I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year

by Carol Leonnig

  “Our political leadership will be determined by the American people,” Milley told another member of Congress. “We will obey lawful, legal orders from a duly constituted government, period. And at twelve o’clock on the twentieth of January, there will be a president and he will be certified by the legislature.”

  The general’s steady assurances over the phone masked his internal worry. Signs of the country’s division kept flaring like little brush fires in the inauspicious first days of the new year. On January 1, police in San Francisco found a spray-painted message at Nancy Pelosi’s home. One or more vandals had sprayed the words “Cancel Rent” on the House Speaker’s garage door and left in her driveway what appeared to be a pig’s head in a pool of fake blood.

  The next day, police in Louisville, Kentucky, found spray-painted messages on McConnell’s home. “WERES MY MONEY” was sprayed on the front door, while “MITCH KILLS POOR” was sprayed over his front window. McConnell had just blocked a vote on a House bill that would have increased the size of stimulus payments in the most recent COVID relief bill.

  On January 2, violence also broke out in Salem, Oregon, where police clashed with pro-Trump demonstrators, including members of the Proud Boys, who were objecting to the election results as well as coronavirus restrictions.

  In Wisconsin that day, five hundred National Guard members were being drawn up to help support local police maintain order amid protests expected for the upcoming arraignment of Kyle Rittenhouse, an Illinois teen charged with fatally shooting two people during civil rights demonstrations in Kenosha. Rittenhouse had come to Kenosha offering to help defend local business owners from protesters who took to the streets after police there shot and paralyzed Jacob Blake, a twenty-nine-year-old Black man.

  And in Washington, security preparations for the January 6 protests continued. Ten groups had filed applications for protest marches and rally sites, and police estimated 15,000 protesters would descend on the nation’s capital to object to the election results. Some 7,000 law enforcement officers, on top of roughly 340 D.C. National Guard members, were ready to keep the peace. One piece of good news: Leading anti-Trump activists were urging their followers not to show up to counterprotest, which presumably would cut down on skirmishes.

  At the same time, Pentagon leaders and other national security officials were closely watching an uptick in aggressive rhetoric from leaders in Iran, where a significant date was approaching. January 3 would mark the one-year anniversary of the killing of Iranian general Qassim Soleimani by U.S. forces. In the days leading up to January 3, Iranian officials had been making threats about seeking revenge for the death of their Quds Force commander. In a routine morning meeting on January 2, Milley and his colleagues conferred about Iran’s saber-rattling, including a speech by Iranian president Hassan Rouhani the night before in which he seemed to make a thinly veiled threat on Trump’s life.

  “Trump . . . will soon be deposed not just from office but from life,” Rouhani said. “The disappearance of the criminal Trump will bring quiet and stability to the region and throughout the world. He perpetrated many crimes but the economic embargo on Iran and the assassination of [Qassim] Soleimani are crimes we cannot forgive.” He added that Iran’s payback would come “at a time and place that it sees fit.”

  Rouhani’s statement stumped U.S. officials. Iran’s leader could have been issuing a bona fide threat of assassination, a tough-sounding but ultimately hollow threat to impress his own citizenry, or a chest-beating tease about Trump losing reelection. Late in the day January 2, Robert O’Brien called for a meeting at the White House with Trump the following day to discuss the Iranian threats. The dangers overseas—and the ad-hominem nature of the Iranian leader’s comments—had forced Trump to cut short his holiday vacation at Mar-a-Lago to return to the White House.

  Given everything that was going on, Milley had to keep one eye on Iran and the other on Washington. The Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman was concerned that day, having taken stock of the increasingly unhinged tone of Trump’s tweets just before midnight the night before. Trump repeatedly complained about all the ways the election had been corrupt. As the president told it on Twitter, he had actually won Georgia, but Stacey Abrams intervened to stop him; changes in state election laws made the entire results both illegal and invalid; and the vote count in Wisconsin should have been tossed out. Trump insisted he had lost due to massive fraud, continuing to push theories of manipulated Dominion machines, illegal ballot dumps, and other conspiracies. By now, more than eighty judges of both political parties had concluded the president had no leg to stand on. But recent polls showed two thirds of Republican voters believed the election was illegitimate.

  Milley told close aides that listening to the president was like reading George Orwell’s 1984. “Lies are truth. Division is unity. Evil is good,” the general said, mimicking the dystopian novel.

  But it was Trump’s call to action that most worried Milley. “January 6th. See you in D.C.,” the president wrote to his Twitter followers. Trump had been steadily promoting the event like a celebrity boxing match, and roughly ten days earlier had reminded his fans to come to Washington: “Be there, will be wild.” On OANN, a steady drumbeat of advertisements aired promoting the upcoming march. “The cavalry is coming,” one read. “Time not to be silent,” read another.

  Milley told his staff that he believed Trump was stoking unrest, possibly in hopes of an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and call out the military. He had also shared his concerns with a few trusted peers. They and several others were worried, too. The night of January 2, Milley got a heads-up from a former defense secretary that all ten living former secretaries of defense had reached the same conclusion. They were about to publish an opinion piece in The Washington Post warning the current Pentagon leaders they should never allow the military to be used to settle election disputes or interrupt the peaceful transfer of power.

  A student of history, Milley saw Trump as the classic authoritarian leader with nothing to lose. He described to aides that he kept having this stomach-churning feeling that some of the worrisome early stages of twentieth-century fascism in Germany were replaying in twenty-first-century America. He saw parallels between Trump’s rhetoric of election fraud and Adolf Hitler’s insistence to his followers at the Nuremberg rallies that he was both a victim and their savior.

  “This is a Reichstag moment,” Milley told aides. “The gospel of the Führer.”

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  After states certified their election results on December 14, they sent their electoral college votes to Congress to be counted and affirmed on January 6. This event had long been a ceremonial formality, officiated by the vice president, acting in his or her capacity as president of the Senate. In this case, Vice President Pence was set to certify Biden’s victory. As painful as that might be, there was precedent: Vice President Al Gore had certified George W. Bush’s win in 2001 and Vice President Walter Mondale had done the same for Ronald Reagan in 1981.

  But Trump imagined a different scenario. The president became convinced that Pence had the power to refuse to accept votes from such key states as Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, and to send them back citing concerns with the tallies. Then, Republicans in those state legislatures could maneuver on his behalf to somehow overturn the election results, or at least delay the ultimate outcome.

  Most lawyers and constitutional scholars believed this would be illegal; the vice president had no such authority. But not Trump’s lawyers. Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell told the president that this junk legal theory was no slam dunk but had potential. A litany of other outside voices, whom Meadows put on the phone with the president or invited into the Oval Office for meetings in late December and early January, echoed their agreement. They included Flynn, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, and Mark Martin, a former chief justice of the State Supreme Court in Meadows’s home state of North Caroli
na. One after another, they told Trump that Pence not only had the power but the duty to take this drastic step. The vice president was the guy to right this wrong.

  Other senior administration officials blamed Meadows for neglecting his gatekeeper role. “The president was exposed to crazy people spouting lunatic theories about the election and his ability to overturn it. That is all Meadows,” one of them recalled. “He’s going to pick up the phone and call people, or crazy people are going to call him, but you can limit that. You’ve got to get him exposed to the right people, the right dissenting voices, and channel it. Meadows did none of that. He reinforced [Trump’s] instincts.”

  Trump told his aides several times, “The lawyers are saying we can do this. We need Mike to be strong. We’ve got to do something about it.”

  Trump irrationally expected that Pence—a model of complicity, a man he had selected as vice president in part because he could be trusted to never cross the president or challenge his authority—would boldly overturn America’s two-hundred-year-old system of laws in service to his president. Trump was forcing Pence to choose between defying the Constitution—many parts of which he had memorized—and his lame-duck leader.

  “It’s the ultimate irony that a guy who acted like a total sycophantic pussy for four years, Trump wants him to be the Six Million Dollar Man at the end,” one of Trump’s advisers later remarked. “Well, shit, the guy hasn’t stood up to anybody for four years and now you want him to stand up illegally, unconstitutionally to the United States Senate and the House of Representatives? Are you nuts? Have you looked at Mike Pence?”

  Ever since being nominated as vice president, Pence had provided nothing but subservience to and fawning praise of Trump. He had sounded at times like a robot as he extolled Trump’s virtues in virtually every public appearance, from his “broad-shouldered leadership” to his “clear vision.” For Pence to reject Trump’s wishes in their final month in office would be unprecedented.

  Something else motivated the president at this time. The Lincoln Project aired a viral ad in mid-December that featured a haunting voice-over by a deep-voiced man: “The end is coming, Donald. Even Mike Pence knows. He’s backing away from your train wreck, from your desperate lies and clown lawyers. When Mike Pence is running away from you, you know it’s over. Trying to save his reputation, protect his future.

  “Oh, there’s one last thing, Donald,” the narrator continued. “On January sixth, Mike Pence will put the nail in your political coffin when he presides over the Senate vote to prove Joe Biden won. It’s over, and Mike Pence knows it.”

  The ad, the brainchild of top-flight Republican strategists who were proud Never Trumpers, aired only in the D.C. media market, and during commercial breaks on Fox & Friends. Its target audience was just one man—the president—and its aim was to prey on his paranoia about disloyalty.

  It worked. Trump was furious about the ad and told Pence to send the Lincoln Project a cease-and-desist letter. Pence ignored the president’s order, not wanting to draw more attention to the ad. But Pence actually wanted to fulfill Trump’s wishes. A graduate of law school who also had practiced law, Pence knew enough about the Constitution to understand that his role on January 6 was merely ceremonial. He felt fairly sure there was no legal way for him to do what Trump wanted him to do. Yet Pence still was open to that possibility and explored whether any defensible option existed. Pence met regularly with Marc Short and the vice president’s counsel, Greg Jacob, to hash over the extensive legal research they had conducted into his constitutional powers and historical precedent. Pence also consulted his outside counsel, Richard Cullen, and huddled with the Senate parliamentarian to understand his obligations. Pence also called Lindsey Graham, just in case the senator saw any workaround.

  “No,” Graham said.

  “Really?” Pence asked.

  “I’d tell you if I could, but I don’t. I’ve had my people look at it,” Graham replied. “Mike, I’m no constitutional lawyer, but common sense tells you you can’t do this.”

  Some of the professionals working for Trump, including Pat Cipollone, tried to talk sense into the boss.

  “Tell the vice president he needs to send the votes back. He needs to do it,” Trump told Cipollone during a meeting in the president’s private dining room in early January.

  “He can’t do that,” Cipollone said. “It’s not a constitutional role for him.”

  Walking out of the meeting, Keith Kellogg said to Cipollone, “Pat, you need to go back in there. You need to keep pounding away at it.”

  “I’m not going back in there,” Cipollone said. The White House counsel knew there was little he or anyone else could do to change Trump’s mind.

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  As part of his job, Milley had developed close relationships with several lawmakers, including Senator Angus King. Their friendship had been forged at Milley’s confirmation hearing in 2015 to become the army’s chief of staff. King had asked Milley if he would be able to give his forceful advice when it ran counter to the administration’s position.

  “I want to underline the importance of that question,” King said. “All of your experience, all of your knowledge, all of your wisdom that you have accumulated over the years are of no value if you do not share them. And you will be operating in the highest levels of our government in a situation that often can be intimidating. And I want to encourage you to remember that question, and when in doubt, speak up.”

  Milley had answered without hesitation. “Senator, I can guarantee that,” he said. “I have been in a lot of combat, and I will be intimidated by no one.”

  A mutual respect grew between Milley and King, and in 2020 they spoke privately about their concerns over Trump’s unhinged behavior. Because Milley was on high alert about January 6, he had been monitoring Dataminr, an app that tracked specific news reports or Twitter alerts on subjects of one’s choosing. Milley was checking it several times a day, looking for any sign of election protests, plans for civil unrest, or nutty calls for martial law that Flynn may have stirred up. The general knew that a small spark could set off a blaze.

  Sometime in the first couple of days of January, Milley saw disconcerting chatter on Dataminr. Pro-Trump rhetoric was interlaced with calls for violence. He saw references to smuggling guns and other weapons into Washington to “stop the steal.” He also saw unsettlingly personal and specific threats. One message said something along the lines of “Let’s burn Senator McConnell’s house down while he’s in it.” This wasn’t inconceivable, not after McConnell’s home in Kentucky had been vandalized.

  “We are coming to kill you. Just wait a few days,” read another message, which appeared to be aimed at members of Congress who supported certifying the election.

  It was unclear whether the social media chatter represented a serious threat. Still, Milley shared with King what he was seeing. On January 2, King called Mitt Romney, knowing the Utah Republican was a likely target of Trump sympathizers. King told Romney what his senior Defense Department contact had heard. Concerned, Romney then told his wife, Ann, who was more alarmed.

  “Mitt, you can’t go back,” Ann Romney told her husband. She called his Senate staff and said she was fearful for his safety.

  Mitt Romney tried to reassure her. “It’s the Capitol and I’m careful and I do have precautions and security. I’ll be very, very careful,” he told his wife. He said he had a responsibility to go back to Washington and certify the election. He had to help the country move on.

  Romney solidified his plans to fly to Washington while his aides arranged for some additional security to protect him at the Capitol. “What gave me a sense that there could be trouble in Washington was that the president had called for people to come to ‘stop the steal,’ ” he recalled in an interview. “There would be normal people across the broad spectrum, but there would also be extremists, [and] there c
ould well be violence.”

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  Trump was not only stirring chaos on social media and calling his supporters to the streets. On January 2, the president called Raffensperger to repeatedly coerce Georgia’s secretary of state to “recalculate” the statewide vote tally to put him on top. It was an egregious abuse of power, legal scholars said, and possibly a criminal act.

  “All I want to do is this,” Trump told Raffensperger. “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”

  Trump repeated his request: “So what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break. You know, we have that in spades already.”

  On the call, which was arranged by Meadows, Trump was rambling and at times nonsensical. He alternately berated and flattered Raffensperger, who along with his office’s general counsel, Ryan Germany, tried to explain to the president that his assertions were based on debunked conspiracy theories and that Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate.

  “The people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry, and there’s nothing wrong with saying that, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated,” Trump said.

  “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong,” Raffensperger said.

  Trump had tried to call Raffensperger eighteen times before he finally reached him on January 2. The president’s calls kept being rerouted to interns because staff in the secretary of state’s office thought they were prank calls. Raffensperger and his staff were upset by Trump’s nonsensical claims and unrelenting pressure in the hour-long call. The secretary of state’s office had recorded the conversation, but did not intend to release it, until Trump forced their hands. Shortly before 9:00 a.m. the next day, January 3, Trump tweeted that he had spoken to Raffensperger and “he was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters’, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!”