Trump began the New Year of 2018 by tweeting another attack on the Justice Department, referring to it this time as the “Deep State Justice Department.” There was nothing new in his calls for jail time for Clinton and Comey. But it did mark his first public use of a phrase that had become ubiquitous among his adoring media chorus.*
Newt Gingrich elaborated on the theme, calling Mueller “the tip of the deep state spear aimed at destroying or at a minimum undermining and crippling the Trump presidency” on Twitter. He added, “The brazen redefinition of Mueller’s task tells you how arrogant the deep state is and how confident it is it can get away with anything.”
“Deep State” soon joined “witch hunt” and “lock her up” in the pantheon of repetitive Trumpisms.
The term appears to have first been used in the 1990s to describe bureaucratic resistance to the Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But its use in the United States picked up after a 2014 Bill Moyers television interview with the author Mike Lofgren, a Republican former congressional staff member. It quickly made the leap from PBS to right-wing conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones, who accused the Deep State of plotting to assassinate Trump.
In an essay to accompany the Moyers interview, Lofgren posited,
There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power.
IN MID-JANUARY, TRUMP was diverted from Mueller and the Russia investigation by yet another scandal, this one involving payoffs to a porn star. On January 12, The Wall Street Journal reported that Michael Cohen “arranged a $130,000 payment to a former adult-film star a month before the 2016 election as part of an agreement that precluded her from publicly discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.”
Michael Cohen, who spent nearly a decade as a top attorney at the Trump Organization, arranged payment to the woman, Stephanie Clifford, in October 2016 after her lawyer negotiated the nondisclosure agreement with Mr. Cohen.
In a statement to the Journal, Cohen said, “This is now the second time that you are raising outlandish allegations against my client. You have attempted to perpetuate this false narrative for over a year; a narrative that has been consistently denied by all parties since at least 2011,” but he stopped short of explicitly denying payments had been made.
When Cohen sought guidance from Trump (again defying his lawyer’s order not to talk to the president), Trump told him to say the president “was not knowledgeable” about the transaction. Cohen subsequently released a statement to that effect: “In a private transaction in 2016, I used my own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000” to Clifford. “Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction,” and “neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly.”
Trump’s lawyer sent Cohen a text: “Client says thanks for what you do.”
WITH PRIEBUS GONE, McGahn was increasingly isolated at the White House. He and Trump were now communicating mostly through lawyers. On the other hand, his status as a key witness to the Comey firing gave him a certain amount of job security. Still, as should have been obvious, McGahn was fast falling from favor with the president.
Matters came to a head after The New York Times, on January 25, disclosed that Trump had ordered McGahn to get rid of Mueller but had backed down after McGahn refused and threatened to quit—all of which was true.
“Fake news, folks. Fake news. A typical New York Times fake story,” Trump said en route to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Through various lawyers and other intermediaries, Trump asked McGahn to refute the story. McGahn wasn’t about to lie. He refused, saying the article was largely accurate.
A week later Trump was still fulminating. The story was “bullshit,” he told Rob Porter, the White House staff secretary who was emerging as the president’s preferred confidant. McGahn had leaked it to make himself look good. Trump said he wanted McGahn to write a letter refuting the story “for our records” because McGahn was a “lying bastard.” He added that if McGahn didn’t write such a letter, “then maybe I’ll have to get rid of him.”
When Porter dutifully conveyed the message, McGahn refused, saying the story was true. He waved off the president’s threat to fire him, saying the “optics would be terrible.”
The next day, in an Oval Office meeting with McGahn and the president’s new chief of staff, John Kelly, Trump told McGahn he needed to correct the Times story. “I never said to fire Mueller. I never said ‘fire,’” Trump insisted. “This story doesn’t look good. You need to correct this. You’re the White House counsel. Did I say the word ‘fire’?”
“What you said is, ‘Call Rod [Rosenstein], tell Rod that Mueller has conflicts and can’t be the Special Counsel,’” McGahn responded.
“I never said that,” Trump said. He only wanted McGahn to tell Rosenstein about Mueller’s conflicts and then let Rosenstein decide how to proceed.
Trump had said no such thing. McGahn asserted again that Trump had said, “Call Rod. There are conflicts. Mueller has to go.”
At this juncture the conversation was getting “a little tense,” in Kelly’s view.
So would McGahn do a correction? Trump asked.
“No,” McGahn said.
Plainly annoyed, Trump noticed McGahn was writing on a legal pad. “What about these notes?” he asked. “Why do you take notes? Lawyers don’t take notes. I never had a lawyer who took notes.”
McGahn said a “real lawyer” takes notes because they create a record and aren’t a bad thing.
“I’ve had a lot of great lawyers, like Roy Cohn,” Trump said. “He did not take notes.”
DESPITE TRUMP’S EARLIER public statements that he’d gladly submit to an interview by Mueller and his team, on January 29 Trump’s lawyers John Dowd and Jay Sekulow submitted a twenty-page letter refusing Mueller’s request to interview the president. It also constituted a detailed defense of the charges being investigated, focusing on the president’s unique status as chief executive officer. The memo took the sweeping—and in the view of many legal experts radical—view that a president could not be charged for doing something that was within his constitutional prerogative, such as firing Comey, no matter what his motive. They also took the opportunity to attack the FBI and the Department of Justice—a thinly veiled attack on Mueller himself.
“It is abundantly clear to the undersigned that all of the answers to your inquiries are contained in the exhibits and testimony that have already been voluntarily provided to you by the White House and witnesses, all of which clearly show that there was no collusion with Russia, and that no FBI investigation was or even could have been obstructed,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.
“It remains our position that the President’s actions here, by virtue of his position as the chief law enforcement officer, could neither constitutionally nor legally constitute obstruction because that would amount to him obstructing himself, and that he could, if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon if he so desired.”
They continued, “We express again, as we have expressed before, that the Special Counsel’s inquiry has been and remains a considerable burden for the President and his Office, has endangered the safety and security of our country, and has interfered with the President’s ability to both govern domestically and conduct foreign affairs. This encumbrance has been only compounded by the astounding public revelations about the corruption within the FBI and Department of Justice which appears to have led to the alleged Russia collusion investigation and the establishment of the Office of Special Counsel in the first place. . . .
“We respectfully decline to allow our client to testify,” the letter continued, and the lawyers took aim again at the FBI: “As is now apparent with the benefit of subsequent developments, the firing of Mr. Comey has led to the discovery of corruption within the FBI at the highest levels. . . .
“It is also worth responding to the popular suggestion that the President’s public criticism of the FBI either constitutes obstruction or serves as evidence of obstruction. Such criticism ignores the sacred responsibility of the President to hold his subordinates accountable—a function not unlike public Congressional oversight hearings. After all, the FBI is not above the law and we are now learning of the disappointing results of a lack of accountability in both the DOJ and FBI.”
And they reinforced McCabe’s and Trump’s point that Rosenstein had an obvious conflict, given that he was a critical witness for the defense:
As you also know, far from merely signing off on a Presidential decision or taking a weak or indirect action indicating a tacit or pressured approval, Mr. Rosenstein actually helped to edit Mr. Comey’s termination letter and actively advised the President accordingly. It is unthinkable that a President acting (1) under his Constitutional authority; (2) on the written recommendation and with the overt participation of his Deputy Attorney General; and (3) consistent with the advice of his Attorney General, to fire a subordinate who has been universally condemned by bipartisan leadership could then be accused of obstruction for doing so.
In sum,
What all of the foregoing demonstrates is that, as to the questions that you desire to ask the President, absent any cognizable obstruction offense, and in light of the extraordinary cooperation by the President and all relevant parties, you have been provided with full responses to each of the topics you presented, obviating any need for an interview with the President. As all of the evidence demonstrates, every action that the President took was taken with full constitutional authority pursuant to Article II of the United States Constitution. As such, these actions cannot constitute obstruction, whether viewed separately or even as a totality.
ON SUNDAY EVENING, January 28, Christopher Wray summoned McCabe to his office at the Hoover Building. Since Wray’s arrival, McCabe had tried to do everything he’d promised, which was to get Wray up to speed before McCabe reached his retirement date, now less than two months away. Wray had generally listened attentively, revealing little about himself. Their relationship was professional and polite, if not especially warm or close.
It was thus a shock to McCabe that as soon as he arrived, Wray said he was removing him as deputy director. Michael Horowitz, the inspector general, had briefed Wray the day before on progress in the leak investigation, which was nearing completion. Horowitz had told him that McCabe was going to be charged with multiple counts of “lack of candor” regarding his testimony about the Wall Street Journal article.
McCabe tried to defend himself; neither he nor his lawyer had as yet had a chance to respond to any proposed findings. McCabe stressed that he’d voluntarily corrected any misstatements. Wray wasn’t interested in the details. He said McCabe had a choice: he could choose to leave his position, or Wray would remove him.
McCabe thought about it overnight. The next morning, he said he’d remain on the payroll, but effectively end his twenty-one-year career at the bureau. He didn’t want another job; after being deputy and acting director, anything would be a demotion. And he wasn’t going to pretend the move was voluntary. He had enough vacation time to get to his retirement date. Or so he thought.
Just about everyone at the FBI was stunned by McCabe’s sudden departure and Wray’s faint praise. Obviously something very bad had happened. No one knew what.
THE WEEK OF March 12, the inspector general finally delivered a draft “Report of Investigation of Certain Allegations Relating to Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe” to the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility. Just twenty-four hours later, the office notified McCabe it was recommending he be fired.
McCabe finally got a copy. Its conclusions were more devastating than anything McCabe had imagined:
We found that, in a conversation with then-Director Comey shortly after the WSJ article was published, McCabe lacked candor when he told Comey, or made statements that led Comey to believe, that McCabe had not authorized the disclosure and did not know who did. This conduct violated FBI Offense Code 2.5 (Lack of Candor—No Oath).
We also found that on May 9, 2017, when questioned under oath by FBI agents, McCabe lacked candor when he told the agents that he had not authorized the disclosure to the WSJ and did not know who did. This conduct violated FBI Offense Code 2.6 (Lack of Candor—Under Oath).
We further found that on July 28, 2017, when questioned under oath by the OIG in a recorded interview, McCabe lacked candor when he stated: (a) that he was not aware of Special Counsel having been authorized to speak to reporters around October 30 and (b) that, because he was not in Washington, D.C., on October 27 and 28, 2016, he was unable to say where Special Counsel was or what she was doing at that time. This conduct violated FBI Offense Code 2.6 (Lack of Candor—Under Oath).
We additionally found that on November 29, 2017, when questioned under oath by the OIG in a recorded interview during which he contradicted his prior statements by acknowledging that he had authorized the disclosure to the WSJ, McCabe lacked candor when he: (a) stated that he told Comey on October 31, 2016, that he had authorized the disclosure to the WSJ; (b) denied telling INSD agents on May 9 that he had not authorized the disclosure to the WSJ about the PADAG call; and (c) asserted that INSD’s questioning of him on May 9 about the October 30 WSJ article occurred at the end of an unrelated meeting when one of the INSD agents pulled him aside and asked him one or two questions about the article. This conduct violated FBI Offense Code 2.6 (Lack of Candor—Under Oath).
Lastly, we determined that as Deputy Director, McCabe was authorized to disclose the existence of the CF Investigation publicly if such a disclosure fell within the “public interest” exception in applicable FBI and DOJ policies generally prohibiting such a disclosure of an ongoing investigation.
However, we concluded that McCabe’s decision to confirm the existence of the CF Investigation through an anonymously sourced quote, recounting the content of a phone call with a senior Department official in a manner designed to advance his personal interests at the expense of Department leadership, was clearly not within the public interest exception. We therefore concluded that McCabe’s disclosure of the existence of an ongoing investigation in this manner violated the FBI’s and the Department’s media policy and constituted misconduct.
The OIG is issuing this report to the FBI for such action as it deems appropriate.
Under FBI guidelines, subjects are typically given thirty days to respond. McCabe was told he had less than a week. On Thursday, he spent four hours with Scott Schools, who’d replaced David Margolis at the Justice Department. McCabe stressed how confusing the questioning had been, veering abruptly from the Circa News article the questions were supposed to be about to a Wall Street Journal article he barely remembered and wasn’t prepared for. He’d been blindsided, too, after he was summoned to the Justice Department and was shown the Page-Strzok texts. His mind was still reeling from that revelation when, over his protests, he was again aggressively questioned about the Wall Street Journal article. When McCabe had the time to consider what he’d said and realized he’d made some misstatements, he’d corrected his testimony—as have countless witnesses called by the FBI.
Schools betrayed little reaction, but McCabe thought he’d made a strong case. Part of him couldn’t believe that after an illustrious career at the highest levels of the bureau, he was about to be fired.
Friday was McCabe’s last day on the payroll; he’d be eligible to retire on Sunday. It didn’t matter if he were terminated for cause on Monday; he’d still receive full retirement benefits, which included a pension and health care. He and his family celebrated as best they could with a dinner Friday night.
McCabe was watching CNN at about 10:00 p.m. when the reporter Laura Jarrett broke in with the news that he’d been fired. She called it a “stunning blow tonight to the man who had climbed to the highest echelons of the FBI.”
On some level McCabe knew it was coming. Still, the news felt like a punch in the gut. And the timing—late on a Friday night, just in time to cost him his retirement benefits—seemed obviously vindictive. He was not going to go quietly.
“This attack on my credibility is one part of a larger effort not just to slander me personally, but to taint the FBI, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals more generally,” McCabe said in a statement released by his law firm. “It is part of this Administration’s ongoing war on the FBI and the efforts of the Special Counsel investigation, which continue to this day. Their persistence in this campaign only highlights the importance of the Special Counsel’s work.”
Many at FBI headquarters were stunned that standard dismissal procedures had been accelerated and McCabe was fired hours before he was eligible to retire. Strzok, for one, thought it was morally wrong and malicious. Under the circumstances, it looked as if FBI and Justice Department leadership were trying to curry favor at the White House at McCabe’s expense.
President Trump could barely contain his satisfaction, saying in a late-night tweet. “Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI—A great day for Democracy,” he wrote. “Sanctimonious James Comey was his boss and made McCabe look like a choirboy. He knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI!”
ON MARCH 22, John Dowd, considered a voice of moderation on Trump’s legal team who had orchestrated the delicate balance between cooperating and keeping Trump from testifying, resigned, presumably over differences in strategy. As Dowd’s voicemail had vividly demonstrated, a large part of that strategy had been aimed at keeping others from turning against the president, a classic lawyers’ dilemma in any case involving possible conspiracies. So far, Trump had been remarkably adept at keeping everyone in the fold while stopping short of outright witness tampering. Of course Trump didn’t need to say the obvious, which was that he had a unique incentive to encourage cooperation: the power of the pardon.
Paul Manafort had clearly gotten the intended message: After Manafort and his former business partner Rick Gates were indicted in October, Manafort had reassured his fellow defendant that he had talked to the president’s personal counsel who said they should “sit tight” and “we’ll be taken care of,” even though he said no one actually used the word “pardon.”
But then, on April 9, FBI agents searched Cohen’s home, hotel room, and office pursuant to a search warrant. Trump was outraged. That afternoon, at a meeting with military commanders to discuss Syria, he instead vented his frustrations with Mueller and the Russia investigation.
“So I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys—a good man,” Trump began. “And it’s a disgraceful situation. It’s a total witch hunt. I’ve been saying it for a long time. I’ve wanted to keep it down. We’ve given, I believe, over a million pages worth of documents to the Special Counsel. They continue to just go forward. And here we are talking about Syria and we’re talking about a lot of serious things. We’re the greatest fighting force ever. And I have this witch hunt constantly going on for over 12 months now—and actually, much more than that. You could say it was right after I won the nomination, it started.
“And it’s a disgrace. It’s, frankly, a real disgrace. It’s an attack on our country, in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for.
“So when I saw this and when I heard it—heard it like you did—I said, that is really now on a whole new level of unfairness.”
After repeating “there was no collusion at all. No collusion,” he continued with a familiar attack on Mueller and his team. “This is the most biased group of people. These people have the biggest conflicts of interest I’ve ever seen. Democrats all—or just about all—either Democrats or a couple of Republicans that worked for President Obama, they’re not looking at the other side; they’re not looking at the Hillary Clinton—the horrible things that she did and all of the crimes that were committed. They’re not looking at all of the things that happened that everybody is very angry about, I can tell you, from the Republican side, and I think even the independent side. They only keep looking at us.
“So they find no collusion, and then they go from there and they say, ‘Well, let’s keep going.’ And they raid an office of a personal attorney early in the morning. And I think it’s a disgrace.
“So we’ll be talking about it more. But this is the most conflicted group of people I’ve ever seen. The Attorney General made a terrible mistake when he did this, and when he recused himself. Or he should have certainly let us know if he was going to recuse himself, and we would have used a—put a different Attorney General in. So he made what I consider to be a very terrible mistake for the country. But you’ll figure that out.
“All I can say is, after looking for a long period of time—and even before the Special Counsel—because it really started just about from the time I won the nomination. And you look at what took place and what happened, and it’s a disgrace. It’s a disgrace.”
Clinton was obviously still an obsession: “And the other side is where there are crimes, and those crimes are obvious. Lies, under oath, all over the place. Emails that are knocked out, that are acid-washed and deleted. Nobody has ever seen—33,000 emails. . . . So I just think it’s a disgrace that a thing like this can happen.”
Trump was especially furious when he learned that it was Rosenstein who approved the search warrant for Cohen.
One reason for Trump’s vehement reaction might have been that Cohen was no Flynn, or even Manafort, but an intimate confidant who had full knowledge about the Moscow project as well as the Stephanie Clifford payoff—and who knew what else.
Even though they weren’t supposed to be talking, a few days later Trump called Cohen to “check in.” The president urged Cohen to “hang in there” and “stay strong.” Then a friend of Trump’s called Cohen to say that he was with “the Boss” at Mar-a-Lago and the president “loves you.” Another mutual friend told him, “Everyone knows the boss has your back.”
Given Cohen’s public statements of loyalty, he seemed unlikely to turn against the president, especially because the Trump Organization was paying Cohen’s legal fees, which he told Vanity Fair were now in the seven figures. Still, any white-collar defense lawyer knew how intense the pressure to cooperate with the government could become. And neither Trump nor his lawyers knew exactly what the FBI agents might have gotten as a result of the searches.
A time-honored way to keep a witness in line was to make sure his lawyer had a close relationship with the president’s lawyers. Robert Costello fit the bill. He was close to Giuliani, and Costello told Cohen he had a “back channel of communication” to the president’s lawyer, a channel that was “crucial” and “must be maintained.” Costello wrote in an email to Cohen that he’d spoken to Giuliani, and the conversation was “Very Very Positive. You are ‘loved’ . . . they are in our corner. . . . Sleep well tonight, you have friends in high places.”
Even so, Cohen worried that after the searches he was “an open book.” He didn’t want his payments to women on behalf of Trump to be revealed. His statements—lies, actually—to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow project were an especially “big concern.”
But he felt better after talking to Trump’s lawyer. Cohen told him he’d been a “loyal servant” and asked what was in it for him. The lawyer responded that Cohen should stay on message; the investigation was a witch hunt; and everything would be fine. Cohen resolved to toe the party line and stay a part of the team.
On April 24, at a press conference with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, ABC’s Jonathan Karl asked if Trump would consider a pardon for Cohen.
Trump glared at him. “Stupid question.”
JOHN DOWD’S EXIT from Trump’s legal team, and the arrival of Giuliani, marked a fundamental shift to a far more combative strategy toward the special counsel and his allies at the FBI and the Justice Department. Gone were the lawyers who’d counseled moderation and who had persuaded Trump not to fire Mueller, Rosenstein, or Sessions. Firing McCabe might have earned Sessions and Rosenstein goodwill and some time. But after the Cohen raid, the president’s patience with them was clearly wearing thin.
“Much of the bad blood with Russia is caused by the Fake & Corrupt Russia Investigation, headed up by the all Democrat loyalists, or people that worked for Obama,” Trump tweeted on April 11, just two days after the Cohen raid. “Mueller is most conflicted of all (except Rosenstein who signed FISA & Comey letter). No Collusion, so they go crazy!”
Trump summoned Rosenstein to the White House the next day, ostensibly to talk about turning Russia-related documents over to Congress. There was widespread speculation that Rosenstein would be fired, so much so that hundreds of former Justice Department employees signed a letter demanding that Congress “swiftly and forcefully respond to protect the founding principles of our Republic and the rule of law” if Trump fired Rosenstein, Mueller, or any other senior Justice Department officials. Even Sessions weighed in, warning McGahn that if Trump fired Rosenstein, Sessions would have to resign.
Rosenstein emerged from the meeting with his job intact, and Trump avoided another Saturday Night Massacre. Rosenstein, by then, knew all the details of the inspector general’s report—an investigation that had begun within the FBI to find the source of leaks to Giuliani and had ended up instead focusing exclusively on McCabe. The report was released to the public the next day.
Many at the FBI were stunned by the report and its conclusion that McCabe, of all people, had lacked candor. Most people admired and respected McCabe, especially for the way he’d stepped up and steered the bureau through the treacherous period after Comey was fired. It made no sense that McCabe would lie, when both Lisa Page and Michael Kortan knew exactly what had happened, and readily volunteered the story when the investigators finally got around to asking. And the report made no mention of the incredible pressure McCabe was under when he was questioned about a distant Wall Street Journal story that, by then, seemed insignificant.
On the other hand, the report gave pause to many, even friends of McCabe’s. Comey clearly had a different recollection. The sacred obligation to tell the truth was something that had been drummed into them from their first days in the FBI.
No one had been closer to McCabe than Page. As she later testified, “I have never seen Andy lie, ever, under any circumstances. I have never seen Andy do anything other than make the right decision and often the hard decision, even when it has been personally unpopular or professionally unpopular. I have consistently seen him make hard decisions because they were the right thing to do.” She continued, “The findings of the inspector general are entirely inconsistent with the man I know and have worked very closely with for the last 4 years of my career. And I cannot—I simply don’t agree with those conclusions.”
But McCabe had no one willing or able to publicly defend him.
Trump, on the other hand, could barely contain his glee. “DOJ just issued the McCabe report—which is a total disaster,” he tweeted. “He LIED! LIED! LIED! McCabe was totally controlled by Comey—McCabe is Comey!! No collusion, all made up by this den of thieves and lowlifes!”
BY THEN, Trump must have had a pretty good inkling of what was coming in Comey’s new book, A Higher Loyalty, which was scheduled for publication on Tuesday, April 17. Copies and excerpts were circulating on the previous Thursday. And ABC was already touting its upcoming Sunday night 20/20 interview of Comey by George Stephanopoulos as a blockbuster, revealing that Comey had gone so far as to compare Trump to a mob boss.
Trump had already taken to Twitter, calling Comey “a proven LEAKER & LIAR. Virtually everyone in Washington thought he should be fired for the terrible job he did—until he was, in fact, fired. He leaked CLASSIFIED information, for which he should be prosecuted. He lied to Congress under OATH. He is a weak and . . . untruthful slime ball who was, as time has proven, a terrible Director of the FBI. His handling of the Crooked Hillary Clinton case, and the events surrounding it, will go down as one of the worst ‘botch jobs’ of history. It was my great honor to fire James Comey!”
And “Big show tonight on @seanhannity!” Trump tweeted, promoting Sean Hannity’s segment that night on Fox News. Saying he was inspired by a video clip teasing Comey’s upcoming interview with Stephanopoulos, Hannity used the occasion to attack the “obvious Deep State crime families trying to take down the president,” consisting of the Clinton “family,” the Comey “family,” and the Mueller “family.”
“Mr. Comey, you’re really going to compare the sitting president of the United States to a mob boss so you can make money?” Hannity went on. “If he’s going to use a sweeping analogy, I’ve decided tonight we’re going to use the Comey standard . . . and make some comparisons of our own,” including “the Clinton crime family,” the “Mueller crime family,” and Mueller’s “best friend,” Comey.
Initially stunned by the events of the previous May, Comey hadn’t planned to write a book, and certainly not a Trump tell-all. When two fast-rising Washington literary agents, Keith Urbahn and Matt Latimer, called to propose a book, he turned them down. But he did suddenly have time on his hands. He wanted to do something he thought was useful. His wife encouraged him. He had a lot of pent-up thoughts about the president and what he was doing to the American system of justice. And the agents dangled the prospect of a multimillion-dollar advance.
So he called them back and said he’d write a book on leadership. The agents were blunt: a book on leadership wouldn’t sell. A book about Trump would. So the previous summer, he’d reached a deal to write a hybrid memoir-leadership book, hence the subtitle: Truth, Lies, and Leadership. Comey stopped doing interviews and speeches and refused all comment on Trump.
There was fierce competition among networks for the first interview. Initially, Comey favored NBC’s Lester Holt, but ABC offered a radio tour and more affiliates, so he went with Stephanopoulos. Stephanopoulos and his producers were thorough; they spent time with Comey’s family; visited his New Jersey boyhood home; and conducted a five-hour interview with Comey himself, all of which got reduced to one hour of airtime that focused almost entirely on Trump and went far beyond anything Comey said in the book.
As advertised, Comey repeatedly compared Trump to a Mafia boss.
“How strange is it for you to sit here and compare the president to a mob boss?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“Very strange. And I don’t do it lightly,” Comey answered, “and I’m not trying to, by the way, suggest that President Trump is out breaking legs and—you know, shaking down shopkeepers. But instead, what I’m talking about is that leadership culture constantly comes back to me when I think about my experience with the Trump administration. The—the loyalty oaths, the boss as the dominant center of everything, it’s all about how do you serve the boss, what’s in the boss’s interests. It’s the family, the family, the family, the family.”
He repeatedly criticized Trump’s character.
“You write that President Trump is unethical, untethered to the truth. Is Donald Trump unfit to be president?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“I don’t buy this stuff about him being mentally incompetent or early stages of dementia,” Comey said, bestowing faint praise. “He strikes me as a person of above average intelligence who’s tracking conversations and knows what’s going on. I don’t think he’s medically unfit to be president. I think he’s morally unfit to be president.
“A person who sees moral equivalence in Charlottesville, who talks about and treats women like they’re pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it—that person’s not fit to be president of the United States, on moral grounds. And that’s not a policy statement. Again, I don’t care what your views are on guns or immigration or taxes.
“There’s something more important than that that should unite all of us, and that is our president must embody respect and adhere to the values that are at the core of this country. The most important being truth. This president is not able to do that. He is morally unfit to be president.”
Not only that, but “the challenge of this president is that he will stain everyone around him. And the question is, how much stain is too much stain and how much stain eventually makes you unable to accomplish your goal of protecting the country and serving the country?”
Later, Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think the Russians have something on Donald Trump?”
In an answer sure to enrage the president, Comey said, “I think it’s possible. I don’t know. These are words I never thought I’d utter about a president of the United States, but it’s possible.”
“That’s stunning,” Stephanopoulos said. “You can’t say for certain that the president of the United States is not compromised by the Russians?”
“It is stunning and I wish I wasn’t saying it, but it’s just—it’s the truth. I cannot say that. It always struck me and still strikes me as unlikely, and I would have been able to say with high confidence about any other president I dealt with, but I can’t. It’s possible.”
Even as the segment aired, Trump launched a new wave of Twitter attacks, calling Comey a “slimeball” and “slippery” and suggesting he be jailed. “The big questions in Comey’s badly reviewed book aren’t answered like, how come he gave up Classified Information (jail), why did he lie to Congress (jail), why did the DNC refuse to give Server to the FBI (why didn’t they TAKE it), why the phony memos, McCabe’s $700,000 & more?”
The interview dominated the news all week. “If there was any chance that President Trump and James B. Comey could have avoided all-out war, it ended Sunday night,” the Times wrote. Comey called Trump “a serial liar who treated women like ‘meat,’ and described him as a ‘stain’ on everyone who worked for him. He said a salacious allegation that Mr. Trump had cavorted with prostitutes in Moscow had left him vulnerable to blackmail by the Russian government. And he asserted that the president was incinerating the country’s crucial norms and traditions like a wildfire. He compared the president to a mafia boss.”
Comey was taken aback that the distilled interview focused so much on Trump—he called it “vertigo inducing”—and that his observation Trump was “morally unfit,” which wasn’t in the book, became the centerpiece of massive media coverage. But his literary agents were right about what would sell. Thousands of people greeted him at stops on his book tour, so many he couldn’t autograph all their copies. He vaulted to the top of the bestseller lists, selling 600,000 copies during the first week alone.
Reviews were mostly positive (“compelling” was a common adjective), but there were whiffs of criticism from reviewers who blamed Comey for Trump’s being president in the first place. And, in entering the partisan fray, Comey threw any claim to objectivity to the winds, emerging as a fierce anti-Trump partisan.
As the columnist Frank Bruni wrote in the Times, “James Comey’s book is titled ‘A Higher Loyalty,’ but it surrenders the higher ground, at least partly. To watch him promote it is to see him descend. Not to President Trump’s level—that’s a long way down. But Comey is playing Trump’s game, on Trump’s terms. And in that sense, he has let the president get the better of him.”
And Comey faced criticism from within the ranks of retired FBI agents, echoing thoughts that many current employees were reluctant to say, at least on the record. Nancy Savage, executive director of the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, told The Guardian that Comey, “and a number of other FBI employees who worked directly for him, have damaged the agency.” She called the book “tasteless at best. There is a total lack of dignity.”
The former senior agent Bobby Chacon said of Comey, “I worked for him. He did a lot of good things at the FBI. He was popular and I didn’t like the way the White House sacked him. But he made mistakes and now has been overtaken by his emotions. I’m surprised he has been dragged down into street-fighting with Trump.”
In the wake of Comey’s ABC interview and book tour, Trump’s approval ratings actually rose, from a low of 37 percent on December 13 to 44 percent in early May, according to RealClearPolitics.
ON JUNE 8, 2018, William Barr, the former attorney general who’d kept up a drumbeat of public support for Trump, sent an unsolicited nineteen-page memo to Rosenstein at the Justice Department, arguing that Trump should not be required to testify in any obstruction inquiry and that Mueller was out of bounds by even asking. Barr later acknowledged that it was the only time he’d sent such an unsolicited memo to the department.
In essence, Barr argued that firing Comey and asking him to “let this go” of the Flynn matter were within a president’s constitutionally prescribed duties, and thus could not be the basis for a criminal charge.
Barr indicated he didn’t think obstruction, in Trump’s case, was a “real crime.” “I know you will agree that, if a DOJ investigation is going to take down a democratically-elected President, it is imperative to the health of our system and to our national cohesion that any claim of wrongdoing is solidly based on evidence of a real crime—not a debatable one,” Barr wrote in the memo. “It is time to travel well-worn paths; not to veer into novel, unsettled or contested areas of the law; and”—in a clear barb aimed at Mueller and his team—“not to indulge the fancies by overzealous prosecutors.”
Barr wrote that he was “deeply concerned” about the institution of the presidency, but given Trump’s ongoing humiliation of Sessions, and the degree to which Barr’s memo staked out the same position as Trump’s defense lawyers, it inevitably led to speculation inside the Justice Department that Barr was auditioning for a triumphal return to Pennsylvania Avenue.
ON JUNE 14, Michael Horowitz, the inspector general, released his long-awaited report on the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation. The report harshly criticized Comey for the way he disclosed the results of the case at his July 5 press conference. “We concluded that Comey’s unilateral announcement was inconsistent with Department policy and violated long-standing Department practice and protocol by, among other things, criticizing Clinton’s uncharged conduct,” the report stated. “We also found that Comey usurped the authority of the Attorney General.”
And “although we acknowledge that Comey faced a difficult situation with unattractive choices, in proceeding as he did, we concluded that Comey made a serious error of judgment.”
That’s what drew the most press. “Inspector General Blasts Comey” was the headline in The Washington Post; “Comey’s Actions ‘Extraordinary and Insubordinate,’” reported CNN.
And the revelation of the “No, no, he won’t. We’ll stop it” text from Strzok—which hadn’t been included in the earlier release—triggered a new wave of conspiracy theories and references to a “Deep State.”
As the CNN editor at large Chris Cillizza accurately observed, “Those seven words are what Trump and his allies will seize on—casting them as definitive proof that the ‘deep state’ not only didn’t want him to win but was actively working to keep him from the White House.”
The White House said the report “reaffirmed the president’s suspicions about Comey’s conduct and the political bias among some of the members of the FBI.”
But nearly lost in the sensational details were some sobering conclusions that threw cold water on the Deep State conspiracy theorists: The inspector general found no reason to question the decision not to charge Clinton. He found that any political bias or opinions had not affected the outcome. Far from coddling or protecting Clinton, the report noted, Page and Strzok “advocated for more aggressive investigative measures in the Midyear investigation, such as the use of grand jury subpoenas and search warrants to obtain evidence.”
The report concluded, “We found no evidence that the conclusions by the prosecutors were affected by bias or other improper considerations; rather, we determined that they were based on the prosecutors’ assessment of the facts, the law, and past Department practice. We therefore concluded that these were legal and policy judgments involving core prosecutorial discretion that were for the Department to make.”
In short, after seventeen months and hundreds of interviews, the inspector general found no reason to reopen the Clinton case or doubt its conclusions.
Even though they felt exonerated, the report nonetheless cast a harsh spotlight, yet again, on Page and Strzok. A week later, Strzok was told his job status was under review. (Much to her relief, Page had already found a job with a private law firm.)
After thirty days, Strzok was told he would be terminated, but he could appeal. Strzok met with Candice M. Will, the head of the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility. He argued strenuously that he’d never lied or engaged in any illegal activity. At the end of the day, all he’d done was express some personal opinions in what he thought was a strictly private setting. None of his personal views had impacted his work, as the inspector general had concluded.
To his pleasant surprise, in their next meeting, Will agreed with him. She told him he’d be suspended for sixty days but could return and “get back out there.”
Strzok was elated. He signed a so-called last-chance agreement in which he agreed to the suspension and gave up his rights of appeal. He understood he’d be on probation: if he screwed up, he’d be fired.
Strzok was at home when two agents delivered a letter, which he assumed was the agreement countersigned by Will. But when he opened it, it was from Bowdich, whom Wray had named his deputy. Bowdich overruled Will. Strzok was fired.
“Deeply saddened by this decision,” Strzok wrote on Twitter. “It has been an honor to serve my country and work with the fine men and women of the FBI.”
Trump was far more outspoken. “Agent Peter Strzok was just fired from the FBI—finally,” Trump tweeted. “The list of bad players in the FBI & DOJ gets longer & longer. Based on the fact that Strzok was in charge of the Witch Hunt, will it be dropped? It is a total Hoax. No Collusion, No Obstruction.”
Seemingly oblivious to the findings of the inspector general, Trump added, “Just fired Agent Strzok, formerly of the FBI, was in charge of the Crooked Hillary Clinton sham investigation. It was a total fraud on the American public and should be properly redone!”
THAT SPRING TRUMP formally added Rudy Giuliani, who’d been informally advising him for months, to his legal team. Giuliani combined the skills of a practiced TV commentator with decades of experience as a prosecutor. But his most important attribute might have been that Trump actually followed Giuliani’s advice.
Soon after Giuliani’s arrival, the president’s risky dalliances with Michael Cohen stopped. The Trump Organization stopped paying Cohen’s legal bills. An increasingly desperate Cohen was no longer feeling the love.
Cohen turned to television on July 2. In his first public comment since the raid on his office, Cohen told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, “My wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will. I put family and country first.”
Stephanopoulos reminded Cohen of his pledge to “take a bullet.”
“To be crystal clear, my wife, my daughter and my son, and this country have my first loyalty,” Cohen said.
And Cohen hired a lawyer who was openly hostile to Trump: Lanny Davis, a longtime Democrat best known for his prolonged and passionate defense of an embattled Bill Clinton.
Mueller handed over many aspects of the Cohen investigation (such as the payments to Stephanie Clifford) to federal prosecutors in New York. They were outside the scope of Mueller’s mandate, and his doing so also served the purpose of placing probes of Trump into more than one set of prosecutorial hands. (An enduring lesson of Kenneth Starr’s investigation of Clinton was that it was a mistake to combine the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky cases, because Clinton allies needed to demonize only one prosecutor.)
Cohen pleaded guilty to eight felonies in New York on August 21. He immediately implicated Trump in the Clifford payments and said during his plea hearing that he had worked “at the direction of the candidate in making those payments.”
In stark contrast, Paul Manafort refused to cooperate or testify in his own defense. That same day a jury declared Manafort guilty on eight felony counts.
Trump leaped on the disparity in an interview with the Fox & Friends host Ainsley Earhardt. As for Cohen, “he makes a better deal when he uses me. Like everybody else. And one of the reasons I respect Paul Manafort so much is he went through that trial—you know they make up stories. People make up stories. This whole thing about flipping, they call it, I know all about flipping. For 30, 40 years I’ve been watching flippers. Everything’s wonderful and then they get 10 years in jail and they—they flip on whoever the next highest one is, or as high as you can go. It—it almost ought to be outlawed. It’s not fair.”
As for a pardon for Manafort, “I have great respect for what he’s done, in terms of what he’s gone through. . . . He worked for many, many people many, many years, and I would say what he did, some of the charges they threw against him, every consultant, every lobbyist in Washington probably does.”
(In an apparent effort to curb Trump’s worst instincts, Giuliani later walked back Trump’s remark and said any discussion of a pardon would be inappropriate.)
IN EARLY SEPTEMBER, the Justice Department provided Congress with many of the missing Page-Strzok texts that had fueled a wave of conspiracy theories, which soon appeared in the media. No one had been trying to conceal them. It had merely been a technical glitch, and the inspector general’s team had managed to recover them. In contrast to the first batch, they were relatively innocuous.
Page did finish All the President’s Men. “Did you know the president resigns in the end?!” she’d texted in March.
“What?!?! God, that we should be so lucky,” Strzok answered.
Trump and his allies leaped on a text saying, “I want to talk to you about media leak strategy with DOJ before you go,” which Strzok sent Page on April 10.
“More text messages between former FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page are a disaster and embarrassment to the FBI & DOJ,” Trump tweeted. “This should never have happened but we are learning more and more by the hour. ‘Others were leaking like mad’ in order to get the President!”
But Strzok’s lawyer issued a statement that the text referred to a meeting at the Justice Department to discuss a strategy to stop leaks, not a plot to leak.
A little more than a week later, on Friday, September 21, The New York Times had another scoop. “The deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, suggested last year that he secretly record President Trump in the White House to expose the chaos consuming the administration, and he discussed recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office for being unfit,” the reporters Adam Goldman and Michael Schmidt revealed.
“The New York Times’s story is inaccurate and factually incorrect,” Rosenstein said in a statement. “I will not further comment on a story based on anonymous sources who are obviously biased against the department and are advancing their own personal agenda. But let me be clear about this: Based on my personal dealings with the president, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment.”
The Times story added, “A Justice Department spokeswoman also provided a statement from a person who was present when Mr. Rosenstein proposed wearing a wire. The person, who would not be named, acknowledged the remark but said Mr. Rosenstein made it sarcastically.”
No one, however, mentioned (nor did the Times report) that Rosenstein had made the offer to record the president twice in front of McCabe alone—none in a sarcastic tone—and that Page had taken notes on one of those occasions.
Still, a close reading of Rosenstein’s response showed that he didn’t really deny anything specific in the story. Rosenstein had just handed Trump all the ammunition he needed to fire him. Hardly anyone expected Rosenstein to survive the weekend.
On Friday evening, Rosenstein met with John Kelly, the chief of staff, at the White House and offered to resign. He also called McGahn with the same offer. But Kelly and McGahn thought only the president could accept his resignation. Neither was eager for a replay of a Comey-type disaster just weeks before the midterm elections.
On Monday, Rosenstein was still in his job, but the Justice Department was deluged with press calls about his imminent ouster. Sarah Flores, the chief spokesperson, started drafting a statement for Sessions. Rosenstein headed to the White House. News channels broke into coverage of the Kavanaugh Supreme Court hearings to report he was on his way to resign.
But Comey’s perception that Rosenstein was a “survivor” proved apt. Just before 1:00 p.m., Sanders, the White House press secretary, tweeted that Rosenstein and the president had had an “extended conversation,” presumably by phone, because Trump was in New York for the United Nations General Assembly meeting. She added that they’d meet in person on Thursday, which gave Rosenstein at least a three-day reprieve.
On Wednesday, during a press conference at the United Nations, Trump described his Monday talk with Rosenstein as “a good talk. He said he never said it, he said he doesn’t believe it. He said he has a lot of respect for me, and he was very nice, and we’ll see.”
By Thursday, with everyone at the White House consumed by the Kavanaugh hearings, Trump postponed their get-together. It was only in October, after Kavanaugh was confirmed, that Rosenstein and Trump spoke in person on a flight to Florida. Trump didn’t fire him or ask for his resignation. A White House spokesman said they discussed routine Justice Department matters, and Trump said only that the conversation was “great.”
If, indeed, Rosenstein told Trump he “never said it”—either in the Monday conversation or on the plane or both—he had just given the president further leverage over him. It was one thing to vaguely describe a newspaper story as inaccurate. It was another to mislead the president, as Michael Flynn had discovered.
In many ways, it was even better for Trump than carrying around a resignation letter in his pocket. He now had ample grounds for firing Rosenstein, the man overseeing the Russia investigation, whenever he wanted.
AMERICAN VOTERS WENT to the polls on November 6 in what was overwhelmingly interpreted as a referendum on the tumultuous presidency of Donald Trump. The next day, Trump was in a surprisingly upbeat mood, given that Republicans lost a net thirty-nine seats and Democrats seized control of the House, giving them the capacity to launch investigations of the president that the Republican-controlled House had stalled.
“It was a big day yesterday,” Trump exulted at a news conference. “An incredible day,” adding, “This election marks the largest Senate gains for a President’s party in a first midterm election since at least President Kennedy’s in 1962.”
Even then, he veered into the Russia investigation, nearly taunting the Democrats to pursue it. “I keep hearing about investigations fatigue. Like from the time—almost from the time I announced I was going to run, they’ve been giving us this investigation fatigue. It’s been a long time. They got nothing. Zero. You know why? Because there is nothing. But they can play that game, but we can play it better.”
Later, CNN’s Jim Acosta returned to the subject: “On the Russia investigation. Are you concerned that you may have indictments . . .”
“I’m not concerned about anything with the Russia investigation because it’s a hoax,” Trump interrupted. “That’s enough. Put down the mic,” the president directed.
A White House aide tried to grab the microphone, but Acosta resisted.
“Mr. President, are you worried about indictments coming down in this investigation?” he finally asked.
“I’ll tell you what: CNN should be ashamed of itself having you working for them. You are a rude, terrible person. You shouldn’t be working for CNN.”
Trump avoided a question about the fate of Sessions, but even before the press conference Kelly had called and demanded Sessions’s resignation that day. Sessions delivered a letter to the White House, which Kelly accepted. Trump didn’t give him the courtesy of a personal send-off.
“Dear Mr. President, at your request I am submitting my resignation,” Sessions wrote. He added, in what many took to be a pointed jab at Trump’s almost constant efforts to subvert the Mueller probe, “Most importantly, in my time as attorney general we have restored and upheld the rule of law.”
In a slap at Rosenstein, who, as the deputy, would ordinarily have stepped in as acting attorney general, Trump instead named Matthew Whitaker, a little-known former Iowa football player and Iowa U.S. attorney whose principal qualifications seemed to be his close relationship with the Iowa senator Charles Grassley—a fierce critic of the Comey and McCabe FBI—and his hostility to Mueller’s investigation.
Whitaker was widely distrusted by career lawyers at the department as a blatantly partisan advocate for Trump. Just before his appointment to the Justice Department, he’d gone so far in a CNN interview as to propose starving Mueller for funds. “I could see a scenario where Jeff Sessions is replaced with a recess appointment and that Attorney General doesn’t fire Bob Mueller, but he just reduces his budget so low that his investigation grinds to almost a halt,” Whitaker had said. In a radio interview he said, “There is no criminal obstruction of justice charge to be had here. The evidence is weak. No reasonable prosecutor would bring a case on what we know right now.”
Whitaker’s appointment drew immediate condemnation from Democrats in Congress and a lawsuit that tried (unsuccessfully) to block his appointment. Even Republican senators were wary. Referring to Mueller’s work, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee said, “No new Attorney General can be confirmed who will stop that investigation.” There was little chance that Whitaker would secure Senate confirmation.
That was of little concern to Trump and his legal advisers. A reliable and far more illustrious alternative to Whitaker was waiting in the wings. One month later, Trump announced that he’d chosen William Barr to be his new attorney general. “He was my first choice from day one,” he told reporters.
With Republicans in control of the Senate, Barr was easily confirmed over Democratic objections to his pro-Trump op-ed pieces and unsolicited legal memo.
ON NOVEMBER 20, Trump’s lawyers finally submitted written answers to a limited number of questions from the Mueller team. “What I can tell you is they’re complete and detailed,” Rudolph Giuliani said in an interview. “But there’s nothing there I haven’t read in a newspaper.”
As agreed, the answers were limited to the time period before Trump became president and excluded any questions related to obstruction of justice. But that left one precarious area for the president: Trump Tower Moscow, which did relate to Russia, and any efforts by Trump to influence Cohen’s testimony, which overlapped the obstruction probe. And neither Trump nor his lawyers, at this juncture, knew what Cohen was telling Mueller.
Mueller and his lawyers had asked Trump to describe the timing and substance of discussions he had with Cohen about the project, whether they discussed a potential trip to Russia, whether the president “at any time direct[ed] or suggest[ed] that discussions about the Trump Moscow project should cease,” or whether the president was “informed at any time that the project had been abandoned”—all subjects Cohen had addressed.
“I had few conversations with Mr. Cohen on this subject,” Trump responded. “As I recall, they were brief, and they were not memorable. I was not enthused about the proposal, and I do not recall any discussion of travel to Russia in connection with it.” He continued, “I vaguely remember press inquiries and media reporting during the campaign about whether the Trump Organization had business dealings in Russia. I may have spoken with campaign staff or Trump Organization employees regarding responses to requests for information, but I have no current recollection of any particular conversation, with whom I may have spoken, when, or the substance of any conversation. As I recall, neither I nor the Trump Organization had any projects or proposed projects in Russia during the campaign other than the Letter of Intent.”
That answer was exceptionally vague and didn’t answer any of Mueller’s specific questions.
Nine days later, Cohen pleaded guilty to making false statements to Congress about Trump Tower Moscow and agreed to cooperate with Mueller. That same day Trump told reporters that he had decided to scrap the project, although “there would have been nothing wrong if I did do it. If I did do it, there would have been nothing wrong. That was my business. . . . It was an option that I decided not to do. . . . I decided not to do it. The primary reason . . . I was focused on running for President. . . . I was running my business while I was campaigning. There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have won, in which case I would’ve gotten back into the business. And why should I lose lots of opportunities?”
That contradicted Cohen’s version that the project was still on a list of Trump Organization projects at the time of the inauguration; that Trump had never terminated it; and, in Trump’s written answer, that he had “no current recollection” of any specific conversation about it.
So Mueller’s lawyers asked again whether Trump had participated in any discussions about the project being abandoned, including when he “decided not to do the project.”
“The President has fully answered the questions at issue,” Trump’s lawyers curtly responded.
Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison on December 12.
“Time and time again, I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds rather than to listen to my own inner voice and my moral compass,” Cohen told the judge. “My weakness can be characterized as a blind loyalty to Donald Trump, and I was weak for not having the strength to question and to refuse his demands.”
WITH GIULIANI IN charge of his legal team, and the Mueller probe now in seemingly safe hands with Barr as attorney general, Trump eased off his attacks on Mueller and the Justice Department. His advisers said he was well aware by this point that even if he wanted to or needed to, it was too late to remove Mueller. Mueller had given up his efforts to interview Trump, or even insist on more written answers to his existing questions.
Speculation in the media turned from whether Trump would have Mueller fired to when Mueller would deliver his feverishly anticipated report. There was a flurry of rumors in February that delivery was imminent. CNN reported, “Attorney General Bill Barr is preparing to announce as early as next week the completion of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, with plans for Barr to submit to Congress soon after a summary of Mueller’s confidential report.” The Washington Post reported, “The special counsel’s investigation has consumed Washington since it began in May 2017, and it increasingly appears to be nearing its end, which would send fresh shock waves through the political system.” Vanity Fair observed, “The great national psychodrama that has touched every corner of our politics and culture over the past two years is coming to an end.”
By mid-March 2019, it had still not arrived, which only added to the suspense. Then, the week of March 18, the rumors heated up again. By Friday morning, they were at a fever pitch. Media crews staked out the special counsel’s offices and the Justice Department.
A New York Times reporter spotted Giuliani at the Trump International Hotel down the street from the White House, waiting as anxiously as everyone else in the city. “They said it was going to be at noon or 12:30,” Mr. Giuliani told the reporter.
At 4:00 p.m., thunder rumbled, followed by a hailstorm.
At almost precisely that moment, an inconspicuous security guard from Mueller’s office slipped by news crews waiting outside the Justice Department and delivered a thick envelope to Rod Rosenstein.
The Mueller report had arrived.