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

by Carol Leonnig

  After seeing Trump’s tweet, Raffensperger authorized that the taped conversation be shared with Washington Post reporter Amy Gardner, who later that day published an account of the call, along with a full audio recording. The undeniable sounds of Trump’s mafia tactics immediately drew condemnations.

  Raffensperger would later explain that Trump only had himself to blame for the audio’s release. “If President Trump wouldn’t have tweeted out anything and would have stayed silent, we would have stayed silent as well. And that would have just been a conversation between him and I, man to man, and that would have been fine with us,” Raffensperger said in an interview with Brendan Keefe of WXIA, Atlanta’s NBC affiliate. “But he’s the one that couldn’t, you know, had to put it out on Twitter. And so if you’re going to put out stuff that we don’t believe is true, then we will respond in kind.”

  At the White House, some loyal Trump advisers blasted Meadows for having arranged the call. By not shielding the president from such a conversation, they thought, the chief of staff had committed political malpractice. Larry Kudlow and Meadows had been friends of long standing, but the economic adviser was furious that Trump had been allowed to be in such a compromised position.

  “Mark, did you think for one minute that that call would not be leaked in its entirety?” Kudlow said to Meadows. “Are we children here or are we adults? . . . What were you thinking?”

  Meadows responded sheepishly, “I couldn’t stop the president. I tried, but I couldn’t stop him.”

  * * *

  —

  On January 3, officials from the Justice Department, Defense Department, Department of Homeland Security, and local law enforcement gathered on a conference call to discuss security preparations for the January 6 events. One official reviewing the latest intelligence said there were no clear indications of an attack but warned that hotel occupancy rates and the number of incoming buses suggested that the crowd would be slightly larger than the pro-Trump demonstrations in Washington in November and December. A Homeland Security operations chief said his agency had picked up chatter of some folks traveling to Washington with intent to do violence but concluded the overall threat from these protests wasn’t significant.

  A domestic security briefer told the group, “Our biggest concern is when the sun goes down, just like what happened on 12 December and 14 November.” At those rallies, fights broke out at night between pro-Trump demonstrators and counterprotesters. O’Brien advised that security in and around the White House had been increased and that he believed the Secret Service had the complex well buttoned up, though he said there could be serious danger if counterprotesters showed up to bedevil the pro-Trump crowd.

  That afternoon, the op-ed from the ten living defense secretaries—including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Jim Mattis—was published on the Washington Post website. The piece never mentioned Trump’s name and yet it was all about him. It raised the possibility of Trump using the military to interfere in the transition and issued a not-so-subtle threat to Miller, the acting defense secretary, and Trump’s newly installed toadies.

  “Efforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory,” the former secretaries wrote. “Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic.”

  At about 5:30 p.m., top military and national security officials convened in the Oval Office to meet with Trump about the Iranian threats. Meadows, O’Brien, Cipollone, Miller, Milley, Patel, and Mike Pompeo were there. The president wanted to reopen a decision that Miller had just issued to return the USS Nimitz, one of the navy’s largest aircraft carriers, to its home base in California. Trump, who always wanted to look tough, hoped to send a message to the Iranians by routing the aircraft carrier back to patrolling the Arabian Sea. The conversation was rational and without any drama or vitriol. Most of the generals agreed that’s what should happen. Trump so ordered it.

  General Frank McKenzie of the U.S. Central Command was especially pleased. He had earlier made a special request that the carrier remain in theater amid the threats of revenge on Americans on the anniversary of Soleimani’s killing and had been surprised when Miller proceeded to ignore him and withdraw the ship. The easiest target for Iranian attackers would be U.S. troops in the region, he thought, and the Nimitz could provide significant support in staving off such an assault. The conversation in the Oval then shifted to public relations. How would the government explain the decision to turn the aircraft carrier around? They decided it would send a strong message if they were clear the change was due to Iran’s threats.

  At the tail end of the meeting, in an exchange that lasted about ninety seconds, Trump shifted the topic to the upcoming protests. He turned to look at Miller. “You’ve got enough guys and you’re all set for the sixth of January?” he asked.

  “Oh yes, Mr. President,” Miller replied. “We’ve got a plan.”

  Trump nodded.

  “Just make sure it’s all safe,” Trump said.

  Milley thought this was pretty benign and that Trump sounded genuine. Still, when the meeting wrapped up, he approached Miller privately. Milley wanted to be clear that when Trump said “you’re all set,” he was referring only to National Guard capabilities.

  “There’s nothing else set, right?” Milley asked.

  Miller told him, yes, the National Guard was all the president meant. Nothing else was in the works.

  On January 4, Pentagon officials received a morning update on preparations for January 6 and learned the FBI had no credible reports of dangerous threats, but that the crowd estimate had risen to twenty thousand based on hotel occupancy levels. The weather forecast was a clear day without rain, not what law enforcement officials hoping for a low turnout wanted to hear.

  Homeland Security officials reported that the two main points of protest would be at the Capitol and at the Ellipse near the White House. Washington D.C. National Guard Commander William Walker said his team was helping D.C. police man key checkpoints, and D.C. police seemed to believe they had enough Guard support. The Secret Service asked for five military civil support teams to help them in and around the White House. The FBI flagged in a briefing later that afternoon that agents had seen an increase in violent rhetoric on social media, just as Milley had on Dataminr, but there was nothing specific they could act on.

  At the White House, meanwhile, staffers were preparing for Trump to address the “Save America” rally at the Ellipse on January 6. Advance staff considered the best places to hang signs and mapped out where the president would stand and what the camera angles might be. Secret Service officers prepared how and when to safely move the president from the White House to the rally space. It was one thing for the president to encourage his supporters to gather in solidarity with his quest to overturn the election; it was another for him to take the stage and make the event his own. Some of Trump’s advisers objected.

  “Holy cow,” Kudlow told Meadows when he found out Trump would be speaking. “We shouldn’t go near it.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” Meadows assured him. “It’s going to be okay.”

  * * *

  —

  On January 4, Trump was due in Dalton, Georgia, for a massive nighttime rally with Perdue and Loeffler on the eve of the runoff. But the president’s mind was not on the Senate and whether Republicans would retain their majority. It was on whether he could retain his power. Before departing late that afternoon, Trump met in the Oval Office with Pence, who had just returned from a campaign trip earlier in the day to Georgia. They were joined by Giuliani and John Eastman, a law professor with solid conservative credentials, having clerked for Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas and served as dean of the Chapman University School of Law.

/>   Eastman had a history with Trump. He had been encouraging the president earlier in the year to end birthright citizenship by executive order, something Barr had worked repeatedly to prevent from happening. When Barr had argued to Trump that an order taking people’s citizenship away retroactively would never stand up in court, the president said he knew a legal scholar who claimed the opposite. Eastman argued that the president could clarify by executive order that citizenship does not extend to children born of parents who were only temporarily visiting the United States.

  In the run-up to January 6, Eastman had argued that Pence could conceivably object to certification and send electoral votes back to states and force state legislatures to review the votes. This helped get Trump all spun up, though even Eastman realized this was merely a theory, not a likely outcome. But Trump, always optimistic about his chances, eagerly pursued Eastman’s legal theory. In the January 4 meeting with Pence, Trump introduced Eastman to the vice president.

  “This guy’s a really respected constitutional lawyer,” Trump said. “He thinks you have more authority. Let’s talk it through.”

  Eastman discussed two historical examples of vice presidents intervening during certification. The first was from 1801, when then vice president Thomas Jefferson presided over the certification of his own election as president. There was a dispute over certifying Georgia’s slate of electors because a page was missing due to a clerical error. Jefferson refused to wait and simply accepted electors from Georgia in his favor. This was an imperfect analogy, however, because Jefferson’s victory in Georgia was never in dispute. Furthermore, the Twelfth Amendment, which passed in 1804, clarified the process, and the Electoral Count Act of 1887 clarified it even further.

  Eastman’s second example was from 1961. Then vice president Richard Nixon was presiding over his own loss to John F. Kennedy as president. This was the first presidential election since Hawaii became a state. Hawaii sent Congress two slates of electors, one for Nixon who was initially thought to have won, and a second for Kennedy, who prevailed narrowly in a recount. Nixon wanted to count the slate for Kennedy—a magnanimous gesture to help heal the country since Kennedy was the clear winner overall—and asked Congress if there were any objections. There were none, so Nixon certified the Kennedy slate from Hawaii. Though 1961 presented a very narrow and unique situation, Eastman oddly argued that Nixon set a precedent for vice presidents choosing which electors to certify, as if that empowered Pence to unilaterally dismiss electors from some states that Biden won.

  Pence, who was accompanied by Jacob and Short, calmly and politely refuted Eastman’s arguments. He explained why the Jefferson and Nixon examples were in no way analogous to the current moment. The vice president called the Hawaii case a red herring, arguing that sending electors back to the states would be fruitless because the states already had certified their election results. Pence walked Trump through the overall analysis Jacob had provided based on extensive research: There was simply no legal way for him to reject the electors or otherwise act unilaterally to overturn the election. The Constitution would not permit it.

  After the meeting, Eastman acknowledged to Giuliani, “There’s no chance any of this is going to happen.” Later, Eastman would deny that Pence had refuted his arguments.

  Trump was unconvinced by Pence’s presentation. He soon walked out of the Oval and boarded Marine One to begin his trek to Dalton. On the trip, Donald Trump Jr. got Trump riled up again about Pence. The president’s eldest son did not believe the vice president was fighting hard enough to keep Trump in office. “He’s weak,” Trump Jr. told his father.

  Graham traveled with the president and tried to counter the Pence hate. “He can’t do what you’re asking him to do,” Graham told Trump. “If Al Gore tried this, we would have all been rioting in the streets.”

  Trump responded by suggesting Gore wasn’t smart enough to try to block certification. “They didn’t think about it,” he said.

  “Oh, okay,” Graham said facetiously.

  When Trump took the rally stage in Dalton, he was supposed to be motivating his supporters to vote for Perdue and Loeffler. Instead, he gave them reason to doubt the integrity of the state’s elections. The very first words out of the president’s mouth were: “I want to thank you very much. Hello, Georgia. By the way, there’s no way we lost Georgia. There’s no way. That was a rigged election. But we’re still fighting it, and you’ll see what’s going to happen.”

  “I’ve had two elections,” he added. “I won both of them. It’s amazing. I actually did much better on the second one.”

  None of that was true. The rally devolved from there into a classic Trump grievance fest. About eight minutes into his remarks, the president threatened the man who had stood by him more faithfully than anyone.

  “I hope Mike Pence comes through for us, I have to tell you,” Trump said. “I hope that our great vice president comes through for us. He’s a great guy. Of course, if he doesn’t come through, I won’t like him quite as much. No, Mike is a great guy. He’s a wonderful man and a smart man and a man that I like a lot, but he’s going to have a lot to say about it.”

  After days of privately pressuring Pence to do what the law would not allow, Trump had turned on him publicly. The president’s comments disgusted some senior White House officials. One of them recalled, “Pence had been such a loyalist during the whole four-year period. My God. We all took bullets for the guy, but Pence went out straightening misstatements and taking bullets on everything. How the president could go after Pence as disloyal was insane to me. And you had these outside nutjobs—I don’t even want to call them conservatives; I’ll say Trumpists—who were picking on Pence. That made my blood boil.”

  * * *

  —

  In Colorado that night, Mike Luttig, a former federal appeals court judge, a lifelong conservative, and a respected expert on the Constitution, was having dinner with his wife at their getaway home. The phone rang and Cullen, Luttig’s good friend, was on the other end of the line, calling from his home in Virginia, where it was about 9:00.

  “We’ve got an issue,” Cullen said, pausing briefly. “It’s John Eastman.”

  The Pence team was shaken by Eastman’s insistence to Trump about the vice president’s authority to block certification. Short had looked up Eastman’s biography and saw that he had once clerked for Luttig. He knew Luttig had an esteemed pedigree and his views were influential in conservative circles. Short and Cullen discussed the Eastman problem and his connection to Luttig.

  When Cullen called, Luttig said he knew Eastman as a former clerk, but added, “Richard, I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “Did you know John Eastman’s advising the president?” Cullen asked.

  The former judge was curious. He said he had not known that. On what in particular?

  “He’s advising the president that the vice president doesn’t have to accept the electoral college vote,” Cullen said.

  Luttig had been very open about his opinion of the law: Pence had no choice but to accept the state-certified election counts. But he found this new information a strange development: Eastman, a legal scholar Luttig respected, was telling Trump there was some legal reason Pence could not certify the vote.

  Luttig asked Cullen, “The president is killing the vice president based on Eastman’s advice, right?”

  “Right,” Cullen said. “And it’s coming to a head tomorrow.”

  “Now look, John is a brilliant constitutional scholar. Whatever John is telling the president has some basis in the law,” Luttig said. But a scholarly analysis of historical precedents and Senate rules was a vastly different enterprise than giving a client legal advice that would hold up in court, Luttig said. And Eastman was a scholar, not normally in the business of advising clients.

  The two friends said good night and planned to talk again in the morning.
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br />   It was barely 6:00 a.m. in Colorado on January 5 when Cullen called back.

  “Okay, here’s the deal,” he told Luttig. “The V.P. has to make the decision today and has to confront the president.

  “Is there anything you can do to help the vice president?” Cullen asked.

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about it overnight,” Luttig said. “I don’t know what I could do.

  “Look, of course you can tell the vice president that I said he has no choice under these circumstances but to accept the electoral college vote.”

  “I know that,” Cullen said. “I’ll do that, of course. But I’ve already told him that.”

  Luttig paused.

  “When does the vice president need me to do something?” Luttig asked.

  “Immediately,” Cullen said.

  Luttig’s mind was racing. And then he had an idea.

  “Well, Richard, I guess I could tweet something,” he said.

  Cullen said that would be very helpful. A piece of legal advice offered in a public forum by a judge heralded in conservative circles would give Pence some backup with Trump.

  Luttig chuckled at himself in this important moment. He wasn’t a technological Luddite, but he wasn’t a regular tweeter either. He couldn’t give a legal opinion in 240 characters, so he would need to connect the tweets. He asked his son to send him some instructions for creating a thread. Then he sent a draft of what he would write to Cullen. He didn’t want to tweet something Pence wouldn’t approve.

  Cullen shared it with Short and then wrote back to Luttig by email.

  “Okay, the vice president would appreciate this,” Cullen said.