“Gina’s done a lot for this nation,” Pence told Trump. “I don’t agree with removing her.
“She’s done a lot of heavy lifting,” he added, referring to her record on capturing or taking out terrorists.
When it was his turn to weigh in, Kellogg was more plainspoken with Trump: “She killed a lot of bad guys.”
Pence also refuted the argument Meadows had been making about loyalty. “Mr. President, she’s done what you’ve asked her to do,” the vice president said.
Cipollone, a prudent lawyer, hung back. Though generally a fan of Haspel’s, he let Pence do most of the talking in the meeting. Trump ultimately decided that day to put his Patel plan on ice and keep Haspel in her position.
Down the hall in the chief of staff’s office, Meadows told Haspel he had offered the deputy CIA director job to Patel. She was unaware that the president had originally planned to do exactly this and that he had just decided against it. Haspel made clear that she would resign noisily rather than let Patel become her number two.
“I won’t stand for that,” Haspel told Meadows. “I’d like to then tender my resignation to the president myself.”
Before it came to that, however, Trump had backed off the idea of replacing Haspel.
Milley had heard from his contacts about Haspel’s dramatic Friday at the White House. He wasn’t convinced that the idea of installing Patel in a top job like CIA director or FBI director was entirely dead, but he was hoping he might help kill it for good. He had an opportunity the next day, Saturday, December 12: the annual Army-Navy football game. The cadets and midshipmen gathered at Army’s Michie Stadium in West Point, New York, and Milley and other brass flew up for the big game, as did Trump. After Milley joined Trump on the field for the commander in chief to perform a coin toss to start the game, they retired to the president’s viewing box. Other guests included Meadows, McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, and Patel and Miller, who had returned from Asia as well.
Meadows was talking to Trump in a whisper, but as Milley later told aides, he could hear some of the exchange. The president said, “Yeah, I want you to take care of that.” Meadows nodded and said, “Oh, yes, Mr. President. I’ll take care of that.”
Milley, who had been on edge for four days since Patel’s recall, decided to play the rube and try to flush out what was going on.
“Hey, Kash,” Milley hollered from across the box. “So, what are you going to take? CIA or FBI? Which one is it?”
Milley said it loudly, for everyone in the box to hear. Trump looked at Milley, a slight frown on his face. Meadows stared over, too.
“It’s all in the papers, Kash,” Milley said, faking his information. “Which are you doing?”
“Oh Chairman! Chairman!” Patel said, waving him off and seeming to adopt a pose of mild embarrassment. “Come on. Stop! Stop!”
Milley didn’t care how awkward this was. He put everyone on notice that he was watching their moves. Meadows, with a look of consternation on his face, pulled Milley aside to try to interrupt what was becoming a scene.
“What’s going on? Are you guys getting rid of Wray or Gina?” Milley asked Meadows. “Come on, Chief. What the hell is going on here? What are you guys doing?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Meadows said. “Just some personnel moves.”
“Just be careful,” Milley said. He didn’t say this in a supportive way. It was more like a warning. Milley wanted Meadows to know that he was watching. Did anyone think the leaders of the U.S. military were idiots? He wanted the White House to understand that he was drawing hard boundaries, and that Patel and his pals weren’t going to get the guys with the guns.
* * *
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On the same day, December 12, thousands of Trump supporters flocked again onto the streets of downtown Washington to display their strong opposition to the election results. It was another in the series of “Stop the Steal” rallies. The crowd included a heavy representation of QAnon supporters and Proud Boys, whose leader, Enrique Tarrio, posted a picture of the White House on the right-wing social media platform Parler, claiming he had received a “last minute invite to an undisclosed location.” A White House spokesman said Tarrio was taking a public tour of the mansion’s Christmas decorations.
The opening of the rally felt like a cacophonic religious revival for Trump worshippers. The stage speeches had been organized in part by Jericho March, a Judeo-Christian group that had formed to fight for what it believed to be Trump’s rightful return to a second term and had been named in honor of the triumphant battle of Jericho. In the biblical story of Joshua, the righteous Israelites were said to have marched around the city for six days and performed other ceremonies until the walls fell and they were able to conquer the city of Canaan. Here, too, Trump’s righteous warriors set out to march around the Capitol and monuments until they could reclaim their government. Preachers gave chest-thumping sermons. A man dressed in all-white garb took the stage and held up a ritual Jewish horn, which the Israelites sounded to begin their march. Called a shofar, it resembled a steer’s horn but was decorated with red, white, and blue paint. The Jericho March leader said it had been made especially for Donald Trump.
“President Trump, come get your shofar and lead us to another four years!” the man said. “Amen!”
MAGA celebrities on hand included conspiracy theorist radio host Alex Jones and Trump adviser Katrina Pierson, both of whom were known for inflammatory rhetoric. Pierson promised that the Trump warriors gathered downtown would stop Biden from becoming president. “We will utilize that system to the very end. And if that does not work, we will take our country back,” she said.
The founder of the “Stop the Steal” movement, Ali Alexander, told the demonstrators to get ready to take action to protect their government and that if, “heaven forbid,” the electoral college certified Biden as the winner on December 14, their fight would move to Congress. He said they should all stand ready to take up this fight on January 6, when Congress was scheduled to officially certify the electoral college results. Alexander said that Alabama congressman Mo Brooks planned to object to House certification and warned other Republicans to join him “or we will throw them out of office.”
The crowd favorite—and the one whose appearance most rattled his former colleagues in the firmament of the U.S. government—was Michael Flynn, whom Trump had pardoned on November 25. Flynn wore a red polo shirt and a blue blazer with a flag-motif handkerchief knotted around his neck, a kind of revolutionary’s ascot. He led the MAGA fans in prayer before ebulliently insisting that Trump would remain in office for a second term. Acknowledging that “we’re in a crucible moment in the history of the United States of America,” Flynn said the president was counting on them.
“Don’t get bent out of shape,” he said. “There are still avenues.” He added, “The courts aren’t going to decide who the next president of the United States is going to be. We the people decide.”
Marine One, presumably carrying the president, along with two decoy helicopters, flew overhead as Flynn spoke.
“There he is,” Flynn said. “He’s a sneaky guy. But he’s a fighter!”
One of Flynn’s fellow generals watched the event on television, shaking his head at the zaniness of what he was hearing. “Mike, you’ve gone off the deep end,” the general said to himself. “This is psychotic.”
Though the rhetoric was amped up, the protests that day were largely peaceful and calm. Later that night, however, D.C. police struggled to keep the Trump supporters separated from anti-Trump protesters, especially near Black Lives Matter Plaza and near Harry’s Bar downtown, which the Proud Boys had used as a gathering point. At least four people were stabbed in scuffles nearby. The organizers of Jericho March weren’t involved. They insisted they were people of peace and faith.
In locations across America around this time, Trump supporters were acting ou
t with threatening and dangerous behavior. In Gwinnett County, Georgia, a Dominion Voting Machines contractor was accused of treason and found a noose outside his house, after a video accusing him of vote manipulation spread online. Gabriel Sterling, a top election official in Georgia, who is Republican, pleaded with Trump to tell his supporters to stop their violence and intimidation.
“It’s all gone too far,” Sterling said in an emotional news conference on December 2. “You need to step up and say this . . . stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. Someone’s going to get hurt. Someone’s going to get shot. Someone’s going to get killed. And it’s not right.”
Sterling’s plea did not douse the passions of Trump’s backers. In Michigan three days later, a state Biden carried by 154,000 votes, protesters picketed outside the home of Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. She had just finished wrapping her portico with Christmas lights and was about to watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas with her four-year-old son when about two dozen protesters picketed her home, some of them carrying guns and chanting “Stop the Steal!”
“Ever since the president first tweeted at me and every time there is an additional attempt to spread false information, you see an uptick in the threats,” Benson told The New York Times. “And now apparently, they’re in front of my house, in the dark of night, in this very private, quiet residential neighborhood. We are concerned not only for the safety of my family, but my neighbors as well.”
Other election officials and state legislators in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and other states reported receiving threatening emails and voice-mail messages. Michigan state representative Darrin Camilleri told the Times he had received an email that said, “Be prepared to take your last meal,” and another that read, “We’re looking forward to bring[ing] back firing squads.”
Finally, on December 14, the electoral college convened with electors gathered in every state and in the District of Columbia to officially affirm their election results. This was the moment when McConnell and some other senior Republicans believed the results would truly be final. By the end of a daylong cascade of ceremonial votes, Biden received 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. In an address to the nation that night, Biden said, “In this battle for the soul of America, democracy prevailed. We the people voted. Faith in our institutions held. The integrity of our elections remains intact, and now it’s time to turn the page, as we’ve done throughout history.”
The next day, December 15, McConnell tried to put an end to Trump’s election-fraud shenanigans. Rising on the Senate floor to deliver a speech, the majority leader said, “Many of us hoped that the presidential election would yield a different result, but our system of government has processes to determine who will be sworn in on January 20. The electoral college has spoken. So today, I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden.”
Trump and his supporters were not ready to turn the page. They shifted their attention to the next date on the calendar: January 6, when Congress was slated to certify the electoral college results. Already, some House Republicans, led by backbencher Brooks, were planning to object to certification from five states where Trump had alleged fraud: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Shortly after his floor speech congratulating Biden, McConnell privately urged fellow Senate Republicans not to sign on to this effort to reverse the election outcome because he said it would be futile. McConnell also spoke by phone with Biden, who had called to thank him for the congratulations and vowed to work together on issues where they could find agreement.
Trump was furious and called McConnell. Animated and angry, the president cursed at the Senate leader. Trump made clear McConnell’s offer of congratulations to Biden was so disloyal he might as well have declared a mutiny. McConnell, equally firm, said this was the result dictated by the constitutional process and had to be accepted. “The electoral college is the final word,” McConnell told Trump.
McConnell was quite familiar with the president’s profanities, and at peace with the outcome. But Trump would not rest. He wanted to keep fighting to subvert the vote, but Trump would have to do so without the support of the Senate’s top Republican. This acrimonious call would be the last time the two men spoke for the remainder of Trump’s presidency.
* * *
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After his caustic meeting with Trump on December 1, Barr knew it was probably time to go. He wanted to make sure his exit was dignified, without the president taking cheap shots at his expense, but Barr also didn’t want to resign in a manner that would be interpreted as a break with Trump and injure the president politically. The attorney general had been on a high wire for two years and had to figure out how to dismount under extreme pressure. Barr was tired, and the closer the calendar got to Christmas, the more he longed for a work-free holiday, so he set his sights on leaving before then. He had confidence in the team he was leaving behind, including Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen and Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Rich Donoghue. There weren’t that many days left to hold down the fort, but Barr thought they would handle it well.
Over the weekend of December 12, Barr decided that he would talk to Trump on Monday, December 14, about leaving. That Sunday night, he wrote a resignation letter he expected would eventually become public. But there was only one person it needed to impress—Trump—and Barr dutifully emphasized the president’s accomplishments as well as his strength as a leader.
On Monday, Barr went to the White House and directly to Cipollone’s office and said he wanted to speak to the president alone. They entered the Oval Office together and found Meadows with Trump. Cipollone and Meadows excused themselves. The conversation between Trump and Barr was nothing like their last meeting two weeks prior, according to the account Barr shared with some of his senior deputies. The attorney general came bearing a gift, which helped: a letter full of praise. But in this opening conversation, he was clear-eyed.
“I think you know how much I’ve supported your administration and your policies,” Barr began. “I’ve tried to help you be a successful administration that way.”
“Yes, yes,” Trump replied, nodding his head.
“You and I have had a good relationship for most of that time. It’s been strained recently and I think we’re butting heads a lot and I’d rather not end our relationship with a blowup or have it further deteriorate,” Barr said. “I would just as soon leave now, and I wrote a letter that expresses my feelings about what we’ve been able to accomplish.”
Trump was listening closely. He was immediately intrigued. The president knew that resignation letters could pack a punch. He had felt victimized two years earlier when Jim Mattis quit as defense secretary with a headline-making resignation letter effectively denouncing Trump’s worldview.
“Let me see it,” Trump told Barr.
After scanning it, the president said, “Hmmm . . . This is a good letter.”
In very short order, Trump called Meadows and Cipollone back into the Oval.
“Bill wrote this great letter,” Trump told them, and showed each of them. “He’d like to leave now.”
As his advisers read over the glowing letter, they complimented Barr. The attorney general wanted to stay until December 23 to wrap up some work. The four of them talked for a moment about replacements and Barr suggested elevating Rosen to be acting attorney general, backed by Donoghue as acting deputy attorney general. Trump nodded. That sounded fine to him.
The meeting was going so smoothly. Not one hiccup or sharp note. Trump looked relieved, those briefed on the meeting said. With Barr, he had a Cabinet member he had liked so much, and seemed to personally enjoy, yet they ended up on a collision course over the election. Barr had a lot of credibility and things could only end badly if they stayed together.
The White House released Barr’s letter, and every paragraph delighted Trump. It opened by suggesting that they ha
d met that day to discuss the ongoing election fraud investigations—not exactly true—and Barr stressed the importance of continuing those probes. Then he got to the meat: “I am proud to have played a role in the many successes and unprecedented achievements you have delivered for the American people.”
Barr then sounded a note that Trump loved perhaps the most, describing the many slings and arrows the president took from his enemies yet was still standing, unfazed.
“Your record is all the more historic because you accomplished it in the face of relentless, implacable resistance,” Barr wrote. He condemned “a partisan onslaught against you in which no tactic, no matter how abusive and deceitful, was out of bounds. The nadir of this campaign was the effort to cripple, if not oust, your Administration with frenzied and baseless allegations of collusion with Russia.”
Here, when it came to the Mueller investigation, the two men stood on common ground. “Few could have weathered these attacks, much less forge ahead,” Barr wrote, but Trump did.
The president tweeted his praise for the departing attorney general that night: “Our relationship has been a very good one, he has done an outstanding job!”
Barr had pulled it off. He left the Trump administration without a nasty tweet or a knock-down, drag-out fight amplified by the leaks of scheming courtiers. He felt he had done this quite deftly. He didn’t know how brilliantly he had timed it.
* * *
—
Flynn’s former military colleagues thought they were long past being shocked by his bizarre behavior after he joined Trump’s campaign and his administration. He had taken money from the Turkish government while seeking a White House job, lied to the FBI about his conversations with a Russian ambassador on his fourth day as national security adviser, and then claimed prosecutors had coerced him to falsely admit to lying. But on December 17, the military brass he used to work alongside were floored anew when the retired lieutenant general asserted in a television interview that Trump had won the election, and urged him to seize voting machines and declare martial law if necessary to “rerun” the election.
I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year Page 46
