In the midst of the Kavanaugh confirmation fight, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team requested to interview me as part of their investigation into Russian meddling during the 2016 election.
The Mueller investigation represented a dangerous threat to the Trump presidency and reelection. Mueller had nearly unlimited power and resources to come after the president and his team, as well as loyal allies in the media. But a year into his investigation, Mueller had still not turned up any evidence whatsoever of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Early in the investigation, the Democrats and the media were convinced they’d found their smoking gun: a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian woman during the campaign. Much like his dad, Don Jr. doesn’t take hits lying down. He fights back and does so aggressively. When others would have cowered, he leaned in. For a time Don Jr. became the face of the fight against Mueller’s team. His hard-charging personality and fearless pushback against his critics made him extremely popular with the president’s base and a star in the Republican Party.
While Don Jr. was under attack, I did a press briefing and defended him on behalf of the administration:
The only thing I see misleading is a year’s worth of stories that have been fueling a false narrative about Russia collusion.… You guys are focused on a meeting with Don Jr. of no consequence.… Bill Clinton was paid half a million dollars to give a speech to a Russian bank, and was personally thanked by Putin for it. Hillary Clinton allowed one-fifth of America’s uranium reserve to be sold to a Russian firm whose investors were Clinton Foundation donors, and the Clinton campaign chairman’s brother lobbied against sanctions on Russia’s largest bank and failed to report it.
The hypocrisy from Democrats and their liberal media allies was shameless. If anyone should have been investigated for ties too close to Russia, it was the Clintons, not President Trump or any member of his family.
Evidence soon emerged that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the DNC paid for the fake Russia dossier used by the Obama administration to illegally spy on a Trump campaign official and then by FBI director Comey to launch the Russia witch hunt against President Trump. I briefed, and slammed the Hillary–DNC–Russia effort to spread disinformation about the president: “We’re seeing now that if there was any collusion with Russia it was between the DNC and the Clintons and certainly not our campaign.”
During this time, I had been experiencing a lot of trouble with my eyes, which were irritated and watering all the time. The White House medical team, which is second to none, had done an initial exam one day in the doctor’s office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the West Wing. They wanted to do more substantial tests and a full medical exam and scheduled a day for me to go to Walter Reed. The doctors wanted to rule out some pretty serious issues including a tumor putting pressure on the nerves behind my eyes or even cancer. To say I was stressed was an understatement. I didn’t want to make a big deal about it and told only a few people, including Chief of Staff John Kelly, who even in his gruff way was very comforting. Ivanka also came by to see how I was and left an encouraging note on my desk. Bryan went with me to Walter Reed and we spent the entire day getting tests done—an MRI of my brain, blood tests, and dozens of other checks. It was the most comprehensive medical exam I’d ever had. Bryan sat for hours anxiously waiting but never letting on and encouraging me in between each test they ran. By the end of the day they had ruled out some things but were concerned about several large lumps on my thyroid. The doctors did a biopsy on my neck to test for cancer, but said they wouldn’t have results for a few days. The biopsy left a huge bruise on my neck, but Katie Price, who did my hair and makeup at the White House before my briefings and interviews, was masterful in concealing it so I didn’t have to share my fear that I might have cancer with the world.
After this intense and nerve-racking day at Walter Reed, Bryan and I left the hospital and went out for an early dinner at Salt and Pepper in the Palisades neighborhood of Northwest DC to decompress before returning home to our kids. Shortly after we sat down I looked up to see Robert Mueller and his wife walk in the front door. A soccer team who had just finished their game and the four of us were the only people dining in the restaurant. As if the day hadn’t been stressful enough—we were now stuck at a table next to the man in charge of the investigation to take down the president!
After three days of nervous anticipation, I received a call from the White House doctor letting me know I had gotten the all clear on thyroid cancer. The medical team determined there was some nerve damage primarily behind my right eye, and stress and bright lights had made it worse. Not the best news when intense stress and bright lights were a daily part of my job—but I was immensely relieved to be cancer free.
The Mueller investigation continued to roil Washington. It was a major distraction from the president’s agenda and deterred many good people from joining the administration. In one of Mueller’s first big moves, he indicted Russian nationals for meddling in the 2016 election. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein—who was responsible for overseeing the investigation after Attorney General Jeff Sessions voluntarily recused himself under pressure from the media—addressed reporters and said the indictment contained no allegation that any American was a knowing participant in Russia’s interference or that it altered the outcome of the election. Still, the witch hunt continued.
Meanwhile, unlike the Obama administration, the Trump administration had actually taken a hard line against Russia, which the media hardly ever reported because it didn’t fit their Trump-Russia collusion narrative. Since taking office President Trump had imposed crippling sanctions on Russia; closed Russian diplomatic properties in the United States and expelled Russian spies pretending to be diplomats; approved the sale of lethal arms to Ukraine to defend against Russian aggression; persuaded NATO allies to increase their military spending to deter Russia; isolated and sanctioned two of Russia’s worst proxies: Iran and Venezuela; made America the number one producer of oil and gas, lowering the cost of energy and hurting the Russian economy; and rebuilt our military so that neither Russia nor any other foreign adversary could challenge the United States.
Furthermore, as tensions escalated between the United States and Russia over human rights abuses in the Syrian civil war, President Trump actually enforced President Obama’s “red line.” In the White House Situation Room, military options to respond to a Syrian chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians were presented to the president. In the room with the president were Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Chief of Staff John Kelly, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Joe Dunford, me, and a few others. At one point the president turned to me and asked for my thoughts. After I weighed in, he said “Huh. I figured you would have been more ruthless.”
President Trump did what Obama refused to do and on April 14, 2018, launched airstrikes against Syrian military targets, demonstrating once again the president’s willingness to stand up to Putin and his cronies like Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
None of this mattered to the Trump haters who had invested everything in the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. Former FBI director James Comey was paid millions to write a book. When he launched his book tour, I held a press briefing to respond on behalf of the administration.
A reporter asked: “The president came out swinging today, calling James Comey a ‘liar,’ a ‘leaker,’ a ‘slimeball.’ Is he worried about what he’s saying?”
“Not at all. The American people see right through the blatant lies of a self-admitted leaker,” I said. “This is nothing more than a poorly executed PR stunt by Comey to desperately rehabilitate his tattered reputation and enrich his own bank account by peddling a book that belongs on the bargain bin of the fiction section.
“Instead of being remembered as a dedicated servant in the pursuit of justice like so many of his other colleagues at the FBI, Comey will be forever known as a disgraced partisan hack that broke his sacred trust with the President of the United States, the dedicated agents of the FBI, and the American people he vowed to faithfully serve. One of the president’s greatest achievements will go down as firing Director James Comey.” I called on the next reporter.
“Thanks, Sarah. The Justice Department Inspector General came out with his long-awaited report this afternoon on former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, saying that he improperly leaked information about the Clinton Foundation investigation to a reporter, and then lied to James Comey about it and, under oath, to two FBI investigators. Do you have a reaction to that? And does that, in your mind, validate the decision to fire McCabe?”
“I haven’t seen the full report, but sounds like two peas in a pod with McCabe and Comey. McCabe was fired in disgrace for misconduct and lying about it.…”
“Thank you, Sarah. You said that James Comey was a liar, that he’s a leaker, that he made false representations or claims. Other than what the president tweeted this morning about lying under oath to Senator Grassley, what exactly has he said that’s false or a lie?”
“Comey claimed reopening the Clinton investigation when he did was based on merit. Now he says it was based because of poll numbers.
“Comey claimed the president told him to stop investigating Flynn, after he previously testified that no one told him to stop investigations.
“He also—even the media has reported that officials have determined that Comey leaked four memos—at least four that we know about—with classified information. I think it’s very clear that Comey has a credibility problem.”
The other thing is clear, this is one of the few issues in Washington that both Democrats and Republicans agree on. He’s been criticized by the legal community for leaking sensitive information, and organizations promoting good government found Comey’s leaking grounds for firing.
Multiple Democrats, including some of the biggest leaders in the Democratic Party, have also attacked Comey. Minority Leader Pelosi said Comey was “maybe not in the right job.” Senator Schumer said he was “appalled by what Comey did” and “did not have confidence in him any longer.” Senator Bernie Sanders said Comey “acted in an outrageous way.” Clinton’s running mate, Senator Kaine, said Comey is “responsible for the lowest moment in the history of the FBI.” Even Congresswoman Maxine Waters said Comey has “no credibility.” The FBI should be independent and not led by a political hack. Comey’s higher loyalty is pretty clear that it’s only to himself. If you can get this group of people and others like Mark Meadows and a number of others to agree on something, I think that you’d have to be right.
“Sarah, what about the dossier, though? Sarah, what about the dossier?”
“The dossier is false opposition research that was funded by the Clinton campaign to attack the president. It was used illegally to justify spying on Americans. And I think that’s quite the problem.”
“Sarah, what about the content of the president’s attacks on Jim Comey, your attacks on Jim Comey? Isn’t all of that a bit unbecoming of the presidency of this White House to go after him in such a personal way like that?”
“I think it’s unbecoming for the person that is supposed to be the top law enforcement official in the United States, the person that is supposed to protect the people of this country, to lie and leak classified information, certainly to falsify documents … if anybody has created this problem, it’s Jim Comey and he should be the one held responsible.”
After my briefing the president called me into the Oval. He applauded as I walked in, telling the other aides in the room to do the same. He said, “I loved it. You’re a f—— killer!” In the ultimate sign of his approval, the president told the valet to bring me a Coke. “When you’re on fire like today it’s a beautiful thing,” he said. Johnny DeStefano, the head of presidential personnel, joked “But, Mr. President, she did say ‘thanks, guys’ to close it out again.” At a briefing a few weeks before, the president had called me into the dining area off the Oval, where he was watching the Masters and going through personnel appointments with Johnny. There was a small pile of Starbursts wrappers on the table and he said, “Great job. You can have all the pink and reds you want, but I think you should quit ending the briefing by saying ‘Thanks, guys.’ I don’t like the word ‘guys.’ It may even be offensive to some women. Plus some days after they treat you so badly it’s way too friendly.” Without saying anything to Johnny, the president turned on the TV, played back my recorded briefing using his TIVO, and said, “S——… you’re right. Sarah, it was an 11 but now it’s only an 8.5,” and we all shared a laugh at the president’s impossible-to-meet expectations.
During the summer of 2018, I flew with President Trump as a member of the US delegation to Helsinki to meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin. President Trump and President Putin had visited in person briefly a few times the year before—in Vietnam during the president’s first trip to Asia, and in Germany for the G20—but this was their first summit. July in Finland was hot, and the sun set at midnight. There was no air-conditioning in our hotel and we sweated as we prepared for the two world leaders to meet face to face.
After their one-on-one meeting, President Trump and President Putin held a joint news conference, during which the president did not publicly challenge President Putin’s denial of interfering in the 2016 election. President Trump was blasted by the media and critics on the left and right. It was a missed opportunity to send an unmistakably clear message to Russia and other foreign adversaries not to interfere in our elections, but in the president’s view, he had already taken a much harder line against Russia than President Obama, and much like with President Xi in China, President Trump believed it was more productive to be diplomatic than confrontational in face-to-face meetings with foreign leaders.
In many instances President Trump and leaders in the administration had acknowledged and condemned Russian election interference but none of that mattered to liberals. After all, in their minds, President Trump was a “Russian agent” and “traitor to his country,” despite no evidence to support these outrageous claims and plenty of evidence to the contrary. Senior Trump administration officials spent an inordinate amount of time and energy working to counter any threat of foreign interference in the 2018 election. Before a White House press briefing with FBI director Christopher Wray, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, and National Security Advisor John Bolton on the threat posed by Russia in the upcoming election, I ran the prep and murder-boarded all of the nation’s senior law enforcement and intelligence officials on questions they’d likely be asked at the briefing. Most of them didn’t seem thrilled that I was asking them such pointed questions in an aggressive manner, but I reminded them not to take it personally, that I was asking as if I was a reporter, not a colleague. Unlike the Obama administration, the Trump administration took a serious approach to election security. President Trump, of course, got no credit when the 2018 midterm election concluded without any significant foreign interference—only the blame for President Obama’s incompetent mismanagement of the Russian threat during the 2016 election.
As the Mueller investigation was nearing an end, Emmet Flood, the attorney in the White House handling the Russia investigation, came by my office and told me he needed to see me. Emmet was a seasoned pro with experience handling high-stakes investigations in the Clinton and Bush administrations. He had a stoic face but an incredibly funny, dry sense of humor. Emmet and I had grown close working together over the last few months. I trusted him more than anyone else in the building to navigate the Mueller storm threatening us all. Given that I was constantly answering questions about the Mueller investigation and usually the first to know about breaking news surrounding it, we spent a good amount of time working together and briefing the president on the ongoing witch hunt. He regularly tried to water down my fiery statements while I reminded him we had to punch them up or they would never be approved by our boss. Although he was a good friend, I usually wasn’t thrilled when he wanted to see me because I knew it wouldn’t be good news. As he entered my office he had a look on his face that I knew meant something was up and he wasn’t looking forward to our conversation.
He sat me down and told me that Mueller’s team wanted to interview me. He said I wasn’t required to do it and the decision to do so was mine. The only people in the building who knew about Mueller’s request were him and the president. I asked Emmet what the president thought I should do and he said the president wanted me to do it so long as I was comfortable with it. I asked Emmet for his recommendation and he said he thought I should do it as well. Their scope was narrow. They wanted to talk to me about four specific things and they wouldn’t be allowed to go into anything outside of those four areas. I told him I wanted to think about it and talk to my husband and the president. He agreed that was a good idea.
I had heard horror stories of innocent people who had done nothing but work for the president and serve their country spending themselves into financial ruin on attorney’s fees. I knew we couldn’t take that on. We had three kids and were paying a lot on rent and childcare to live in one of America’s most expensive cities. A $100,000 legal bill would have been devastating to our family, but I also wanted to do my part, get the truth out, and defend the president. I didn’t want to worry Bryan either. I had been assigned Secret Service because of a specific, credible threat to my safety and the last thing we needed was the additional stress of a costly legal fight and to be thrust deeper into this frivolous investigation and become an even bigger target for the media and liberal mob.
Emmet and I went to the back dining room off the Oval and he, the president, and I talked about what I should do. The president made clear it was my decision to make. He didn’t pressure me. I told him I was inclined to do it. He said make sure you have a good lawyer and assured me I wouldn’t be on the hook for legal expenses. Bryan agreed that it made more sense to be fully transparent than to avoid it and create the perception that I had something to hide. Emmet connected me with a prominent, well-respected Washington attorney named Bill Burck, who represented a few other senior administration officials and knew the Mueller investigation inside and out.
I called Bill but he was out of the country and told me he’d call me back. I anxiously waited two days for him to get back to me and let me know the game plan. He said there were four areas to cover and we would need to do prep sessions to go over any material related to the topics. I had already turned over two notebooks that the investigators were going through. Bill told me they would build a briefing binder for me that included all the emails, statements, and notes on the four topic areas and drop it off at my house. A few days later a courier brought a two-inch-thick, three-ring, binder with sixty-seven tabs to my house, full of hundreds of pages to review. It was the size of a phone book. I tried to familiarize myself with the binder ahead of my in-person session but it was a lot of information to quickly digest.
I made plans with Bill to go to his home and meet with his team on a Sunday afternoon so no one would see me coming and going from his office. I went to church with my family that morning and by late afternoon my binder and I were sitting in his living room at his home in Northwest Washington, DC. We spent hours going over questions and asking why I had made a particular statement; if someone had told me to say it and why; and whether I discussed a particular answer with the president directly. It was exhausting and frustrating trying to recall details of conversations that had taken place months ago that I’d considered insignificant at the time. Some of the conversations I just couldn’t remember at all and others I knew exactly how, when, and why I had said what I did. We covered everything we anticipated would come up and Bill and his team felt good about it. He assured me that I was not a subject of the investigation—nor was I a target—I was simply a source on events I had been involved in and I had nothing to worry about.
The morning of my interview I came into the office like normal and went to my morning meetings. I told my assistant and others I was going to be out of pocket most of the day. I loaded into the Secret Service’s black SUV and we picked up Bill and his team on the back corner outside their office. We drove to a nondescript gray concrete government building like you’ll find on nearly any block in our nation’s capital. We went in through the back loading-dock entrance and rode an elevator to the floor where we’d spend the next several hours. We stepped off the elevator and walked down an empty hallway flooded with fluorescent lights to the interview room. The Secret Service agents with me took a seat in a drab lounge area just down the hall where they waited. The interview room was like a psych ward where patients aren’t allowed to have sharp objects or contact with the outside world. It had neutral white walls, a couple of tables, and government-issued chairs. There was nothing hanging on the walls and I hadn’t seen a ray of natural light since we entered the building. It was an unsettling place. We waited. Eventually Mueller’s team walked in and instructed me where to sit. Just before we got started Robert Mueller himself dropped by to say hello and thanked me for interviewing with them. I’d seen hundreds of clips of him on TV and spoken his name thousands of times—and had that one awkward public encounter with him at Salt and Pepper restaurant in the Palisades—but this was the first time we had ever spoken to one another. He was smaller than I expected him to be, standing face-to-face with him. He was pleasant but wasn’t sticking around. As he made clear to the world in his disastrous congressional hearing, Mueller was just the “Republican” figurehead of a partisan investigation actually run by a bunch of angry Democratic prosecutors out to destroy the president and everyone associated with him.
We took our seats and the interrogation began. Mueller’s team had barely finished introducing themselves before they started firing off questions. They quickly got frustrated at anything I couldn’t remember. It was evident the Democratic prosecutors had nothing but contempt for me and considered me no better than a common criminal from the moment they stepped in the room. Despite the fact I wasn’t a target nor a subject of their investigation they were arrogant, condescending, and laced every question with doubt. They made me feel guilty despite the fact I had voluntarily come to help them with an investigation I knew was nothing more than political vengeance from Democrats who couldn’t accept their defeat to President Trump.
One of the areas Mueller’s team was most interested in was the firing of disgraced former FBI director Jim Comey, even though the president has the legal authority to hire or fire anyone he wants—for any reason. When I found out, how I found out, why I said what I said in the interview I did with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson after Comey’s firing. I remembered much of that night and told them all that I could. They asked questions about the famous statement from Don Jr. about his meeting with a Russian woman during the campaign. I was on Air Force One at the time, but wasn’t in the room when the statement was drafted. Still, they wanted to know about my comments in my briefing about Don Jr.’s statement. They wanted to know why I said what I did, who told me to say it, when they told me to say it, and whether or not I knew it to be true. They asked a lot of questions about whether or not the president was serious about firing Mueller and my response to this question during a gaggle aboard Air Force One on June 13, 2017, when I stated that “while the president has the right to, he has no intention to do so.” They asked me a hundred different ways if I had spoken to the president directly about this answer and at any other time after it. No matter the question, I gave as much information as possible and answered all of their questions patiently and honestly.
The area where they really drilled down and were relentless was about an answer I gave during a press briefing regarding what we had heard from current and former members of the FBI. I stated in my briefing that along with the president and leaders in Congress, members of the FBI had also lost confidence in Director Comey. I said, “I had heard from countless members of the FBI and they were grateful and thankful for the president’s decision.” We spent a large amount of our nearly six hours together going over that particular statement, which had nothing to do with their investigation into whether or not there had been collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians to influence the 2016 election. Mueller’s prosecutors hammered me over the word “countless,” and I said my use of that particular word was a “slip of the tongue” made in the heat of a contentious briefing, but that I had in fact heard directly or indirectly from a number of current and former FBI agents who supported the president’s decision to fire Comey. Later the Mueller team totally misrepresented my statement to them in their official report for no apparent reason other than to vilify me. It was clear the main reason they’d called me in to do an interview had nothing to do with their investigation and everything to do with falsely attacking me in their report as payback for vigorously defending the president and fighting back against their witch hunt.
It was late on a Wednesday evening when we got word that the Mueller team was about to issue their report to the Justice Department. I was already running late for dinner with my family and I texted my husband: “Don’t kill me, still at the office … Mueller report coming.” A few days later, Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and Emmet called me from Air Force One as the president was walking across the South Lawn to board Marine One and told me to get on the helicopter now and join the president for his trip to Florida. I called Bryan as I was walking to Marine One and told him not only was I not coming home that night, I was on my way to Florida. Emmet told me Mueller had issued his report to DOJ, and at Mar-a-Lago, I worked with the president, Emmet, and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone to coordinate our response. Attorney General Bill Barr announced that he might issue a summary report by the weekend and we soon learned there would be no more indictments.
On Saturday the president golfed with Kid Rock at his club in Florida. In a great mood, he told me, “It’s like Election Day all over again—the pundits on TV don’t know what to say!”
I returned to Washington early ahead of the president for the release of Attorney General Barr’s summary of the Mueller report. I went out for a quick ice-cream break with my husband and kids and then went to my office to coordinate the administration’s response. At 3:27 p.m. I got a call from the president. He was on speaker with Pat and Emmet and Mick and we finalized our statement. In the first public comment from the White House, I said, “The Special Counsel did not find any collusion and did not find any obstruction. AG Barr and DAG Rosenstein further determined there was no obstruction. The findings of the Department of Justice are a total and complete exoneration of the President of the United States.” I added: “A great day for America and for President Trump. After two years of wild anti-Trump hysteria, the president and his millions of supporters have been completely vindicated.”
A few key decisions saved Trump’s presidency from the Mueller threat: the president opting not to fire Mueller, but allowing him to complete his investigation with full cooperation from the White House and campaign staff and no White House interference; hiring Pat Cipollone and Emmet Flood, both of whom were brilliant lawyers who effectively defended the president and aggressively and successfully pushed back on the president doing an interview with Mueller; and replacing Attorney General Sessions with Attorney General Barr, who had the experience and credibility to wrap up the investigation and communicate a summary of the report to the American people.
Upon his arrival back at the White House on Marine One, the president said, “I just want to tell you that America is the greatest place on Earth. The greatest place on Earth. Thank you very much.”
The president walked across the South Lawn and into the White House and told Scavino and me to join him in the private residence. We walked in to find the president’s legal team there and the room erupted in high-fives, hugging, and celebration. Hope texted me to let me know she was crying tears of joy in Los Angeles that the nightmare was finally over, and I shared her message with the president. He smiled and said, “We’ve all been through a lot together, but I’m so happy, so proud of the job each of you have done.”
For more than two years Democrats and their liberal media allies had slandered President Trump as a traitor to his country for conspiring with Russia. It was all total BS—a malicious lie given wall-to-wall media coverage for two straight years. This should never again happen to an American president. But in that moment in the president’s residence of the White House we knew the witch hunt was over. Together we celebrated a triumphant victory over the forces who’d put us through hell for the sin of winning an election.