the residence.
Bizarre. He'd told Sessions he wanted him to stay. He was obviously plotting something.
Finally, three days after returning from the Middle East, Trump gave the letter back to Sessions.
Trump had written across the paper: “Not accepted.”
The president continued to stew about Mueller’s appointment. He repeatedly told aides that the new special counsel had conflicts of interest. Trump noted that attorneys at Mueller’s former law firm had represented Trump associates. And he cited the fact that, six years earlier, Mueller tried to get a refund when his family resigned its membership at a Trump golf course in Northern Virginia.
[...]
Bannon and other Trump advisers pushed back, saying the issues he was raising were not serious.
[...]
Trump urged McGahn to complain to Rosenstein about Mueller’s possible conflicts. McGahn refused, saying Trump could take up the matter with the president’s personal attorney — but advised him against doing so.
McGahn told the president that pushing out the special counsel could be seen as obstruction. And Trump was already at risk because of his request to Comey to lay off national security adviser Michael Flynn, McGahn told him.
[...]
A few days later, Christopher Ruddy, Trump’s friend and Newsmax Media’s chief executive, met at the White House with Bannon and Priebus.
They told him they were worried that the president was strongly considering firing Mueller — and could do so abruptly. Ruddy asked if he could talk about the issue publicly, and Priebus agreed.
[Ruddy reported publicly,] “Well, I think he’s considering perhaps terminating the special counsel. I mean, Robert Mueller, there are some real conflicts.”
Ruddy’s comments drew extensive news coverage. In response, Trump told spokeswoman Sarah Sanders to release a statement saying that while he had the power to fire Mueller, he had “no intention to do so.”
But privately, the next day, a personal attorney for Trump reached out to Mueller’s office and expressed concerns that the special counsel had conflicts of interest, according to the prosecutors’ internal notes. (A Trump lawyer would later deny that Mueller’s possible conflicts were discussed.)
The president’s pressure did not work.
[...]
On June 14, The Washington Post broke a bombshell story.
In “a major turning point,” The Post reported, the special counsel was investigating the president himself for possible obstruction of justice.
What Trump had feared most had come to pass: His own actions were under scrutiny.
[...]
Trump’s anger continued unabated the following day.
This was it. Mueller had to go, the president had decided.
On Saturday, June 17, Trump traveled to the presidential retreat at Camp David.
From there, he called McGahn at home and directed him to have the special counsel removed.
“You gotta do this. You gotta call Rod.”
“Call Rod, tell Rod that Mueller has conflicts and can’t be the special counsel.”
“Mueller has to go.”
“Call me back when you do it.”
[...]
To get Trump off the phone, [McGahn] left him with the impression he would call Rosenstein. But he had no intention of doing so.
The White House counsel felt trapped. He didn’t know what he would say if the president called again.
He decided he had to resign.
McGahn called his personal attorney, William Burck, to tell him of his difficult decision. He also told his chief of staff, Annie Donaldson.
To try to keep her out of the investigation, McGahn did not want to tell Donaldson exactly what Trump had asked of him. But he said that the president had asked him to call the Justice Department and do something he did not want to do. In one call, he told her, Trump asked him, “Have you done it?”
Donaldson guessed that Trump’s request had something to do with Russia. She decided to resign along with her boss.
That evening, McGahn called Bannon and Priebus and told them he planned to quit.
The president asked me to “do crazy shit.”
Bannon and Priebus urged him to reconsider.
McGahn thought about his options. By Monday, he had decided to try to stick it out and returned to work.
When McGahn saw Trump, the president did not mention his order to get rid of Mueller. And McGahn did not tell the president that he had planned to resign rather than comply.
The crisis had passed — but only for the moment.
Chapter 4: Trump turns to a loyal ally for help
On June 19, Trump met alone in the Oval Office with his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski.
After some small talk, Trump turned the conversation to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He told Lewandowski that Sessions was weak. The president said Sessions should not have recused himself from overseeing the Russia investigation, a decision the attorney general had announced a few months earlier.
“Write this down.”
Trump said he never would have appointed Sessions if he’d known he would take that step. The president then told his former campaign manager to deliver a message to Sessions: The attorney general should give a speech. Trump dictated what it should say.
“I know that I recused myself from certain things having to do with specific areas. But our POTUS . . . is being treated very unfairly. He shouldn’t have a Special Prosecutor/Counsel b/c he hasn’t done anything wrong. I was on the campaign w/him for nine months, there were no Russians involved with him. I know it for a fact b/c I was there. He didn’t do anything wrong except he ran the greatest campaign in American history.”
Trump wanted Sessions to limit Mueller’s investigation to examining only future election interference — a move that would prevent the special counsel from scrutinizing the president’s 2016 campaign.
[...]
Trump told Lewandowski that it would be good for Sessions if he gave such a speech.
Sessions would be the “most popular guy in the country.”
[...]
The request was extraordinary. The president wanted his attorney general to interfere in an investigation — one examining Trump’s own conduct and that of his campaign.
Lewandowski decided he wanted to give Sessions the message in person, but he didn’t want to meet at the Justice Department. That was Sessions’s home turf and would give the attorney general an advantage. Lewandowski also didn’t want to sign in to enter the government building, which would leave a record of his meeting.
He called Sessions and the two men agreed to meet the following evening at Lewandowki’s office.
At the last minute, Sessions canceled the meeting.
Old Jeff is not quite as stupid as he looks (and acts).
Lewandowski knew the notes he had taken in the Oval Office were sensitive. He placed them in a safe at his home [and] called Rick Dearborn, a senior White House official, and asked if he could pass a message to the attorney general. Lewandowski figured the message would be better coming from Dearborn, who had been Sessions’s chief of staff and — unlike Lewandowski — worked in the White House.
Dearborn agreed — without knowing what the message said. He planned to give it to Sessions at a dinner in late July.
On July 19, Lewandowski was back at the White House. The Russia investigation was heating up.
[...]
As he walked into the Oval Office, Lewandowski handed the speech that Trump had written for Sessions to Hope Hicks, a top communications adviser. He asked her to type it up while he met with the president.
Trump asked Lewandowski if he had spoken to Sessions. Lewandowski promised he would deliver the message soon.
The president told his former campaign manager that if Sessions did not meet with him, Lewandowski should tell Sessions he was fired.
It was an odd request for Lewandowksi. He was not the attorney general’s boss. He didn’t even work for the government.
Leaving the meeting, Lewandowski ran into Dearborn in the anteroom of the Oval Office and gave him the notes that Hicks had typed.
Lewandowksi explained this was the message for Sessions they had discussed.
Dearborn was wary and did not feel comfortable carrying a message to Sessions. He decided he didn’t want to know any more and threw away the notes without ever speaking to the attorney general.
Dearborn told Lewandowski he had handled the situation.
In case it hasn't been obvious, the Trump administration has been a total mess since the beginning.
Lewandowski would later be asked about the episode on Capitol Hill. “I didn’t think at the time that the president asked me to deliver a message that anything was illegal about it. I didn’t have the privilege to go to Harvard Law. So if you’re telling me that in your opinion, that would have been illegal, then that’s your opinion to it. But I never assumed that, never thought about it at the time and I haven’t thought about it now,” he told members of Congress in September 2019.
[...]
[Trump] brought up the topic in an impromptu interview with three New York Times reporters.
“Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else.”
[...]
Hicks was deeply worried about the president’s critical comments about Sessions, which immediately spurred public questions about whether he was trying to bully his attorney general into interfering with the Russia investigation. But later that day, Trump called her to say how happy he was with the coverage.
That's what he said to Rosenstein about the coverage over firing Comey after having fumed about it.
He's nuts.
Three days later, on July 21, The Washington Post reported that Sessions had discussed campaign-related matters with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 presidential race, contrary to what Sessions had said publicly.
The focus on his interactions with Kislyak made the embattled attorney general even more vulnerable.
So, both Flynn and Sessions had gone to Kislyak inappropriately before Trump was president.
That evening, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus called Sessions’s chief of staff, Jody Hunt, to talk about whether Sessions might be fired or resign.
Hunt told him that Sessions had no intention of resigning — and noted that even if Trump fired Sessions, the special counsel investigation would continue.
The next day was Saturday. Aboard Marine One bound for Norfolk, Va., that morning, Trump told Priebus that the country had lost confidence in Sessions and the negative publicity surrounding the attorney general was intolerable. The president wanted Sessions out.
Priebus warned the president that if he fired Sessions, they would never get another attorney general confirmed by Congress. But Trump suggested he could appoint a replacement without congressional approval. He wanted it done.
Priebus thought Trump’s order was a problem. He called White House Counsel Donald McGahn for advice.
McGahn told Priebus he should not follow the order.
The two men discussed possibly resigning together rather than carry out the president’s demand to fire the attorney general.
You might think they would have realized by this time that the entire Trump presidency was going to be one big legal risk and take the opportunity to quit while they were ahead - or still had heads.
That afternoon, Trump met with Priebus again and pressed him for Sessions’s resignation.
“Did you get it? Are you working on it?”
Priebus believed his own job depended on securing Sessions’s resignation. He told the president he would get Sessions to step down, even though he did not plan on following the directive.
Later that day, Priebus called the president and told him that firing Sessions would be a calamity.
Other Justice Department officials would also resign, he told Trump. Trump would not be able to get anyone else confirmed.
[...]
Trump had backed down and allowed the attorney general to remain in his job. But he kept up the pressure on Sessions in a series of tweets.
For the second time, Sessions prepared a resignation letter.
For the rest of the year, he carried it in his pocket every time he visited the White House — just in case.
Chapter 5: "Maybe I'll have to get rid of him"
In January of 2017, both the
New York Times and the
Washington Post had printed stories that Trump had ordered Don McGahn to get Sessions to fire Mueller.
The news stories were a problem: They indicated that if not for the reluctance of one of his top advisers, the president would have fired the special counsel – a move that would have been seen as an attempt to impede the investigation.
Publicly, the president denied he had called for Mueller’s firing.
“Fake news, folks. Fake news.”
Privately, Trump began an aggressive campaign to get McGahn to dispute the reports.
The next day, Trump’s personal lawyer John Dowd called William Burck, McGahn’s attorney, and told him that the president wanted McGahn to put out a statement denying he had been asked to fire the special counsel.
[...]
McGahn would not put out a statement.
Trump also asked press secretary Sarah Sanders to contact McGahn about the story. McGahn repeated to Sanders that the thrust of the story was accurate.
Trump knew the special counsel was already focused on whether the president was trying to block the inquiry. Trump also knew Mueller was interviewing White House staffers like McGahn. Pressing a key witness to change his story could look like an attempt to tamper with the investigation once again. But the president wouldn’t let it go.
In early February, Trump complained to White House staff secretary Rob Porter that he had never tried to fire Mueller and that McGahn had leaked the information to make himself look good.
It’s “bullshit.”
The president then gave Porter a job: He needed to get McGahn to write a letter “for our records” stating that the president never directed him to fire Mueller. The letter would prove the reporting was inaccurate, Trump said.
McGahn is a “lying bastard.”
“If he doesn’t write a letter, then maybe I’ll have to get rid of him.”
Later that day, Porter delivered the message to McGahn. But the White House counsel refused to write the letter Trump wanted.
[...]
Porter said the president might fire him if he didn’t write the letter. McGahn dismissed the threat.
[...]
On Feb. 6, 2018, McGahn was set to meet with the president and Chief of Staff John F. Kelly in the Oval Office to discuss the story. Trump’s advisers fretted about what could happen if the president kept pushing McGahn to change his account.
[...]
The president began the meeting by complaining about the New York Times story.
“I never said to fire Mueller. I never said ‘fire.’ This story doesn’t look good. You need to correct this. You’re the White House counsel.”
McGahn responded that while he had not told the president directly that he planned to resign, the New York Times story was otherwise accurate.
Trump
“Did I say the word ‘fire’?”
McGahn
“What you said is, ‘Call Rod, tell Rod that Mueller has conflicts and can’t be the special counsel.’”
Trump
“I never said that.”
Trump insisted that he had just wanted McGahn to raise the issue of Mueller’s conflicts of interest with Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein and let him decide what to do.
McGahn said he heard it differently — that the president said: “Call Rod. There are conflicts. Mueller has to go.”
Will you “do a correction?”
McGahn said no.
Trump asked McGahn why he told the special counsel’s office about the incident.
[...]
He was the White House counsel, not the president’s personal lawyer, so their conversations were not protected by attorney-client privilege, [McGahn] explained. That meant that when federal investigators asked McGahn about it, he was required by law to answer truthfully.
Then Trump asked why McGahn took notes in meetings, creating a record of what went on in the White House that Mueller could review.
Trump
“What about these notes? Why do you take notes? Lawyers don’t take notes. I never had a lawyer who took notes.”
McGahn
I’m a “real lawyer.”
Ouch.
After the meeting, Kelly and McGahn talked separately.
McGahn told Kelly that he and Trump “did have that conversation” about removing Mueller. Kelly responded that he had pointed out to the president that McGahn was not backing down.
Trump had pushed and pushed, but he wasn’t able to get McGahn to retract his account. Stymied, the president gave up.
His personal attorney, Dowd, called McGahn’s lawyer, Burck, with a new message: Trump was “fine” with McGahn.
Chapter 6: The president goes after Mueller's witnesses
[S]pecial counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his team of prosecutors moved forward. Beginning in 2017, they quickly uncovered possible crimes committed by several of Trump’s advisers, including some acts unrelated to the 2016 campaign.
With his own associates in jeopardy, the president blasted those who cooperated with Mueller and left open the possibility of pardons for those who did not.
[...]
The first to feel the pressure was former national security adviser Michael Flynn. When Flynn was forced to step down in February 2017 after lying about his contacts with the Russian ambassador, Trump publicly offered warm remarks about the retired general.
[...]
Nine months later, Flynn began cooperating with the special counsel’s office. On Nov. 22, 2017, Flynn’s attorney informed the president’s lawyers that Flynn was withdrawing from an agreement to share information with the president’s legal team. It was a sign that Flynn was switching sides and planned to help Mueller.
That night, Trump’s lawyer John Dowd left a voicemail for Robert Kelner, an attorney for Flynn.
“Maybe, I — I’m sympathetic. I understand your situation, but let me see if I can’t state it in starker terms. If you have — and it wouldn’t surprise me if you’ve gone on to make a deal with, work with the government — I understand that you can’t join the joint defense; so that’s one thing. If, on the other hand, there’s information that implicates the president, then we’ve got a national security issue, or maybe a national security issue, I don’t know — some issue that we’ve got to deal with, not only for the president but for the country. So, uh, you know, then we need some kind of heads-up — just for the sake of protecting all our interests, if we can, without you having to give up any confidential information. So, and if it’s the former, then, well, remember what we’ve always said about the president and his feelings toward Flynn and, that still remains. Well, in any event, let me know, and I appreciate your listening and taking the time. Thanks, pal.”
[...]
Dowd later said the special counsel did not provide the full context of his message in his report and changed “the tenor and the contents” of what he said.
Sure. Because that's what they would do, rather than offer the transcription of the phone call.
The next day, Flynn’s attorneys returned the call. They repeated that they could no longer have confidential communications with the president’s team. Dowd was indignant. He told Flynn’s lawyers that he planned to tell the president Flynn was now hostile toward him.
[...]
Trump expressed sympathy for Flynn. The president suggested he hadn’t ruled out using the powers of his office to pardon him.
[...]
In the days that followed, the president left the door open to a possible Flynn pardon.
“I don’t want to talk about pardons for Michael Flynn yet. We’ll see what happens. Let’s see. I can say this: When you look at what’s gone on with the FBI and with the Justice Department, people are very, very angry.”
A reminder: Flynn has still not been sentenced.
Meanwhile, the president had two other former aides to worry about. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, were charged in October 2017 with conspiracy to defraud the United States and other crimes related to their work as political consultants in Ukraine before joining Trump’s campaign.
A few months after they were indicted, Manafort told Gates that he had spoken to the president’s personal lawyer. It would be stupid to plead guilty, Manafort said.
“We’ll be taken care of.”
“Sit tight.”
Gates asked Manafort whether anyone had specifically mentioned that the two would be pardoned. Manafort responded that no one had used that word.
Gates is obviously no dummy. He recognized the vagueness of the "taken care of" statement.
On Feb. 22, 2018, additional charges were filed against Manafort and Gates in Virginia. The next day, Gates pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
[...]
[Trump]
He never liked Manafort. Ha! I guess "hardly knew him" wasn't going to fly here.
In June 2018, prosecutors accused Manafort of trying to tamper with witnesses in his case. They asked a judge to revoke his bail and send him to jail while he awaited trial. On the day of a hearing in the matter, Trump spoke publicly about the case.
Trump was asked if he was considering a pardon for Manafort. He demurred — but did not rule it out.
“I feel badly about a lot of them because I think a lot of it is very unfair. I mean, I look at some of them where they go back 12 years. Like Manafort has nothing to do with our campaign.”
I take back that "hardly knew him" statement. Trump is literally saying his first campaign chairman had nothing to do with the campaign.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of Washington agreed with prosecutors, revoking Manafort’s bail and ordering him to jail while he waited for his trial.
In interviews, Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani seemed to reassure Manafort that Trump was on his side. While the president shouldn’t issue any pardons during an ongoing investigation, he said, Trump might pardon Manafort at some point in the future.
“When it’s over, hey, he’s the president of the United States. He retains his pardon power. Nobody is taking that away from him.”
Impeachment
could. I wonder how many of his cronies who are holding out for that pardon might start singing once Trump is impeached, which at this writing, is coming up likely by the end of the month.
But nothing, it appeared, got [Trump] as worked up as the investigation of Michael Cohen, his longtime personal counsel. Cohen had been at his side for more than a decade and was intimately familiar with Trump’s personal and financial dealings. In 2016, the lawyer had led failed negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow — an effort that persisted through much of the campaign, even as Trump said he had no business interests in Russia.
[...]
In a May 18, 2017, meeting, Trump told Cohen to cooperate with Congress. Cohen entered into an agreement to share information with the president’s legal team and began to speak frequently with them. At the same time, Cohen’s legal bills were being paid by the Trump Organization.
Cohen later recalled that one of Trump’s attorneys, Jay Sekulow, told him that he would be protected as part of the group, but he would not be if he “went rogue.”
“The president loves you.”
Cohen recalled that he was told that if he stayed on message, the president would have his back. Sekulow has denied Cohen’s account of their conversations, calling Cohen a liar whose “instinct to blame others is strong.”
Cohen spent 10 days in August 2017 drafting his statement for Congress. Phone records show that he and Sekulow spoke nearly every day.
[...]
In late October, Cohen testified to lawmakers behind closed doors. Cohen later admitted his testimony included key falsehoods about the negotiations for the Moscow Trump Tower and how long they lasted.
Cohen said later that he was adhering to a “party line” designed to obscure Trump’s ties to Russia and that his statement was reviewed by the president’s lawyers before its submission.
[...]
The pressure on Cohen soon escalated dramatically. On April 9, 2018, FBI agents investigating his finances and the payment to [Stormy] Daniels, among other issues, raided his home, hotel room and office in New York.
Trump was enraged.
“So, I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys — a good man.”
“It’s an attack on our country, in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for.”
A few days later, Trump called Cohen to check in and ask whether Cohen was okay.
“Hang in there.”
“Stay strong.”
But after the raid, the New York Times reported that Cohen felt isolated and could turn on the president.
Outraged, Trump insisted that would never happen.
[...]
Cohen decided he should stay on message, believing if he did so, Trump would protect him.
Several weeks later, Trump was asked if he might pardon Cohen or Manafort.
“It’s far too early to be thinking about that. They haven’t been convicted of anything. There’s nothing to pardon.”
As Cohen’s legal woes intensified, the president’s words were not enough.
He knew Trump
very well.
On July 2, he publicly turned on his longtime boss. Cohen told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that he would cooperate with the government and that he had hired a new lawyer.
[...]
Aug. 21, 2018, was a grim day for the president. A jury in Washington found Manafort guilty on eight felony counts — increasing the pressure on him to cooperate with Mueller in the hopes of getting a reduced sentence.
Minutes later, in Manhattan, Cohen pleaded guilty to bank and tax fraud, as well as campaign finance violations related to hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels and another woman.
Cohen implicated Trump directly, telling the judge he committed the campaign finance violations “in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.” He agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
Trump immediately began contrasting Cohen, who was assisting the government, with Manafort, who was proving more difficult for prosecutors.
[...]
Days later, Giuliani told The Washington Post that Trump had asked his lawyers about pardoning Manafort. Trump was advised against considering a pardon — but not necessarily forever, Giuliani said. The president was told he should put the idea on hold until the investigation had ended.
The investigation ended months ago, and Trump has still not pardoned Manafort.
Mueller would ultimately indict or convict six Trump associates for a wide variety of crimes — though none were charged with conspiring with Russia to interfere in the 2016 campaign.
Along with Cohen, there was former Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, who served 12 days in prison for lying to the FBI. Manafort was sentenced to 7½ years in prison. Longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone was convicted of lying, obstruction and witness tampering. Gates, who had assisted the government, was still awaiting his sentencing as the end of 2019 approached.
[...]
As for the president himself, the special counsel stopped short of declaring whether he had broken the law.
“While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime,” Mueller wrote, “it also does not exonerate him.”
