A Very Stable Genius

by Philip Rucker

  Trump wanted to know if Lewandowski and Bossie were interested in joining the administration and running the war room operation. The pair had already met with Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon about just that proposition, and everything seemed set. But Trump changed his mind. He told Lewandowski and Bossie, “I don’t want you guys to come here and then when I fire everybody you’re part of that.”

  That same day, Kasowitz and Bowe had left their home base in New York for Bedminster, New Jersey, to meet up with Kushner and Ivanka Trump to travel from the president’s private golf club to Washington together. The couple were rattled by the back channel story and wanted their advice. Before arriving in Bedminster, Kasowitz had confided to others about his growing concerns about Kushner’s presence inside the White House, telling them Kushner might have to leave due to the complications his Russian contacts created. When he and Bowe arrived, Kushner complained about the scrutiny and claimed the Post story was inaccurate. As he would argue repeatedly, Kushner said the Russians asked him for the back channel and he was confident he had done nothing wrong. Kushner and Ivanka Trump also asked Kasowitz and Bowe to help them calm down the president. The couple complained the West Wing was a circus, horribly mismanaged by Priebus and Bannon.

  Meanwhile, Priebus and Bannon were hard at work on what they knew the president would consider the most important pillar: a television-ready spokesman to lead the Trump defense. They were working from a deficit because Mike Dubke, who had helped lead the White House’s response to such crises as the firing of James Comey, had just resigned as communications director in his third month on the job.

  After Memorial Day, Bannon met with Mark Corallo, a seasoned Republican operative whom Trump’s advisers had unsuccessfully tried to get to join the communications shop at the start of the administration. Corallo, fifty-one, was an army veteran who had worked at the Justice Department during the George W. Bush administration, giving him a base of knowledge about criminal probes that could prove valuable. He also had “the look” that Trump would want in his front man: wiry and fit, with close-cropped silver hair and tailored suits.

  Corallo counted Mueller and Comey as former colleagues. He explained that he had admired Comey at first. Over time, however, Corallo said he came to see Comey as a “sanctimonious phony.” Comey had a habit of tut-tutting and frowning at anyone who disagreed with him, Corallo told Bannon. Comey would lecture with a little eye roll, which Corallo said had one message: “I’m just really disappointed in you. Your moral compass is askew.”

  “I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw his six-foot-eight frame,” Corallo told Bannon.

  “Oh, wow, that’s interesting,” Bannon said. “So you must know Mueller, too.”

  Corallo began to gush: “Oh, I love Bob. He walks on water.”

  “Really?” Bannon said.

  “I have very few heroes in life that are not ballplayers, and [former attorney general] John Ashcroft and Bob Mueller are at the top of the list,” Corallo replied. “If you have to have a special counsel, there is nobody better than Bob Mueller. If there’s nothing there, there will be a report that says there’s nothing there. He’s your golden ticket.”

  Bannon and Priebus then wanted to take Corallo to meet Trump. It was in the middle of the afternoon. “I don’t have a tie on,” Corallo said, surprised. In the George W. Bush administration, the president’s schedule had been tightly choreographed, weeks ahead of time, and nobody popped in to see him unless it was urgent—and certainly not on a weekday without a tie. But such formalities did not matter to Trump. Off they went, down the hall and to the president’s private dining room, where the television was on and Trump was perusing a stack of papers. He was warm and gracious to Corallo, and they got down to business. Bannon explained to Trump that Corallo knew Mueller well and Trump said, “I’m all ears.”

  “Here’s the deal, Mr. President,” Corallo told him. “If you’re going to get a special counsel, you couldn’t get a better guy. Mr. President, Jim Comey and Bob Mueller, despite what you might think, they’re not best friends. There is no conflict. And Bob Mueller is the most honest guy in town. You’ve got to understand, this guy is a public servant’s public servant. He’s only interested in facts. He doesn’t have a political ax to grind. He’s not for you or against you when it comes to the law. He really is as honest a human being as this country’s ever produced.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Trump said. “This whole thing . . .”

  His words trailed off.

  “I don’t blame you,” Corallo said. “I understand that it would be uncomfortable. But I do believe at the end of the day, if there’s nothing there, you’ll get a clean bill of health. And if it comes from Robert Mueller, it’s unassailable.”

  Trump seemed to enjoy the practical, cut-to-the-chase way Corallo spoke, but not to be convinced that Mueller was trustworthy. Trump asked him to return later that day to join a meeting about the Russia investigation, for what would be Corallo’s first time in the Oval Office. He felt chills as he took a seat across the Resolute Desk. Trump railed about the Mueller investigation—how unfair it was to him, how persecuted he felt—but Corallo was thinking, “Reagan sat there. FDR sat there. Truman sat there. Ike sat there.”

  Corallo immediately hit it off with Trump’s lawyers, especially Bowe, a practicing Catholic about the same age who also grew up in New York’s blue-collar outer boroughs. Corallo agreed on the spot to work for Kasowitz and Bowe as communications strategist for the president’s outside legal team. He had one condition: “I will never say anything untoward about Bob Mueller. I will never attack him personally. Ain’t gonna happen. And if I’m asked to, I’m out of here, and if anyone on this team attacks him personally, I’m out of here.”

  Kasowitz and Bowe agreed: they would never malign Mueller’s integrity or motivations.

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  Still without a prominent Washington attorney, Trump was vulnerable. He did what he often did at anxious moments. He grabbed the wheel. Trump thought there might be a way to play to Mueller’s patriotism and convince him the investigation needed to end quickly because it was hurting the president and therefore weakening the United States in the view of adversaries around the world.

  “Go see Mueller. You gotta go see him,” Trump instructed Kasowitz and Bowe several times. “Tell him this is really impairing my ability to function as president. Let’s find out what this is. Maybe we can get out in front of it.”

  This was a classic Trump method for fixing problems. He thought he could talk his way out of anything by cultivating a personal relationship and working out the problem man-to-man. After Trump learned that Corallo knew Mueller from their work together in the Justice Department, he was elated. Trump at once asked Corallo to talk to Mueller on his behalf.

  Corallo’s eyes widened with trepidation. He thought to himself, “No way.” Kasowitz spoke up and told Trump absolutely not.

  “That’s totally inappropriate and legally unsound,” Kasowitz told the president. “Mark is not a lawyer.”

  Then the president invoked Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, who stood out in the administration because of his reputation for honor. He thought that because they were both marines, Mattis might engender sympathy in Mueller. Trump told his lawyers to tell Mueller, “General Mattis says this is a problem.”

  Bannon and Priebus shared their view that it was best to steer clear of Mueller for the immediate future, but Bowe gave them some advice: don’t assume you can always corral Trump.

  “I don’t know if you fish,” Bowe told them. “Sometimes you have to let the line run. You run the risk of having the line snap if you pull it in all the time. You can’t reel him in constantly. You can’t say no to him every time.”

  As its public face, Trump’s legal team also included Jay Sekulow, whom Trump hired in late May. A lawyer with deep ties to Washington’s conservative establishment, Sekulow, sixty, was chief counsel to the American Center for Law and Justi
ce, host of a radio talk show, and a longtime commentator on Fox News Channel and the Christian Broadcasting Network. He also was close to Sean Hannity, the Fox host and Trump friend. The president had been impressed at Sekulow’s telegenic qualities and how well he thought on his feet. He felt the smooth-talking, savvy Sekulow could lend credibility to his defense in the media as well as help him navigate the political scene.

  By now, Dowd had made his way onto the president’s team, and he recommended they consider also hiring Ty Cobb, a Hogan Lovells partner and veteran of independent counsel investigations back in the Clinton years. Dowd knew Cobb from their previous careers at Justice and their overlapping work in a massive Wall Street insider-trading case. Cobb was drawn to the challenge of representing Trump, but his firm refused to let him, largely because Trump was too toxic a client. Cobb agreed to retire from his partnership, with his full pension, and went to work in the White House as a special legal adviser rather than as one of Trump’s personal attorneys.

  Yet Trump still lacked a big-name, credible Washington attorney on his personal legal team, one with the backing of a powerhouse firm. In an all-hands-on-deck push, Trump’s advisers reached out to Ted Olson, A. B. Culvahouse Jr., Emmet Flood, Robert Giuffra, Paul Clement, and Dan Levin. All of them followed Sullivan’s lead, giving a polite no.

  Flood had been considering the team’s request that he join them, but as the president’s White House adviser. In a call in the first week of June, Flood was surprised to hear the team was considering setting up shop in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, as Bannon planned, for an on-site war room. Working from the White House grounds would look inappropriate, both for the president and for his private team, but Flood made his warning plainer. “That is absolutely insane,” he said.

  Bowe thought he found the perfect recruit in Dan Levin, a white-collar pro who had worked as Mueller’s chief of staff at the FBI and the Justice Department, and who had turned down Mueller’s request to join his special counsel team. Levin had warned Mueller about hiring aggressive prosecutors like Andrew Weissmann because he thought they might seek a scalp and push to “make” a case, even if the facts didn’t merit prosecution. Levin wasn’t a Trump supporter but felt strongly that even unpopular people deserved lawyers. But Levin’s firm didn’t want Trump as a client.

  For those hunting for a lawyer for the president, the most memorable contender, the one that got away, was Reid Weingarten. The longtime partner at Steptoe & Johnson, Weingarten was a legend because of his uncanny ability at trial to simultaneously woo the jury, eviscerate the government’s star witness, and cultivate a fan worship among some of the prosecutors he whupped. One of his billionaire clients, the Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn, told Trump he had to meet Weingarten: “He’s the best. I love the guy.”

  Weingarten was a lifelong independent, a social progressive, and close friends with Eric Holder, President Obama’s first attorney general. He told his recruiters that he doubted he could represent Trump. He agreed ultimately to talk with Trump in June, however, explaining to White House counsel Don McGahn that he did not feel he could turn down a president’s request to meet.

  Weingarten had a folksy charm and, at times, a mouth like a sailor, giving him and the president a small bit of common ground when they met in the Oval Office. As he did with most of the lawyers, Trump went through a well-worn checklist of questions about how this kind of investigation worked, all of which were softballs for Weingarten, who had cut his teeth as a public corruption prosecutor for many years. Trump wanted to know: What was Mueller up to? What would he be looking at?

  Trump would later tell confidants he was shocked by Weingarten’s answer: By now Mueller would certainly have copies of Trump’s tax returns, likely going back at least five or ten years. This was a basic request any prosecutor would make for anyone under investigation for potential conflicts, the lawyer explained. Trump also asked Weingarten two questions he had been asking other attorneys in recent days: Could Trump pardon his family members? Could he pardon himself?

  Weingarten declined to describe his meeting with the president. Yet Trump told others that Weingarten warned him he might be technically able to, but this legally dubious method would amount to political suicide. At the end of their meeting, the two men parted amiably, if awkwardly. Trump still wasn’t entirely sure he needed a criminal defense lawyer. After all, the president believed he hadn’t committed any crimes.

  “Thanks, Reid,” the president said. “If I smell trouble, when I smell the jail cell, I’ll call you.”

  Then the lawyer was gone. Weingarten met with McGahn for a post-brief after his sit-down with Trump. As McGahn would tell a few close allies, the seasoned lawyer warned him he had just one critical job now: do not let the president remove Mueller. Although Weingarten did not end up working for Trump, the president would repeatedly mention to his aides how much he liked him and recalled details from their conversation.

  Ordinarily, for a veteran of the white-collar defense bar, representing a president would be a prestigious career capstone. Not so with Trump, however. These high-profile attorneys understood that many people who have an affiliation with Trump ultimately get discarded and diminished. He saw his attorneys as tools to help bend the law for him and to protect him as he took suspect or outright illegal actions. Then there was the issue of money. No one in Trump’s orbit could provide clear answers about who would pay, and Trump had a history of stiffing professionals, be they lawyers or construction contractors. What’s more, Trump had a reputation for being a notoriously stubborn client. As one lawyer who said no to Trump’s offer explained, “It’s like being the captain of the Titanic. ‘Turn left. Turn left.’ ‘No, no, I’m going straight.’”

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  Trump was incensed that Comey was going to testify before Congress on June 8. He did not understand how a man he fired one month earlier could discredit him on premium television airtime. Trump’s lawyers began studying whether the president’s conversations with Comey could be shielded by executive privilege. Bowe had done some preparation by calling Flood, who said he was willing to give him some general advice about asserting executive privilege. Flood told him he would never assert it without the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel first conducting an analysis of whether it was warranted and issuing a legal opinion. Bowe thought this sounded complicated and time-consuming. Comey was going to testify in a few days. “Sorry, those are the norms,” Flood said. “That’s just the way it works.”

  Trump’s team decided not to try to block Comey from testifying. Trump watched the hearing on live television from his dining room off the Oval Office, surrounded by Kasowitz, Bowe, Sekulow, and other aides. He got angrier by the second, and even before Comey finished, the president howled that Kasowitz had to hold a news conference—that afternoon—rebutting everything Comey had said. A free-for-all drafting party then began with the president barking out the language Kasowitz should bash Comey with. At one point, Trump suggested that Kasowitz point out that Comey was a liar, but his lawyers said no to ad hominem attacks.

  As often was the case when aides rushed to satisfy Trump’s demands, Kasowitz ended up damaging his reputation with his televised appearance that day at the National Press Club. Speaking from prepared remarks, he inaccurately described key events in the timeline of Comey’s memo about Trump’s request that he “let this go” regarding the Flynn investigation. Kasowitz’s errors would have been easy to avoid, but he jumped to say what his client wanted.

  White House advisers thought Kasowitz looked foolish and ill-prepared. As one seasoned white-collar lawyer who had been asked to help recruit attorneys for Trump put it, “That was terrible. I was watching that thinking, ‘How does it advance his client’s interests for him to be saying these stupid things?’ He wasn’t prepared. His answers were not good.”

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  As they settled into a work pattern with the president, the lawyers incr
easingly saw Kushner and Ivanka Trump as problems. The kids wandered in and out of strategy sessions about the investigation, without so much as a knock on the door, asking what was going on. Ivanka would walk in, say, “Hi, Dad,” and the lawyers would stop talking about substance and simply smile at her awkwardly, waiting for her to leave. She and Kushner talked openly about details of the investigation with other staffers, as well as with the president, and privately offered him their own advice.

  “The kids are always there,” Corallo later explained. “The discomfort is with the kids always being there and talking about the case with other people in the White House, which makes everybody a witness.” The dynamic, he added, “makes it impossible for the White House to function in a normal way.”

  Bannon and Priebus had warned Kasowitz and Bowe back in May about the problems created by having the president’s daughter and son-in-law working in the White House in the midst of a special counsel investigation. McGahn shared their concerns. But the kids wanted to be part of the action, and they wanted the lawyers on their side. They worked to charm Dowd, who was immediately taken by Ivanka as she profusely thanked him for joining the legal team and remarked about how valuable he would be to her father.

  Others who interacted with Ivanka found her to be a spoiled princess who had absorbed her father’s worst narcissistic, superficial, and self-promoting qualities. “As a twelve-year-old, she was put on the phone with CEOs, and her father told her she was the most amazing thing in the world and her opinion was valued,” one administration official explained. “She is a product of her environment.”