“It is impossible for the FBI not to recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton. What she did was wrong! What Bill did was stupid!”
—@realDonaldTrump, July 2, 2016
AFTER A SUMMER OF Trump’s bluster that Clinton should be in prison, the two nominees faced off in a series of three debates. Trump didn’t perform well in the first two. Clinton had come highly prepared. Trump had preferred to go by instinct, and for some reason, he’d sniffed so much during their first two matchups that it had generated media coverage. Clinton crushed him in the polls.
“It was just announced-by sources-that no charges will be brought against Crooked Hillary Clinton. Like I said, the system is totally rigged!”
—@realDonaldTrump, July 2, 2016
“The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails, which should never have been written (stupid), because Putin likes me”
—@realDonaldTrump, July 25, 2016
“The polls are close so Crooked Hillary is getting out of bed and will campaign tomorrow. Why did she hammer 13 devices and acid-wash e-mails?”
—@realDonaldTrump, September 4, 2016
“The results are in on the final debate and it is almost unanimous, I WON! Thank you, these are very exciting times.”
—@realDonaldTrump, October 21, 2016
In the third matchup, despite a strong start on Trump’s part, Clinton still found ways to get under his skin.
Anticipating he was going to lose the election, Trump repeatedly claimed the system was “rigged.”
What’s more, he refused to say whether he’d honor the results if Clinton won.
“I’ll look at it at the time,” he said.
This astonished the debate moderator, Chris Wallace of Fox News: “But, sir, there is a tradition in this country—in fact, one of the prides of this country—is the peaceful transition of power…. Are you saying you’re not prepared now to commit to that principle?”
“What I’m saying is that I will tell you at the time,” Trump said. “I’ll keep you in suspense. Okay?”
“That’s horrifying,” Clinton shot back. “We’ve been around for 240 years. We’ve had free and fair elections. We’ve accepted the outcomes when we may not have liked them. And that is what must be expected of anyone standing on a debate stage during a general election.”
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump face each other in a 90-minute town hall meeting debate—the second of three presidential debates—at Washington University in St. Louis, October 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
Trump wouldn’t budge, and Wallace had to switch topics.
When a quote from WikiLeaks came up, Clinton took the opening to hit Trump where he was weak—on his failure to condemn Russia for committing criminal hacking: “What’s really important about WikiLeaks is that the Russian government has engaged in espionage against Americans. They have hacked American websites, American accounts of private people, of institutions,” she said. “This has come from the highest levels of the Russian government, clearly, from Putin himself, in an effort, as seventeen of our intelligence agencies have confirmed, to influence our election.”
Instead of condemning the attack, as Clinton challenged him to do, Trump said Putin didn’t respect Clinton.
“Well, that’s because he’d rather have a puppet as president of the United States,” Clinton retorted.
“No puppet. No puppet,” Trump said, talking over Clinton. “You’re the puppet!”
When Wallace asked Trump if he condemned Russian interference, Trump said, “Of course I condemn. Of course I—I don’t know Putin. I have no idea.”
Wallace followed up: “I’m not asking—I’m asking do you condemn?”
Trump did not condemn the cyberattack. Not then, and not later.
Trump did not condemn the cyberattack. Not then, and not later.
“I never met Putin,” he said. “This is not my best friend. But if the United States got along with Russia, wouldn’t be so bad.”
It was a strange way to talk about a country that had just committed crimes against the United States.
But Trump had his reasons.
ONE MORNING ABOUT FOUR MONTHS EARLIER, AN e-mail arrived in the inbox of Trump’s son Don Jr.—an e-mail that would have great significance in the years to come.
It was a message from Rob Goldstone, the bulldog-shaped publicist for the pop star Emin Agalarov, and it contained an offer of political assistance: A Russian government official wanted to give the Trump campaign “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary in her dealings with Russia.”
“This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” Goldstone wrote. “What do you think is the best way to handle this information and would you be able to speak to Emin about it directly? I can also send this info to your father via Rhona, but it is ultrasensitive. So wanted to send to you first.”
Despite several laws that prohibit cooperation between private citizens and foreign governments, Don Jr. replied within twenty minutes: “… If it’s what you say, I love it, especially later in the summer.”
That was when dirt would be most useful to his dad.
Don Jr. would later swear under oath that he did not tell his father of the meeting.
But on June 7, Donald Trump gave a speech in California, hinting about something juicy on the way: “I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week,” he said, “and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons. I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting.”
An extract of the e-mail exchange between Don Jr. and Rob Goldstone concerning a meeting with a Russian government official offering incriminating materials on Hillary Clinton. (Senate Judiciary Committee Inquiry into Circumstances Surrounding Trump Tower Meeting)
On June 9 at 4:00 P.M., Don Jr. was ready and waiting in the massive conference room on the twenty-fifth floor of Trump Tower, where giant windows offer spectacular views of Manhattan. An enormous stone-topped table dominates the floor. The conference table can seat dozens in its black leather chairs, but this meeting would not require even half of them.
Just two insiders from the Trump campaign had been invited to receive the high-level proof of Clinton’s crimes that Don Jr. knew his father wanted: his brother-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort, the seasoned strategist who was being maneuvered into the top spot of the campaign.
They did not know whom they would be speaking with, only that incriminating evidence was coming.
When Goldstone arrived, he came with an entourage that included an interpreter and the following people:
After introductions and small talk about the beauty of the Manhattan view, Don Jr. addressed Veselnitskaya, who sat across the table from him: “So I believe you have some information for us.”
Through the interpreter, the lawyer spoke—but not about Clinton crimes.
Through the interpreter, the lawyer spoke—but not about Clinton crimes. Rather, she discussed a scheme by a hedge fund manager who allegedly dodged taxes in both Russia and the United States and also made donations to the DNC.
“So can you show us how does this money go to Hillary?” Don Jr. asked. “Like, specifically, do you have paperwork? Or just indicate how money goes to Hillary.”
She did not have anything of the sort.
Kushner got impatient with her. “I really have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. “Could you please focus a bit more and maybe just start again?”
Veselnitskaya gave her spiel again, word for word, infuriating Kushner, who left the meeting before it officially ended.
Meanwhile, Manafort leaned back in his chair, thumbing notes into his Blackberry. Although Kushner didn’t understand what Veselnitskaya was talking about, Manafort—who was more politically savvy—did. Veselnitskaya was essentially arguing that the hedge fund manager who had employed Magnitsky was a tax cheat, and he and other wealthy people were supporting Democrats.
Eventually, Veselnitskaya got to her main point: advocating the repeal of the Magnitsky Act in exchange for ending the ban on adoptions of Russian orphans by Americans.
In short, she had no incriminating evidence against Clinton. There was nothing useful to the Trumps. When that was clear, Don Jr. abruptly cut off the meeting, inviting the Russians to return after his father was elected.
Afterward, Goldstone apologized to Don Jr. for the disappointing results. “I’m really embarrassed by this meeting,” he said. “I don’t know what that was about.”
The “very, very interesting” Clinton news that Trump had promised to deliver in his speeches did not materialize.
But the Washington Post had a bombshell headline on June 14: “Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on Trump.”
The hack was a devastating security breach for the Democratic National Committee. Two teams of hackers—dubbed Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear—had been identified and kicked out, but the damage to the DNC was substantial. Hackers had plundered their correspondence for a year, with Cozy Bear focusing on e-mail and text messages and Fancy Bear stealing the DNC’s opposition research on Trump. Their work had allegedly been authorized by Vladimir Putin.
Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the architect of the strategy, denied it existed: “I completely rule out a possibility that the [Russian] government or the government bodies have been involved in this.”
Likewise, the Trump campaign rejected the finding that Russia had hacked the DNC. “We believe it was the DNC that did the ‘hacking’ as a way to distract from the many issues facing their deeply flawed candidate and failed party leader,” a news release said.
As Russia and the Trump campaign issued denials, someone named Guccifer 2.0 took credit for the hack, claiming to be a Romanian lone operative. On a WordPress blog, he posted about his exploits and invited people to send questions through Twitter.
But at one point Guccifer 2.0 messed up. Though he usually logged in through a virtual private network that hid his location, he once posted to social media without using the VPN. This left a Moscow-based IP address in the server logs on a site Guccifer used. Experts determined Guccifer 2.0 wasn’t a Romanian hacktivist after all. “He” was a front for people working for Russian military intelligence.
The Russian intelligence agency’s first release was a 237-page opposition-research report on Donald Trump. Compiled in December 2015, the report called him a disloyal, self-interested liar and provided extensive evidence in support of this argument. The research was meant to give Clinton substantiated ammunition to use in her speeches and at debates—for example, this broadside against his business chops: “[H]e has repeatedly run into serious financial crises in his career and his record raises serious questions about whether he is qualified to manage the fiscal challenges facing this country.”
But, as nasty as this opposition research on Trump was, it was nowhere near the full story of the opposition research that had yet to arrive through a DC-based company called Fusion GPS. For clients who can afford their steep rates, Fusion GPS provides research and strategic intelligence. Most of their clients aren’t political; they’re trying to win lawsuits or “find out who ripped them off,” cofounder Glenn Simpson said. Fusion mines public records, some of which they obtain using federal open-information laws. Fusion also has a network of contacts around the world for more elusive information.
A conservative news site had hired Fusion to look into Trump before it was clear he’d win the nomination. They stopped pursuing the information. But then the Clinton campaign moved in. Simpson is a former Wall Street Journal investigative reporter who covered corruption in Russia extensively. He describes himself as being “obsessed” with the country’s kleptocracy and police state.
The Trump investigation was started in the fall of 2015 as a straightforward examination of Trump’s business record, associations, bankruptcies, and suppliers—such as whether any of his branded products were made in sweatshops (they were).
The inquiry soon turned unusual, Simpson said, because of Trump’s relationships to organized crime figures.
Felix Sater was of particular interest because of Sater’s business relationship with a man named Semion Mogilevich, an organized crime boss. To Simpson, it was noteworthy and troubling that Trump had lied under oath about knowing Sater and continued to associate with him long after he’d learned of Sater’s ties to mobsters.
Also, Fusion ran into roadblocks when they started looking at sources of Trump’s income. Some money flowed in from Kazakhstan. Other income sources, they couldn’t account for.
By June, when Simpson had exhausted public records searches, he reached out to a former British spy named Christopher Steele. Simpson was curious about the number of trips Trump had made to Russia, trips that had never materialized into a deal.
The first page of the first report compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele. (Senate Judiciary Committee Inquiry into Circumstances Surrounding Trump Tower Meeting)
“That struck me as a little bit odd and calling for an explanation,” Simpson said.
Simpson gave Steele, who now runs a private intelligence firm, an open-ended assignment: find out what Donald Trump had been doing on those trips—whom he’d done business with, where he’d stayed, and whether anyone had ever offered him anything. Steele, as a former spy stationed in Russia, had sources Simpson didn’t, people whose trust he had cultivated during his intelligence work and afterward.
Steele’s first report, dated June 20, was a shocker:
Putin’s regime had been cultivating, supporting, and helping Trump since at least 2011, with a goal of shattering Western alliances.
Trump had declined real estate deals offered by Russia but had accepted “a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin.”
Trump had engaged in sexual activities in a Russian hotel room that could make him subject to blackmail.
The Kremlin had a dossier of compromising material on Clinton, too, mostly intercepted phone calls rather than documentation of embarrassing conduct.
The memo was explosive, but Simpson trusted Steele, who had been the lead Russian expert for MI6, where he worked for twenty-two years.
“He’s basically a Boy Scout,” Simpson said.
Despite Steele’s sterling reputation, it was still possible that the report contained errors and even disinformation, a favorite Russian tool meant to sow confusion.
Also, human intelligence—information gathered from people—isn’t like public records. You can’t file a lawsuit based on human intelligence. But you can develop judgments and make informed decisions when the information is credible.
Simpson was concerned with the possibility of Russian meddling with an American election. In 1996, when Simpson was still at the Wall Street Journal, he covered Chinese government interference in the US election, something that triggered an investigation and numerous prosecutions. To Simpson, it was credible that the Russian government would want to do the same thing. It also fit a pattern of increasing Russian intelligence operations in Western capitals.
But the DNC hack—which made the news right around the time he got the report—wasn’t like anything he’d seen before. Instead of keeping it quiet, the Russians had leaked the information, turning it into a weapon meant to erode Americans’ faith in their electoral system. This was “extraordinary” and “criminal,” Simpson said.
Simpson and Steele talked it over. From Steele’s perspective, there was a chance Trump was being blackmailed, a significant national security threat. Simpson thought there might be an illegal conspiracy between Trump and Russia’s government. Steele wanted to tell the FBI, but Simpson wanted to think it over. He had no idea how he might report it, nor did he think it was his role as someone working for the Clinton campaign. What’s more, Clinton was still under investigation by the FBI herself over her use of private e-mail servers for government business. The campaign would not want him to approach the bureau.
Steele, who had a contact at the FBI, said he’d take care of making the report. By late June or early July, the former spy began sharing what he knew with the bureau.
This wasn’t the first the FBI had heard of troubling information about Trump, his campaign, and its worrisome Russian ties.
Intelligence agencies from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom had provided similar information. What’s more, after WikiLeaks released twenty thousand e-mails stolen from the DNC on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, Australian intelligence agents reached out to their American counterparts with word that a Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos, had gotten drunk in London with Australia’s top diplomat and bragged about the “dirt” that the Russians had on Clinton.
To confirm this, the FBI secretly sent a pair of agents to London to interview the diplomat, Alexander Downer. Such interviews required a breach of protocol that had to be delicately negotiated by the US and Australia.
But the report seemed credible, and with that, the FBI had opened an investigation into the Trump campaign, which they named Crossfire Hurricane after a Rolling Stones lyric. The FBI would keep an especially tight lid on the investigation, which involved several members of Trump’s campaign. Only a select few at the bureau knew the probe was underway at all.
On July 25, the FBI publicly confirmed another investigation, though: this one of the DNC hack.
“A compromise of this nature is something we take very seriously, and the FBI will continue to investigate and hold accountable those who pose a threat in cyberspace,” a news release said.
Don Jr. scoffed at the idea of the Russian government meddling in the election. It was a plot cooked up by Democrats, he said. “It’s disgusting. It’s so phony … I mean, I can’t think of bigger lies, but that exactly goes to show you what the DNC and what the Clinton camp will do. They will lie and do anything to win.”
Donald Trump also refused to acknowledge the possibility of a hack directed by Putin. He was aware that people were scrutinizing his links with Russia, though. “For the record,” he tweeted on July 26, “I have ZERO investments in Russia.”
Then the next day, at his last press conference for nearly two years, Trump did something astonishing:
Standing in front of the flags of the United States and Florida, Trump encouraged Russia, a nation hostile to the United States, to keep at its criminal hacking efforts.
“Russia, if you’re listening,” he said, “I hope you’re able to find the thirty thousand e-mails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
It was one of the most surreal moments in a decidedly unusual election: A candidate inviting a hostile foreign nation to commit a crime against Americans.
It was one of the most surreal moments in a decidedly unusual election: A candidate inviting a hostile foreign nation to commit a crime against Americans.
On or around that day, hackers under the direction of the Russian government made their first attempt to access the e-mails of Hillary Clinton’s personal office, as well as seventy-six e-mail addresses for her campaign.
Despite Trump’s bravado, his campaign was in another rough patch.
During the Republican National Convention on July 18, Melania delivered a speech plagiarized from one Michelle Obama had delivered in 2008. Ted Cruz refused to endorse Trump on July 21. And overall, Trump’s television ratings weren’t great. More people had tuned in to watch John McCain accept the Republican nomination in 2008. Trump would have loved to beat McCain in the ratings.
There had also been leaks to the media when Trump was choosing a vice presidential candidate. Trump hadn’t wanted to go with Mike Pence; that had been Manafort’s idea. Leaks created a perception Trump could be pushed around, and Trump never wanted to look weak.
Meanwhile, Steele’s investigation into Trump and his team continued. The ex-spy sent memo after memo to Simpson. Fifteen additional confidential reports would come before Election Day, and one afterward.
Steele reported on July 30 that he’d found evidence of “extensive conspiracy” between Trump’s campaign team and the Kremlin, as well as a two-way flow of information. This was exactly the sort of thing Don Jr. had demonstrated a willingness to participate in by hosting the Trump Tower meeting on June 9.
What’s more, Steele reported, Trump was aware that Russia had kompromat on him. But he understood that the Kremlin wouldn’t use this embarrassing information against him because his team had been helpful and cooperative for years, “and particularly of late,” the memo said.
The memo also said sources close to Trump and Manafort indicated the men were happy that Russia was being made out as a “bogeyman,” because this took the spotlight off numerous corrupt business ties in China and other emerging countries.
On August 10, Steele filed another report. This one claimed the campaign was worried about the bad publicity. The memo also said it had been Carter Page’s idea to release the first batch of WikiLeaks memos right before the Democratic National Convention, to drive Democrats who’d liked Sanders toward Trump, but the campaign had underestimated the blowback from this strategy. Also, the Trump campaign was angry that Putin had gone beyond the objective of weakening Clinton and boosting Trump by also undermining the US government and democratic system.
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign was about to take a big public blow. Now that he was running Trump’s campaign, Paul Manafort came under increasing media scrutiny. The New York Times reported on a ledger discovered in Ukraine that revealed Manafort had received $12.7 million in secret—and illegal—cash payments from the pro-Russia political party of his client Viktor Yanukovych.
Although Manafort denied receiving the money, he was done for with Trump. Manafort resigned on August 19. Kellyanne Conway took over as campaign manager, and former Breitbart executive chairman Steve Bannon became the campaign’s chief executive officer.
By mid- to late September, Steele had given a full briefing to the FBI. It was obvious to Fusion GPS’s Simpson that a crime had occurred—hacking. Reporters had begun calling him, wondering whether the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign. Simpson encouraged the journalists to ask the FBI directly. At the end of September, he and Steele briefed reporters from the New York Times, the Washington Post, Yahoo News, the New Yorker, and CNN. Steele talked with reporters again in mid-October, after hackers had released the e-mails of Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. In late October, he spoke with a journalist from Mother Jones, a liberal newsmagazine.
Then–FBI director James Comey’s letter to Congress, dated October 28, 2016, regarding reopening the inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server. (Senate Judiciary Committee Inquiry into Circumstances Surrounding Trump Tower Meeting)
Earlier that year, on July 5, 2016, Comey addressed reporters during a press briefing at FBI Headquarters about the investigation. (FBI)
Inside the Trump campaign, people were frantic, and not just because of Trump’s poor debate performances and the specter of Russian election interference.
The Access Hollywood video publicized on October 7, in which Trump bragged about grabbing women by their genitalia, wasn’t the only sexual misconduct dogging the candidate. Numerous women publicly accused him of harassment and worse. Trump’s team was cleaning it up as well as they could. One challenging task was to complete a nondisclosure agreement about Trump’s extramarital affair with an adult film star. Trump had met Stephanie Clifford—known onscreen as Stormy Daniels—at a charity golf tournament when Barron was just a baby, and their relationship lasted a few months.
Cohen negotiated to buy her silence, but he failed to pay her, so she threatened to talk to the press. After he wired her $130,000, she signed the agreement on October 28. But Cohen didn’t quite finish the job. Trump, using the alias David Dennison, never signed the deal. That same day, FBI Director James Comey wrote a letter to Congress reopening the inquiry into Clinton’s e-mail server, turning the spotlight back on her.
Three days later, on Halloween, Trump got another lucky break, this one from the New York Times. Although Mother Jones published a piece headlined, “A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump,” the less liberal New York Times ran a story that said the FBI’s investigation so far had found no conclusive or direct link between Trump and the Russian government:
“And even the hacking into Democratic emails, F.B.I. and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.”
The FBI had cautioned reporters from the Times not to draw any conclusions from the Steele dossier—a message that led them to discount its contents. The FBI had an agenda in conveying such a message. They were concerned that any “overt actions” they might take related to the Trump campaign would fuel charges that the election was rigged to favor Clinton, a charge Trump had made repeatedly.
But then the utterly unexpected happened. Trump won, probably due in part to the letter Comey sent Congress. The news about the reopened inquiry shifted between 1 and 4 percent of the vote toward Trump. Clinton lost Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin each by less than one point.
“The Comey letter probably cost Clinton the election,” statistician Nate Silver said.
“This will prove to be a great time in the lives of ALL Americans. We will unite and we will win, win, win!”
—@realDonaldTrump, November 12, 2016
TRUMP WAS ELECTED NOVEMBER 8, 2016. HE’D be inaugurated as president on January 20, 2017, giving him seventy-three days to transition into his new role. In the meantime, he had a court date on the calendar: On November 28, the class-action lawsuit against Trump University was set to go to trial. The amount of work he faced was overwhelming.
Trump was ill-prepared for the coming transition. He hadn’t wanted to jinx himself by planning for a win that almost no one thought would happen. But it wasn’t just his superstitious nature that had left him behind schedule: He had no government experience and had never served in the military—the only president to lack either qualification. He had little understanding of what the job would take.
When Trump and Obama met in the White House on November 10, Obama explained the duties of the presidency to Trump, who was surprised by how big the job was. He also didn’t know he’d need to replace every West Wing staffer—up to five hundred people. Obama would spend extra time with Trump to get him up to speed.
He also didn’t know he’d need to replace every West Wing staffer—up to five hundred people. Obama would spend extra time with Trump to get him up to speed.
Trump was slower than Obama had been in choosing key staff, and the process was chaotic. Trump had an advisory board of sixteen, including Ivanka, Don Jr., and Eric, as well as Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner.
On November 10, 2016, just two days after the election, President Barack Obama meets with President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Kushner was no fan of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Trump’s transition team leader. As a federal prosecutor, Christie had sent Kushner’s father to jail for tax evasion, illegal campaign donations, and witness tampering (the elder Kushner had hired a sex worker to entrap and humiliate his wife’s brother for testifying against him). Christie lost his job as leader of the transition team on November 11. Trump replaced him with Vice President–elect Mike Pence.
Despite the slow rate of appointments, Trump was pleased with the process, which he teased as if it were a reality television show.
“VERY ORGANIZED PROCESS TAKING PLACE AS I decide on Cabinet and many other positions,” he tweeted. “I am the only one who knows who the finalists are!”
Although Trump distrusted Republican party leaders, he appointed Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus as his chief of staff—which some observers read as a sign that Trump would become more traditional in his approach to the presidency than he had been as a candidate. Trump chose Priebus over Steve Bannon, who’d been a driving influence on his campaign. But Bannon still had a spot near Trump; he would be Trump’s chief strategist and senior counselor.
While most in Trump’s circle dressed neatly and conservatively, Bannon stood out as a slob with his layered shirts, stubbled chin, and shabby jackets. But he and Trump had simpatico world views that could be surprising in their darkness.
“Darkness is good,” Bannon told journalist Michael Wolff. “Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power. It … helps us when they get it wrong. When they’re blind to who we are and what we’re doing.”
He viewed the world as hurtling toward a crisis. The Trump administration would destroy “the administrative state” and eventually lead to fifty years of Republican political domination.
This rationale drove Trump’s cabinet appointments over the weeks that followed.
For secretary of education, he chose Betsy DeVos, a billionaire with no experience working in schools or attending public schools. DeVos advocated allowing parents to use school vouchers to pay for education in religious and for-profit institutions, giving parents “choice” while undermining public education.
He chose Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency, a man who’d sued the EPA many times as Oklahoma’s attorney general and who does not accept the scientific consensus on climate change.
For secretary of housing and urban development, Trump chose Dr. Ben Carson, a former rival for the Republican presidential nomination and, like Trump, someone with no government background and no experience running a large bureaucracy. Trump, a big believer in business experience as the ultimate qualifier, would later appoint his son’s wedding planner to run the agency’s New York and New Jersey operations.
For his national security adviser, Trump chose the one man Obama told him not to hire: Lieutenant General Mike Flynn.
Sixty-two days before the inauguration
ON NOVEMBER 19, TRUMP SETTLED THE CLASSACTION lawsuit against Trump University for $25 million. He admitted no wrongdoing in the settlement, which gave a 90 percent refund to customers he’d defrauded.
“… As President I have to focus on our country,” he tweeted.
That same day, Trump vented his spleen at the cast of Hamilton. Mike Pence had watched the show when he was in New York, and afterward, the actor who played Vice President Aaron Burr had addressed Pence from the stage afterward: “We, sir—we—are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights,” he said. “We truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.”
Trump couldn’t stand it: “Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing. This should not happen!”
Meanwhile, Trump didn’t want his victory to look anything less than legitimate. So he turned to Twitter and praised the electoral college, where he won 305 of a possible 538 votes. He also tweeted that he would have won the popular vote, too, if elections were based on that.
“I would have campaigned in N.Y. Florida and California and won even bigger and more easily,” he said.
Several times he suggested that millions of fraudulently cast ballots had given Clinton the popular vote win.
Several times he suggested that millions of fraudulently cast ballots had given Clinton the popular vote win.
And he still refused to believe Russia was behind hacks on the DNC. On November 28, he told Time magazine, “It could be Russia. And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.”
EVEN AS THE ROLE RUSSIA HAD PLAYED IN HIS victory was in the news, members of Trump’s transition team, including Kushner and Flynn, met secretly with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the Trump Tower on December 1.
They discussed the possibility of setting up a “secret and secure” way for the transition team to communicate with the Kremlin before Trump officially became president. Kushner suggested using the Russian embassy for these secret chats.
When Kislyak informed his superiors in Moscow of Kushner’s request, US agents were listening in—something that would cause trouble down the road for Kushner.
And Kushner wasn’t just making forbidden diplomatic overtures. He also met with Sergey N. Gorkov, the chief of a Russian state-run bank that had been sanctioned in 2014 by Obama, making it illegal for American entities and the bank to conduct business together. And although the Trump administration would later claim Kushner was filling in until Trump could get the State Department in order, the bank released a statement that said Kushner was actually representing his family real estate empire in the meeting.
In the meantime, the Washington Post had reported the CIA’s view of Russian election meddling: It was meant to help Trump win.
Still, Trump refused to accept it. “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” he said. “The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.’”
Obama ordered a review of the hacks, and on December 29, announced retaliatory sanctions against the Russian government for its cyberattack on the 2016 election. Obama also sent home thirty-five Russian diplomats and seized two compounds they had used.
Flynn and Kislyak talked secretly about those sanctions the same day, and would do so several more times. On December 30, Putin announced he wouldn’t return fire.
That same day, Trump praised the Russian president on Twitter. “Great move on delay (by V. Putin)-I always knew he was very smart!”
Fourteen days before the inauguration
ON JANUARY 6, 2017, THE OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR of National Intelligence released a declassified version of its report on the hack.
“Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election,” the report said. The goal was “to help President-elect Trump’s election chances.”
The report made no mention of cooperation between Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin—something asserted in the Steele dossier.
But Trump was about to get a look at these findings.
Intelligence agencies suspected it was only a matter of time before the Steele dossier became public, and they knew they had to brief both President Obama and President-elect Trump on its contents.
The dossier hadn’t been fully verified. But it had been put together by someone considered reliable—even as some material struck FBI Director James Comey as being “wild stuff.”
In that category, Comey counted the portion of the Steele dossier that said Trump had been recorded engaging in unusual sexual behavior that could be used to blackmail him, specifically that Trump had hired a number of sex workers to urinate on a bed in a hotel room that the Obamas had once occupied.
Even though this had not been verified—presumably because any footage that might exist had not been leaked—it was widely known that Russian intelligence put cameras in hotel rooms. Russia also has a history of gathering sex-based kompromat, making the contents credible human intelligence.
Comey and his colleagues from the CIA and National Security Agency rode in a fleet of fully armored SUVs through Manhattan on their way to meet Trump. The FBI director felt uneasy. He hadn’t met the incoming president yet, but Trump had not struck Comey as a man of sound judgment. Trump was not going to enjoy the conversation, and yet it had to take place.
“How on earth could we brief the man about Russian efforts and not tell him about this piece?” Comey thought. He planned to tell Trump privately, to minimize the embarrassment. Comey worried that Trump might think he was blackmailing him or trying to get leverage.
Comey and his colleagues did not meet Trump in the grand conference room Don Jr. had used the day he was hoping to get evidence of Clinton crimes delivered to him from the Russian government. They met instead in a small conference room with heavy gold curtains hung over its window to obscure the view from the hallway. They were joined by Trump’s senior team, as well as directors and representatives of various US intelligence agencies.
Trump was shown highly classified text messages and e-mails that revealed Putin had ordered cyberattacks meant to throw the election to Trump, undermine Clinton, and divide the nation along partisan lines. The messages came from Russian military officers and a top-secret source in Putin’s inner circle, and the source described how the Kremlin’s hacking and disinformation plan had been enacted.
Trump seemed convinced. But he had concerns, though not about what measures could be taken to prevent future attacks on America’s digital infrastructure. Rather, Trump wanted reassurance that Russia’s meddling hadn’t affected the outcome.
“You found there was no impact on the result, right?” he said.
James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told Trump no such analysis had been made. Neither Trump nor anyone on his team asked what might be done to ward off any future threat from Russia. Instead, and in front of the intelligence personnel, they started talking about how they’d spin the press statement. Comey said he was taken aback.
The time came for Comey to deliver Trump the difficult information. The two men waited for the others to leave the room.
“You’ve had one heck of a year,” Trump told Comey when they were alone. He praised Comey and said he hoped the FBI director would remain in his job. It was perhaps a strange thing for Trump to say. Comey had been appointed for a ten-year term. Trump would have to fire him for him to leave. That had only happened once before in the history of the FBI.
Comey started to explain about the embarrassing material in the dossier. He didn’t include the most salacious details. But Trump interrupted him before he’d finished, eager to argue the allegations were false. Trump asked Comey whether he seemed like a guy who needed the services of sex workers, and then started talking about all the women who’d accused him of sexual assault, something entirely unrelated to the dossier. As Trump grew ever more defensive, Comey said, “We are not investigating you, sir.”
“This was literally true,” Comey later said. “We did not have a counterintelligence case file open on him. We really didn’t care if he had cavorted with hookers in Moscow, so long as the Russians weren’t trying to coerce him in some way.”
When Trump released a statement about the briefing the next day, he stressed he’d been legitimately elected—and implied the attacks were commonplace, when really they were unprecedented in their scope and maliciousness. He also falsely claimed there had been “absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election;” the report did not address that question.
Trump said nothing at all about the mortifying content of the report.
Trump said nothing at all about the mortifying content of the report.
THE CEREMONY MARKING TRUMP’S ASCENSION TO the presidency was harder to plan than had been anticipated. Although a committee for the inauguration event had raised $106.8 million, almost two times what Obama’s first inauguration committee raised, Trump couldn’t get any A-list performers to agree to come. Obama had attracted dozens.
The best Trump could do was the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and an alumna of America’s Got Talent, Jackie Evancho. The Radio City Rockettes were booked to perform, but many women in the dance troupe were unhappy to do so.
One posted on her Instagram account: “The women I work with are intelligent and are full of love and the decision of performing for a man that stands for everything we’re against is appalling.”
Trump, grumpy that big stars didn’t want to celebrate his election, had complained a few weeks earlier on Twitter. “The so-called ‘A’ list celebrities are all wanting tixs to the inauguration, but look what they did for Hillary, NOTHING. I want the PEOPLE!”
The celebrity snub was demoralizing. But it was not as upsetting as what happened on January 10. That day, CNN reported on the two-page summary of the briefing intelligence agencies had given to Obama and Trump. Worse—far worse—an upstart online news source called BuzzFeed did what no mainstream news source had dared: It published the entire Steele dossier.
“These Reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties To Russia,” the BuzzFeed headline read.
“A dossier making explosive—but unverified—allegations that the Russian government has been ‘cultivating, supporting and assisting’ President-elect Donald Trump for years and gained compromising information about him has been circulating among elected officials, intelligence agents, and journalists for weeks,” the story said.
The website posted the entire report so that Americans could decide for themselves what they thought of the information. BuzzFeed characterized the report as unverified, and pointed out some errors, such as the misspelling of Alfa Group as “Alpha Group.”
The next day, Trump was up early. He took to Twitter to mount a defense.
At 4:13 A.M. on January 11, he said, “Russia just said the unverified report paid for by political opponents is ‘A COMPLETE AND TOTAL FABRICATION, UTTER NONSENSE.’ Very unfair!’”
At 4:44 A.M., he blamed unnamed adversaries: “I win an election easily, a great ‘movement’ is verified, and crooked opponents try to belittle our victory with FAKE NEWS. A sorry state!”
At 4:48 A.M., he laid into intelligence agencies: “Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to ‘leak’ into the public. One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany?”
He also called Comey to complain about the “leak,” but this was a misnomer. Because the dossier wasn’t a government document, it wasn’t classified. It had been compiled by private individuals and shared widely. That meant it wasn’t something that could be leaked, Comey told him.
Trump switched tactics. He’d been thinking more about his Moscow weekend. He falsely claimed he hadn’t stayed overnight in Moscow, and that he’d flown from New York.
As far as the most lurid allegation in the dossier, well, it couldn’t be true Trump said. “I’m a germaphobe.”
Nine days before the inauguration
ON JANUARY 12, MORE BAD NEWS CAME FROM THE Washington Post.
The paper revealed Flynn and the Russian ambassador had spoken shortly after Obama announced sanctions in retaliation for the election interference.
Trump’s spokesman, Sean Spicer, downplayed the exchange. “The call centered on the logistics of setting up a call with the president of Russia and the president-elect after he was sworn in,” Spicer said. “And they exchanged logistical information on how to initiate and schedule that call. That was it, plain and simple.”
This was untrue. What none of Trump’s team yet knew was that US intelligence officers had been listening in.
Five days before the inauguration
VICE PRESIDENT–ELECT MIKE PENCE STOOD BEHIND the false statement. “They did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia,” Pence said.
PENCE’S STATEMENT DID NOT END THE MATTER.
Obama’s deputy attorney general, Sally Yates, knew what Flynn had really said to Kislyak. She held a meeting with FBI Director James Comey, outgoing CIA Director John Brennan, and outgoing Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to figure out how to handle the information. Should they tell Trump or other White House officials?
Yates, Brennan, and Clapper thought Trump ought to know Flynn had discussed sanctions. Comey disagreed. It could complicate the FBI investigation into Trump’s campaign.
Without being able to reach an agreement, the group decided silence was the best route. At the request of Trump’s incoming administration, Yates agreed to stay on as acting attorney general until Alabama senator Jeff Sessions could be sworn in.
She would not last that long.
