The FRONTLINE Interviews
Carol Leonnig
The Washington Post
Carol Leonnig is an investigative reporter for The Washington Post, where she covers the White House and government accountability.
This is the transcript of a two-part interview with FRONTLINE’s Michael Kirk and Gabrielle Schonder conducted on May 11 and July 12, 2018. It has been edited for clarity and length. An asterisk indicates the start of a new interview.
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Let’s talk about the [intelligence community] leaders going into Trump Tower on Jan. 6, 2017.Talk me through … why they went.
This is an interesting moment, because Jim Comey has described this in some detail now, and he remembers President Obama nodding to him like: “You poor sucker.You're going to go in there and tell the president-elect all these sort of gruesome, salacious things that have been gathered, information that's not verified but sure makes him look questionable."… The view was that this was so sensational and so worrisome that the president-elect had an absolute right to know and that the intelligence community had a duty to tell him, because it made him vulnerable and because it could leak.From a reputational standpoint, the intelligence community definitely wanted to make sure they weren't withholding this, but you can see why it would be a duty to tell him as well.
Trump had—certainly through the campaign—diminished, made fun of, mocked the idea of the Russian influence on his election.We already know a sort of insecurity is emerging in him in a very big way about whether he actually won or not.They have to be aware of this, so confronting that trait in Trump must have been a problem for them as they thought about how to present it, if nothing else?
Absolutely.One of the debates before they went in was, do we really want to talk about prostitutes urinating on a bed?Do we really want to get into all of these details which will enflame a person already shown to be incredibly sensitive?I also think one thing that's fascinating about this moment is that when the president-elect actually hears the information, his number one concern is not what one would have expected.“Oh, my goodness, what do the Russians—what are they up to?What is the cyberattack vulnerability of our country?What about the influence they might have on our democracy?"Those are not the questions that Donald Trump has for the [intelligence community] or for Jim Comey.The questions he has are really about defending himself, insisting that he's a germophobe and that it’s not possible for any of these claims to be true, almost immediately into defensive counsel mode as if he is on trial.
It’s a very interesting time in lots of other ways, too, because everybody assumes he’ll pivot.Everybody assumes every president, when they get elected, will somehow be different at that moment.But there's never really been anybody like Donald Trump.The expectation that he will pivot actually isn't borne out in any way by the way that he acts, as you’ve described in that moment.
No.He is the same man that campaigned, and he is the same man that his voters supported and were rallying for.He is a fighter; he is an angry attack dog; and he is a common man in the way in which he speaks.Sometimes that comes across to an institution like Washington and the government firmament as coarse, and yet, for his supporters, it is exactly what they want to see.
… As soon as the meeting is over, it’s run on CNN, BuzzFeed hits print or whatever they do, and [the dossier is] out there for the world to see.Trump's reaction?
He's stunned and shocked that this has been leaked.He assumes the intelligence community has come for him.He’s livid.Also, his paranoia and suspicion about the intelligence community feels vindicated.A lot of people don’t remember that the man who eventually becomes his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, has been really sowing that paranoia, really driving a wedge between the president-elect and the intelligence community and telling him repeatedly: “These people don’t want you.These people wanted Hillary Clinton.Don’t listen to them."That's part of Michael Flynn trying to woo the president and trying to become central and essential to him.But it is feeding something, and it bursts wide open when that happens….
Let’s go to the meeting where Comey’s trying to hide in the curtains in the Blue Room and gets called across the floor.An awkward moment occurs.Describe that for me, will you?
Jim Comey, along with a series of law enforcement leaders, military leaders, are all in the Blue Room, and they're there to greet and be greeted by the president.He’s thanking them; he's congratulating them on their work.As I remember, Jim Comey was standing up against a blue curtain.At 6’8” he nearly was close to the sill in terms of the top of his head reaching the top of the curtain rod.Secret Service Director Joe Clancy was standing next to him.Joe Clancy is not a short man, but looked like a dwarf next to Jim.
The president called each one over, one by one, to shake hands and to thank them.[Jim] Comey describes wanting to be sure that his arm was outstretched in just such a way to create just a nice, distant handshake.But instead, the president pulls him in and goes for the hug.It's unclear exactly why, but goes in for the hug to show that they are connected, it appears.And Comey still, with his giraffe-like neck, kind of pulls back, hoping not to be hugged or kissed on the shoulder, and he steps away quickly to try to shake hands with the next person next to the president.
Do you remember what Trump said?
I don’t.
He said something like, “He’s more famous than I am."… What do you make of that?What was the president doing?
Well, now we know that what was going on in the president’s mind—to a certain degree because he has shared it with us—he was trying to establish a bond with this person who was running an FBI investigation, and while he was furious at the man’s delivery of this repulsive report about a dossier and claims of prostitutes in Moscow, although he was furious at that, he smartly realizes this man is running a probe that could eventually uncover something quite unpleasant about my campaign, or about some of my aides.One thing I've always been struck by in the interviews that we've done is people who have said to us [that] the people who surrounded Donald Trump during his campaign were a group of misfit toys.One close friend of the president said to me, “When you saw the president’s campaign, it was almost as if [it were] a Star Wars movie; you had walked into a Jabba the Hutt bar."
And the president is anxious about that.There are other things we don’t know about his knowledge of the information in the dossier, but he’s clearly trying to establish with Jim Comey a bond, a connection and control.
Well, this would be very typical of the New York builder, the rough-and-tumble construction business and zoning business and whatever….
And it’s important to know about that about Donald Trump's history, the kind of muck he has walked through as a result of his business life.He’s tangled with mobsters; he has done deals with Teamsters’ unions; he has battled with people over debts and emerged triumphant, and they took the hit, and financially he survived.He’s survived countless bankruptcies.He’s a survivor and a fighter. …
… Comey has things on his desk that are open.He has files; he knows things, … things he can't talk about, can't even imply to the new president.… One of the things that's open is the Flynn case.Who is Mike Flynn?
Michael Flynn is a longtime intelligence operator and Defense Department employee.He is a person who ran the Defense Intelligence Agency, so he understands some of the country's most closely held secrets.But he wasn’t trusted by the Obama administration, which started to wonder when he was running that agency whether he had the temperament for it and whether or not he was as careful with information as he should have been.He was under investigation by an internal inspector general about releasing classified information to some of our allies improperly.
He is a person who believes he can call the shots, and he doesn't need to call the home office.… Before the election, he had been a consultant for several Republican candidates, and he decides that Donald Trump is his favorite and signs on to help him.
They have a similar worldview.They have a similar belief it’s their way or the highway, and they bond fairly quickly.Michael Flynn is the person telling Donald Trump throughout the campaign what a criminal Hillary Clinton is in his view and how broken the Obama administration’s foreign policy is when it comes to real threats and terrorism and that they should be working more with the Russian state to fight terror.
And what does Comey know about Flynn on Jan. 22, or around then?
You can see how incredibly unprecedented this is.The FBI director has met with the president-elect to tell him a series of unpleasant things about him that are alleged in an intelligence document, and now he also knows that the man the president-elect trusts and has named as his national security adviser has lied to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador during the transition period and before the inauguration.
Michael Flynn had been interviewed by FBI agents working for Comey about a conversation he had with [Ambassador Sergey] Kislyak the day that President Obama announced sanctions against Russia.
… So the way FBI agents tell us they usually do something: They ask a question; a guy lies; you ask some more questions, and you go back, and you say: “By the way, question 3, you want to do that again?You want to rethink that?Here's the question again."They try to let somebody, especially somebody really powerful like this—he’s got a lot on his mind; maybe it slipped his mind.But they say that that was not the case.He stuck to his story.
Yeah, there are great unfortunate disputes within even the FBI about how many times and how explicit the agents were in giving Flynn a chance to hang himself or come clean.
It's enough for Comey to go forward to Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and a couple of others to say: “We have got to do something about it.He's a very powerful guy."Tell me about Yates.Who is she?
She's a career, lifer prosecutor.Has a great reputation.Is then serving as the deputy attorney general and is also quite concerned about the rank of a person who’s under now criminal investigation, a subject, a target, whatever you say.They're right at the heart of a criminal investigation about lying, and it may end up prompting an intelligence investigation.
She confers with the person who runs the national security division at the Department of Justice, Mary McCord, and they decide that what they need to do is to [go] over and alert the White House to this problem.They meet with Don McGahn, who is the White House counsel—again, a man who has been in the job for four days—and communicate in a very formal and careful way that there are concerns about Michael Flynn’s honesty and about whether or not he could be compromised by the Russians, because what he has said publicly and what he has said to the Justice Department does not square.
And the implication being that the Russians would then have a leverage on him; that if it’s true, that that kind of compromises him?
Right.Because remember at this point, it’s been publicly reported that he has told the vice president, again a man in his job for four days, Vice President Pence, and assured him that he’s not had the kinds of conversations about sanctions with Kislyak that are alleged.And Pence goes on to national television to explain this conversation.So in Yates’ mind and in Mary McCord’s mind, the Russians have a chance to get at Flynn if they want.
Who’s McGahn?
McGahn is a person who was not born to be White House counsel and was not experienced for that role.He had been for a long time FEC [Federal Election Commission], a campaign finance lawyer and consigliore to campaigns.But now he’s in the middle of a job vetting all sorts of appointees, deciding about White House precedent and tradition, trying to figure out how to conform with that, and now hearing something that surely no White House counsel has heard on their first week.
What do you think, or what do you know, Yates and McCord thought should happen once armed with that information?
They didn’t prescribe to Don McGahn what he should do.In fact, the exchange is fascinating because he says, “Why does it matter to you that somebody on our team is lying to us, or lying to someone on the team?"And it’s clear that Yates and McCord believe this is a very vulnerable situation for the White House, as well as for Mr. Flynn, and they presume that he would be sidelined, that the White House would fire him, and that does not happen.In fact, that doesn't happen until The Washington Post reports that he lied.
Eighteen days later.That's Jan. 27.It’s a Friday.It's the day that Trump goes over to the Pentagon and signs the travel ban.Yates was not informed that the travel ban was ensuing.… What does it say to you that [she] didn't know that?
If you're giving this administration the benefit of the doubt, it says they have no idea how government works.They have no idea that a Justice Department official who’s been doing this for years and is in the position that she's in should be counseled and could provide you some good advice, and maybe could have stopped a series of legal challenges to that ban.
If you were not giving them the benefit of the doubt, it shows the paranoia, the distrust, the compartmentalization that has defined really Donald Trump's presidency.
From the earliest days, it’s amazing, because this is seven days in.That night, it’s dinner for two in the White House with Jim Comey and the president of the United States.Can you take me there?
Yes.Jim Comey indicates that he was quite apprehensive about this dinner.He wanted to go, but he didn't want to go.And he feared, with good reason from his previous experiences, that the president didn't know the clear line between the Justice Department and his agency, and the political operations of the White House.In that dinner, all of his fears are realized.The president is encouraging him to remember whose side he’s on.He's talking in a way about how he’s trying to keep this dinner a secret from some of his senior people.He mentions: “Hey, Reince Priebus doesn't even know.My chief of staff doesn't even know we're meeting.It’s just between you and me."Comey finds that very off-putting and odd.
Then later, the president contradicts himself and says: “Actually, follow up with Reince.He knows we're having dinner."Everything about it sends off alarm bells for the FBI director.
Trump says “loyalty” a lot in this conversation, I gather, at least three times.What do you think Donald Trump means by loyalty?
I think the president has in his prior life been successful by building relationships in which power is unequal, and he has the cards.I think that is what he is envisioning here: “You're going to be my friend; I'm the boss.But ultimately this is a relationship that's going to largely benefit me."
… How does [Trump] see in the early days, from what you can tell, the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the constellation of things that are around him?
Well, he’s complaining bitterly about it, just as he had [about] the intelligence community.It is in his mind stacked with people who had been supporters of Hillary Clinton.It is not a clear-eyed investigative body.It is one tainted by political hacks.He’s often asking about different people who are career individuals, prosecutors and investigators, whether they are Obama people.To your question about loyalty, it is critical to him to know whose side are they on, and he believes everybody’s choosing a side….
The replacement [for Sally Yates] is Jeff Sessions.Give me a 25-cent version of who is Jeff Sessions.
Jeff Sessions is a longtime senator from Alabama, beloved in the Senate by his colleagues, actually, particularly on the Republican side of the aisle.He was remarkable in [the 2016] election season because he was the first prominent politician to stand beside Donald Trump, who early in the campaign among the large field of Republican candidates was viewed as quite controversial and questionable, a dark horse who’s very unlikely to get anywhere close to the nomination.
Sessions jumping aboard with Donald Trump as the candidate was a huge help, and Trump indicated that he viewed it with something akin to being in a foxhole together.Sessions joining with him was really important to him at that point.
To pick him as the attorney general, is this a Bobby Kennedy moment?Is this a “I've got my guy there; he’s got my back”?
Donald Trump refers and still to this day refers to Sessions, despite their disagreements over time, still refers to him as “my guy."Definitely this is a vote for a loyal soldier, a person who’s been in his foxhole, and his goal is to send the message that it’s the Trump Justice Department now.
At day 18, the Post publishes a story about Flynn.Flynn is fired; Trump is very unhappy.He's gone public with his unhappiness.Then there's a meeting at the Oval Office, and he dismisses [his son-in-law and adviser Jared] Kushner, shoos out the attorney general, and asks Jim Comey to stay behind.What happens?
This is another awkward moment for the FBI director, because asking all of those people to leave, if the dinner set off alarm bells, this is a series of red flags waving around the president’s head.It makes him anxious about what's going to come next, and he tells him, essentially: “I want to see if you can let it go.Michael Flynn’s a good guy.Can you see your way to let this go?"
Comey takes it for what it seems to anyone speaking the English language, which is, “Stop investigating Michael Flynn."There's something larger, though, that Comey knows that's unclear if the president realizes at that time, and the larger thing is that the investigation of Michael Flynn is part and parcel of looking more deeply at Russian interactions with Trump campaign aides.Is the president asking the FBI director to stop looking at Russian interactions with the campaign?Is he trying to shut down a counterintelligence probe that began in July of 2016?
Comey leaves that meeting fairly sweaty-palmed, goes to his car and begins opening his laptop and typing down the words, the phrases that he can remember the president said, because he’s that scared of what this is that has just happened.
Is he thinking, from what we can tell, obstruction of justice at that moment?
What he said to me was that when he began writing this particular memo, he thought, the president is not currently under investigation, but I suspect he will be. ...
Trump, I guess sensing trouble, starts a kind of counterattack.He’s been doing it anyway, but it feels like more of a strategy, a kind of Roy Cohn-like strategy pushing back, aspersing Comey, the FBI, using the terminology that becomes kind of legendary about the employees of the FBI and other places.… As you're reporting the stories, does it feel at the time like an obvious strategy, or is it just the way Donald Trump rolls?
It doesn’t strike me as a well-thought-out strategy, more a reaction that the president often has to things he doesn't like, which is to punch at them, to call them out.And, as we've discussed, his supporters love that and think that this attack on the bureaucracy or the political nature, the pro-Hillary nature, [the] claim that the government has always been behind his hated opponent, that's something that they enjoy seeing him call out.
Again, I don't think that it is a strategy as much as an eruption of frustration that he hasn’t been able to lasso and control what he sought to control….
How about those tweets, huh?That's also part of—maybe it’s not a strategy.Are the tweets not strategic?They are tactical?
The man has millions of Twitter followers.There is almost no kind of television program that can reach people as directly and effectively as a Donald Trump tweet, and it is the ultimate way to get your unfiltered opinion right to your base.And it’s brilliant.You don’t have to have a news conference.You don’t have to face questions.You don’t have to endure any discussion about other facts that may contradict some of the things that you’ve tweeted.It is a very effective way for the president to communicate, and it’s why, despite the fact that it could put him in legal peril, his lawyers have never been able to stop him from tweeting.He sees this as the way to protect his presidency, and it has worked.
What do you mean, legal peril?
Some of the things the president tweets are his statements about his intentions and his motivations, and when you are under investigation for obstruction, your intentions, your motivations are critical to establishing what was behind your decisions that are now under scrutiny—firing Jim Comey, firing Michael Flynn, those things—and what his goals and what he was thinking when he did them will go to the heart of whether or not it was a crime.
One Saturday he reads something, and then he tweets about his wires being tapped by the Obama administration.Tell me that and its implications over that weekend.
This begins a panicked set of volleys of reporting everywhere about whether or not it is possible that Trump as a candidate was surveilled electronically.Everyone is, of course, in the reporting world extremely dubious about whether or not this has occurred, but with good reason sets out to find out if it’s true.
It is nowhere near true.However, it enflames a lot of Republican commentators, and it sets off a weekend of discussion about the possibility that a Clinton-Obama cabal that runs the intelligence community, that runs the FBI, again in the eyes of Donald Trump, had been spying on him personally, which did not happen. …
… It’s May.The president is extremely unhappy with Jim Comey’s testimony.What does Comey say?
This was multiple hours of testimony, and there's one sentence that Jim Comey says that the president, his head nearly explodes.You’ll remember that President Trump kept trying to get Comey to tell him privately that he was not under investigation; he himself, the president, was not under investigation.He’s only been president for five months, four months and some change, and this is what he wants Comey to tell him, and he is assured of it, actually, by Jim Comey in private meetings.He wants Comey to go public and tell everybody that he has assured Donald Trump he’s not the subject of an investigation.
And again, think about how startling that is so early in an administration, that a president is begging for the FBI director to tell people he’s not under criminal investigation.
Why is that so startling?
I've never seen a president, ever, under investigation or worried about being under investigation in his first four months in the presidency.That is what is so striking about the entire experience.Literally from day one, you can see why the president is enraged.He hasn’t even been able to enjoy a day in office without this cloud, this question about whether he is legitimately the president.Did the Russians install him?That's what he believes the FBI, the DOJ, the intelligence community is telegraphing over and over and over again.“You, Donald Trump, are illegitimate."And this is why it’s so important to him that Comey go public with this.
Now we go to the hearing in May.He is asked by a friendly Republican member, meaning friendly to Trump, “Director Comey, is the president or any member of the White House under investigation?"And Comey takes a beat, sits back and says—I'm paraphrasing—“Now, everybody, I don’t want you to make too much of this.I don’t want you to glean too much from my answer, but I'm not going to be able to get into that.I'm not going to be able to tell you."
And with that, the president watching on his television, throws down a book—well, actually it’s a series of documents that are formulated into a book, and the following weekend begins the plan to fire the FBI director. …
By the time they get to Bedminster, [N.J., site of Trump National Golf Club], Kushner is part, with [adviser] Stephen Miller, as we hear it, at least [engaged] in transcribing Trump's musings about how they should get rid of Comey.Can you tell me about Kushner's role, what we knew about it then, what its impact might have been on the president?
If you're going to understand this weekend in Bedminster, you have to remember who Jared Kushner is, and almost more importantly who his father is.Jared Kushner's father [Charles Kushner] went to prison convicted of money laundering, wire fraud, lying in an investigation in New Jersey, and that experience, as it would be for anyone, is searing.And now Jared is learning that his actions, especially with Michael Flynn, his interactions with various Russians, is under investigation as well, and whether he’s been honest about them and what was going on in those conversations.
He has to be reacting in part because of the experience of his own father and how painful that must have been, and he is on his father-in-law's shoulder pressing and urging that he fire Jim Comey, that things have gotten out of control and this is an investigation whose end they cannot see and that it is extremely worrisome.
[Chief Strategist] Steven Bannon, the person you would most expect to throw a grenade into the Justice Department or any federal agency, is strongly discouraging the president and telling him that this is going to be a problem.But Jared wins.Stephen Miller and Hope Hicks, the president’s communications director and trusted confidante, begin exchanging a series of emails and written texts about how they're going to explain Comey’s firing in the coming week, because they know that it’s going to happen.
Stephen Miller drafts a letter that the president is going to send to Comey explaining why he’s going to be fired.It is a rant, the original draft.Nobody’s original draft is that great, but this draft is Donald Trump unloading all of the reasons that Comey has failed him. …
Let’s bring Sessions and [Deputy Attorney General Rod] Rosenstein in, and maybe McGahn.… What happens?They’ve got this letter kind of cobbled together by [adviser Stephen] Miller, and Trump's vehemences are—
President Trump has dictated a fiery “I'm firing you” letter, almost like he's on The Apprentice.It's been soothed and cooled a little bit by his aides; it's been edited down.It’s already decided Comey is out, but what the president and Sessions now ask is for the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, who they know was very disappointed with Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton investigation, but most importantly his public announcement when deciding not to bring charges, they know how upset Rod had been at this, and they ask him to basically write a memo to the file about all of the ways in which Comey has violated the canon, crossed the prosecutor’s manual, done things inappropriately and to document that.
Is it an insurance policy they're putting in the vault that they’ll have this information?Or from what we can tell, is it going to be the casus belli, the reason that they do fire Comey?
It is going to be one of the supporting documents to say: “We have to fire him.Look, even the top levels of the Justice Department agree.It’s not just an angry president.It’s a considered opinion of the leadership that this man needs to go, that he has not served honorably and properly.He's not discharged his duty correctly."
From what you can tell, does Mr. Rosenstein know it?Does he know what its purpose is going to be?
There's great disagreement about this.Rod Rosenstein, based on our reporting, did not realize that this was going to be the way in which is material was going to be used.But this is a critical moment, because Rod Rosenstein’s reputation, 30 years of being a prosecutor, is now on the line.When it becomes known that the president is citing his memorandum as the reason for firing Comey, Rosenstein is blown away, and he actually calls Sessions and says, “I am going to resign if you keep saying this, if the president keeps saying this."
He later denies that he threatened to resign.But his entire career is about to explode, because everyone he's ever worked for or with is wondering one of two things: Did he do this to help the president conspire against the FBI director, or was he duped?Interestingly enough, all of this fear on the part of Mr. Rosenstein leads to the appointment of Bob Mueller. …
The chaos that ensues in the days right after Comey is fired is that [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov and Kislyak show up in the Oval Office the very next day.
Oy, that meeting.In a way, it, it, it, it’s, it’s like a play; you can't believe it really happened.But the president is essentially celebrating with the Russian diplomats that he’s gotten rid of his FBI director who was investigating them and investigating their connections to his campaign.And he said: “Whew, that's a load off.The pressure’s off now.That guy was crazy.I got rid of him."
A “nut job,” he says.
“That guy was a nut job.I got rid of him."The other bizarre thing that happens in this meeting, and why it is a classified transcript and so incredibly sensitive, is that the president veers off script.… He shares a piece of intelligence that puts a partner in jeopardy and should never have been shared with Russia or any other government.The two things together are sort of hard to believe.
What does it tell us about Donald Trump at this moment?
He’s cozier with them than with his own government.
What do you mean?
He views them as friends, but also people to boast in front of, to share his importance and the cool things that he knows.
When Rosenstein picks Mueller, how does it become Mueller, and what is the importance of it?
Rosenstein is in a bind.He looks like he's a patsy; he wants to solve that problem.He knows that Jeff Sessions is going to have to be recused from this investigation, because Sessions hasn’t told anyone, but he has met with Kislyak himself, and he has to pick an independent prosecutor to handle this case, as many other Justice Departments have done in the past, but he has to pick somebody that is so above reproach that no one’s going to complain, including Donald Trump.
He chooses a Republican, which is probably the right thing to do in that instance, but a person who served both administrations and is revered for being untouchable, so above the fray, above politics, and it’s Bob Mueller.All makes sense to people who watch the courts, watch law enforcement.All makes perfect sense.
There is one complication: The president had been interviewing him to be his FBI director, and just days ago.But that selection is celebrated on both sides of the aisle as a brilliant move, and talking heads and members of Congress go on air to say what a brilliant decision this is.
How does Trump feel about it?
Well, it depends on which part of this series of events, moment by moment.But initially he's fine with Mueller but furious that Sessions has recused himself.
I just have one other little part of it to ask you.Could you compare Mueller and Comey?How are they similar?How are they different?
I don't know that you'll care about this, but Comey is a person who has over the years been much more sensitive to his press and much more of a person interested in managing public perception of him, and Bob Mueller hasn’t cared one whit.
Yeah, people tell us Comey knows where the spotlight is, often speaking when it really should have been the attorney general in the Loretta Lynch case, and other things.Mueller will do anything to avoid a microphone.
I mean, there are amazing stories of Mueller literally seeing a reporter talking to one of his prosecutors and immediately ushering the reporter away and out of the room.That's how allergic he is to press.
Mueller compared to Trump?
How could you find two people more different?Though they are generationally linked, they’ve chosen completely different career paths and been guided by very different principles.Mueller—I'll try to think of a pithy way to say it.Bob Mueller's life has been guided by facts and right and wrong, no gray.Donald Trump's life has been guided by personal success, fame, adulation and fuzzying the facts.
And Mueller builds a hell of a team, I gather.
It's amazing when you compare the group that Donald Trump brought together to represent him, and you compare the group that Bob Mueller quickly set out to hand-pick to investigate the Russian hack, possible obstruction, the connections between Russian nationals and Trump campaign officials.The expertise of that group on Mueller's side is a century’s worth of knowledge on money laundering, on Eastern Bloc mobs, on bank fraud, on cybersecurity, on foreign intelligence.It’s a star-studded cast.
And you've anticipated my question, anyway.The Trump legal team?Now he really does lawyer up.
His first lawyer choice is Marc Kasowitz, who he’s known for a long time and has represented him for many years.Marc Kasowitz has virtually no experience and familiarity with this kind of investigation, and the president quickly concludes, as does Kasowitz’s partners, that he’s not the right fit for this position.
He then finds John Dowd, who does have a lot of experience.But as a sole practitioner representing the president in one of the most sprawling counterintelligence investigations, it’s not a very fair match.The president ultimately believes he is the best lawyer for himself, and he pressures and pushes his own lawyers to do his bidding despite the fact that it is not good legal advice that he’s giving himself.
There are others that he chooses largely because they're very good on television, and being a lawyer on television doesn’t really save the bacon.Jay Sekulow, a First Amendment lawyer and arch conservative who’s never represented anybody in a white-collar case.Lovely person, but not going to be the person that saves him in this instance.
His next choice is Rudy Giuliani, “America's mayor,” also a pugilist like the president.But as we've seen in his recent remarks, often imprecise about the facts and has not yet been able to articulate a real legal strategy.
It becomes obvious at some moment that the attorneys are not exactly telling the truth to the president.They're saying: “It’s going to wrap up pretty soon.Let’s give them what they want; let's play it straight."… But they are not exactly telling him the truth when they say it’s just around the corner, Thanksgiving, Christmas.
He had wanted to hire Ty Cobb as a personal lawyer, but Ty Cobb’s firm did not want him to represent the president personally.The compromise was that Ty Cobb was going to go inside the White House, work for the White House counsel’s office and help handle the White House response to the Mueller investigation.Ty repeatedly tells the president: “It's all going to be fine.We're going to give over these records.We're going to make our witnesses available.We're going to cooperate with a straight-up prosecutor who’s acting in good faith, and the part of the inquiry that's about the White House is going to be over as soon as we help them get everything they need."
That doesn't happen to the calendar that Ty sets out, but the president is hopeful because what is it that he wants?He wants desperately to get what he asked Comey to give him in the spring: This cloud is over; I'm not under investigation; it’s over.But there are a lot of complications that Ty doesn’t see.There's the fact that the investigators are learning new information all the time, and they want the president’s interview.They want to sit down with the president.Why?Bob Mueller tells John Dowd in a contentious March 5 meeting, “We need to know did the president have corrupt intent when he took the steps that he did."Sounds really interesting, “corrupt intent."John Dowd says to Mueller: “I'm not sitting my guy down with you.We're not going to do that."Mueller tries to calm him down, says: “You know, I just want to square my corners.I just want to know the president’s word, his intentions, his motivations.I need to hear it from him.And John, if you don’t give him to me, you know I can always subpoena him."
Well, this sets off fireworks, because John Dowd says: “Great.Subpoena us.We’ll go to the Supreme Court.We’ll be tied up in court for a year and a half.Do what you want to do, but you don’t have a case, and I'm not sitting my guy down with you."
And then Dowd leaves.
Then something unexpected happens.John Dowd believes he’s convinced his client not to do the interview; that quietly, behind the scenes, he’s calmed his client down.“You don’t have to fight; you don’t have to go on air.You don’t have to clear the air with this special counsel."But Ty Cobb is whispering in the president’s other ear: “The press is going to kill you.You've said there's nothing here; there's no collusion.You need to sit down.You can't look like you're hiding anything."
Ultimately, the president sides with Ty Cobb.There's a tense conversation.The president calls John, and John says: “I can't help you anymore.If you're not going to listen to me, I can't help you anymore."And the next morning, he resigns.
And then Cobb goes—
… So then Ty Cobb leaves.Two very important things have happened.What are they?Behind the scenes, the White House counsel, who disagrees strenuously with Ty about his cooperative stance, has convinced the president that they need somebody that's going to be more aggressive, somebody in the White House who’s going to be more protective of White House privilege, White House records, and that they need somebody with some impeachment experience.
He convinces the president to hire Emmet Flood, who has just that resume and who has represented President Clinton in the impeachment proceedings.Ty Cobb sees the writing on the wall.His enemy in the White House, Don McGahn, has brought on a friend to really spearhead the representation of the president from inside the White House.Ty Cobb’s days are numbered as being the number one adviser to the president on this issue.
Another thing has happened, which is that Michael Cohen’s home, office and hotel have been raided by federal agents in New York.Why is this important?Michael Cohen is, and has been, the president’s fixer, Donald Trump's personal lawyer before he was a candidate, and this has shaken dramatically the president’s belief that he should sit down for an interview.
Irony of ironies, the man who had recommended that he not sit down for an interview has resigned because the president wouldn’t agree with him, and now the president is like, “I don't think I'm going to sit down for the interview."Ty Cobb, again irony of ironies, who’s been recommending the president sit down for an interview, is leaving.And the president is on notice that it is very likely Robert Mueller is not going to charge him with a crime, but is going to write a report and refer it to Congress, and possibly recommend impeachment.
Flood is offense.He plays offense, so the White House counsel’s office, at least, is preparing literally to fight back?
Absolutely.Emmet Flood will be the quarterback of the White House strategy in stopping Robert Mueller from piercing the presidency.He’ll be the blocker to keep this from getting inside the House...
Does the president know all the details of what actually happened?Does he know about who the woman, the lawyer from Russia is?Does he know about the email?Has he had that kind of conversation with Donald Jr. from Air Force One to say, “Fill me in, son”?
As is often the case, the president believes he knows exactly what's going on and how this should be handled.But what he doesn't know is the detailed explosive documents that will contradict the statement that he has dictated for his son to give.It is infuriating in some respect to Donald Trump Jr. that he’s being told how to explain this, and he also thinks it’s worrisome for his father to be involved.
The lawyers for the president are losing their minds.They are not on Air Force One; they are not in Germany.They cannot reach the president, but they are hearing secondhand that a statement is about to be issued to The New York Times and that their client, without really realizing all of the material that going to eventually come out has sort of stepped in it.
What are the implications of this imbroglio?
On the hurricane scale, this is a 4 for the president’s lawyers.They're intensely concerned that the president has essentially now added to an obstruction case, because while it is not a crime to lie to The Washington Post or The New York Times, his effort to conceal this element, his effort to hide from the public that this was about dirt on Hillary that somebody from Russia was providing, helps establish his state of mind, that he may be conscious of something worth hiding and concealing that relates to Russia and the campaign.A prosecutor can use that, and it helps build a narrative when you go to court or when you write a report about a president eager to hide.
We were talking about how many different law firms have been approached by the president hoping to be able to get people from the firm to come be on the team.… Tell me a little bit about that.
What is startling about this episode when John Dowd resigns and the president has to find legal counsel, somebody with experience, is how many law firms and prominent lawyers and even midlevel lawyers that the president reaches out to, or his allies reach out to, and the immediate answer is, “Hell no."It's a polite “Hell no,” but the reasons are many.President Trump is a notoriously difficult client.He doesn't listen to his lawyers.Nobody wants to represent somebody at the top of their game when they're getting ignored.
As one lawyer who was approached said to me, “If you're really good at this work, you don’t need to build your reputation; you need to protect it.And working for President Trump endangers your reputation.He has sullied many of the people he’s come in contact with, and”—again, in the words of this lawyer—“nobody at the top of their game needs that."
As well, several lawyers told us that their clients, their prospective associates, their partners, strenuously objected when the subject came up of representing Donald Trump.And this is essentially what happened to Ty Cobb.He wanted to represent the president, but his firm said no.
Flood’s a pretty good choice.He’s lucky to get him, that's sort of what you're saying?
Absolutely.Emmet Flood is a star and knows what he’s doing, and the president will be lucky to have him and to keep him.
Can you just help me make sense of the Cohen moment?… What does it tell you about the larger narrative of what you've been following and you and I've just been talking about?
So we now know that Robert Mueller's team was looking at the finances of Michael Cohen and his relationship to the president and to Russia for many, many months, since at least the late summer or early fall of 2017, and ultimately concluded, based on what they found, that they had to kick this case to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York.We don’t know exactly the reasons, but you can make some informed guesses about why.
What they uncovered was that Michael Cohen had been making payments to Stormy Daniels in a strange way, and Stormy Daniels, a porn star—again, who would have thought we would be using this kind of phrasing to describe a presidential investigation?—but Robert Mueller's team found that Michael Cohen had been paying this porn star to keep quiet about her allegations that she’d had an affair with Donald Trump, and she was going to come out and tell this story during the campaign.
The central question becomes, was Michael Cohen illegally providing a contribution to the campaign of Donald Trump by paying off a porn star to stop a negative story that would, if not torpedo the campaign of Donald Trump, dramatically endanger it?
However, we're in Ken Starr territory now, because if Robert Mueller pursues a case about a porn star and payments to her, there will be absolutely a hue and a cry that he’s gone far, far outside the mandate of investigating a Russian hack and interference in the 2016 election.
The New York field office of FBI agents raids Michael Cohen’s home, office and hotel and seizes all of his phones and his laptops and also what we learn is when they made that raid, they intentionally were searching for communications between Donald Trump and Michael Cohen.
What's the importance of this case?Michael Cohen knows the secrets of Donald Trump.Michael Cohen’s office is full of those secrets.Michael Cohen is in significant legal jeopardy.He is the target of a criminal investigation looking at bank fraud, wire fraud, campaign finance violations.He's in serious jeopardy, and a person in serious jeopardy at risk of going to prison is a person very likely to begin to cooperate with an investigation, and ultimately, possibly, cooperate with Robert Mueller.
Let's just quickly tick down the list of what, since Mueller's come in, indictments, delivering warrants, things in front of a grand jury, just tick, tick, tick through [former foreign policy adviser George] Papadopoulos and all of them.
Since his appointment in May, Robert Mueller's team has indicted two Trump campaign advisers, including his former campaign chairman.His team has secured guilty pleas from two other campaign advisers, including his national security adviser.He's interviewed hundreds of witnesses, at least 40 of them who worked on the campaign or in the White House.And he's obtained—and this is only the part we know about; who knows what we don’t know about?—millions of pages of emails, texts and internal memos.
… He’s also charged a series of Russians in a troll factory in St. Petersburg with interfering in the election by penetrating Facebook with phony ads, phony news stories and creating phony Twitter handles and bots to convince American voters that when they were supporting Trump, there were a whole lot of other people behind them and a whole lot of other phony stories to suggest that Trump's claims were correct during the campaign.
And as you say, it’s probably just the beginning.
Right.There's an iceberg quality to Robert Mueller's probe, the part you can see.Every grand jury investigation has a kind of echo of the witnesses that are called in and the defense attorneys who whisper to their friends about what their client was asked.The top of the iceberg that we can see of this case is one that's intensely focused on the idea that the president obstructed justice.There is an enormous body of ice below us that we can't see that is about the Russian crime, the orders of Vladimir Putin during the election to send his missives out, to interfere, and tilt the election toward Donald Trump and away from Hillary Clinton.
That iceberg underneath also includes the many surveillance orders and all of the intercepts of conversations between key Trump campaign officials and Russians still to be named.A lot of this we're going to have to wait for.On obstruction, we may learn more earlier, but a lot of it we're going to have to wait to see what Mueller has divined.
… There's also been another prong to the attack, so it’s Fox; it's Breitbart; it's [Sean] Hannity; it's [host of Fox’s Justice with Judge Jeanine, Jeanine] Pirro; it’s [Rep.] Devin Nunes (R-Calif.); it's the Congress; it’s the committee; it's knocking down the federal—
You mean the group the president refers to as his “warriors”?This is, you know, the Fox News presidency.This is the president speaking through Fox and Fox speaking back to the president’s base, telegraphing worldwide what the president’s views are.
The warriors that he talks about on Congress are a group of conservative Republicans who believe the roots of this FBI investigation really began with Democrats gunning for Trump and hoping that Hillary Clinton would be the president, and if she was going to lose, they were going to do in her opponent and the victorious Trump.
* * *
Rod Rosenstein—he’s a pretty big figure in the film, so having your help in placing him at different points would be really useful.Rod Rosenstein calls the White House to let Don McGahn know that he’s appointing a special counsel.… Do you want to tell me a little bit about Rod making that call?
In many ways, Rod Rosenstein is in a horrible bind on that week, because his reputation and his career are really on the line.He is being excoriated by longtime DOJ alums and even questioned by close friends about why he wrote a memo to help allegedly fire Director Comey.Everyone can understand why Comey is under scrutiny for some of the ways he’s handled the Clinton investigation and his public comments that are out of line with DOJ rules, but nobody can understand why it looks like Rod Rosenstein is a patsy for Trump’s political goals.He essentially saves his reputation by appointing a special counsel, and that moment is pretty important in his repertoire. …
Let me ask you a little bit about a guy I referenced earlier, Marc Kasowitz.Trump brings Marc from New York down to Washington, and Marc comes with f his own set of experiences and his own worldview.And I just wonder, as a Washington observer, how someone like Marc is viewed, and specifically when he goes on the attack of accusing Mueller’s team of being comprised of 12 to 13 Democrats.
… There is an enormous culture clash when Marc Kasowitz, the president’s brash fighter, comes down from New York to Washington.The culture clash is between somebody who’s used to fighting with both fists and, especially in the media, and a white-collar, white-shoe Washington law firm, which is quiet and staid and does its work behind the scenes.
What’s really amazing is, usually when you're defending a client, you don’t go after the prosecutors.You try to make nice.You might argue with them behind the scenes, but you don’t fight with them publicly.And accusing Mueller’s team of being politically biased may not be smart.But it also may not be very effective.Kasowitz immediately ticks off other lawyers who are also hoping to defend Trump or Trump’s family.There is a lot of dissention about Kasowitz here, even among people that are fans of Trump, and they are pushing Trump to remove him from his team.
Trump wants to fire Mueller around this time, or at least these reports come out, and his good friend [Newsmax CEO] Chris Ruddy goes on NewsHour and suggests exactly this.Do you know much about this time period, and the threats that Mueller may be fired?
There was even concern within Mueller’s team that this was going to happen.There was a great deal of consternation after Chris Ruddy’s comments, public comments, but also the private comments that were being shared within the White House.… The president was also getting a good bit of advice that it would be foolhardy to do this, and eventually that argument won out.
Don McGahn: Can you give us a bit of back story on him?
… McGahn is very uncomfortable with some of the president’s requests and worried about what this will mean for the executive, but he doesn’t have a deep bench to rely on.And he hasn’t had a lot of experience in this.He ends up actually, during some of this period, consulting with a really unlikely person, and that’s a former White House counsel to President Obama, Bob Bauer.He really needs help in figuring out, how does he handle this client that’s problematic and also represent the office of the White House?
We talked to Bob Bauer actually.… He seems like a very different figure from Don McGahn, but I could see where he would place the call to ask for some advice.
Bob Bauer is one of the oldest Washington hands, I don't mean in age, but I mean in his experience.He’s advised Clinton; he's advised Obama; he advised Hillary Clinton; and now he's being asked by one of his Republican colleagues who’s representing probably somebody Bauer would consider an enemy for counsel—
<v GABRIELLE SCHONDER> What does it tell us about McGahn asking for—?You know, one of the big problems for the Trump administration—and McGahn’s situation symbolizes this—very few people have longstanding experience in government, period, not to say nothing of their experience in a White House that is a pressure cooker and is under investigation from “Jump."You can see how Don McGahn, with very little experience in this kind of law, finds himself wondering who can help him understand the guardrails, the boundary lines, and he doesn't have anyone below him or next to him to reach to.
This is a moment where the president starts peddling the line “witch hunt” and “no collusion” on Twitter publicly.… Fox News personalities Jeanine Pirro, Sean Hannity, really start undermining the investigators and the investigation.Congressional allies from the House also sort of peep up around this time.I wonder if you can help us understand what's this emerging strategy that we're seeing.
Around this time two things happen at once.One is there's an effort to create a message machine, at different levels—both in Congress, Republican allies of the president, friends of his in the conservative media and also the president's own lawyers—to communicate that the Mueller probe is tainted; that it's tainted by political bias; that there are numerous lawyers involved in it that donated some money to Hillary Clinton or to democratic causes; that there are people at the heart of this investigation that hate Trump by dint of the fact that they gave money to Democrats.That's one rallying cry.
It's not unusual for an executive to find friends to communicate that political message.George W. Bush's administration perfected this.However, what's unusual is the target, which is a team of investigators that have a really good track record, great careers, and their donations to Democrats are relatively minor.
One of the most comical things that comes up in the course of this effort to attack the Mueller team is there is a claim that Bob Mueller himself is compromised.The claim that we reported at the time was that Bob Mueller tried to cancel his membership in a Trump golf club and made a complaint about not getting his fees returned to him in a timely way.This was laughed off by the Mueller team fairly quickly.Even lawyers who were close to the Trump team were counseling: “Do not raise this point.Bob Mueller is not biased because he was once a member of your golf club."But Trump thought it was a great selling point and a great point in the media, and continued to encourage his friends to repeat it.
The Trump Tower meeting in June of ’16 that's revealed a year later, can you tell me, from Mueller’s point of view, how that meeting, the fallout is viewed from an investigative perspective?
… It's a nothing burger from Mueller’s perspective and legally, if candidate Donald Trump knew nothing about it, and no other part of the campaign really had any role in seeking information from Russians.It's a big deal if Trump knew about it, if he or any other campaign officials knew what was at the heart of the offer of dirt on Hillary, if they knew it had some tentacles back to the Russians and their intelligence service.
… How difficult is his case to make?
Ultimately Mueller's investigation into the potential collusion or coordination with the Russian government boils down to this: Are there members of Trump's inner circle and his campaign who worked in a conspiracy to gain information from a foreign adversary to help the election?There's no crime called collusion.There is a crime called conspiracy, and it's one of the easiest charges to make, but it's pretty tricky to say that members of this campaign knew a Russian adversary had special information, and they conspired with them to interfere and steal an election. …
… The Mueller investigation heats up in late July.There's the Manafort raid and the Papadopoulos arrest.Can you tell us about those two events?
The raid on Paul Manafort's Alexandria condominium townhouse is striking for several reasons.One, it infuriates Trump and his band of supporters, and also lawyers representing several people in the White House.They view this as unnecessary and brutal.The prosecutors raid homes all the time in search of evidence.They consider this a shot across the bow that was unnecessary and that Manafort and his lawyers would have turned over any information prosecutors seek.We don't know whether they would have turned over whatever information the prosecutors would have sought.
But that tells you in that moment that Mueller’s team is cranking on three critical people: Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and also Michael Flynn.In this period, we all knew that they were under investigation, but this tells you they are targets.They're no longer just people of interest.People that were scrutinizing the Manafort raid tells you he has a target on his back.
And George Papadopoulos sort of comes out of nowhere.It's not a name many of us had heard when that story breaks.
I might sound a little defensive on this point, if you don't mind, but The Washington Post wrote a lot about George Papadopoulos before he was arrested and before he ultimately pled guilty to lying to the FBI.He was an individual who was dismissed by the Trump administration as a very junior person with very little impact.However, he was introduced at The Washington Post by Donald Trump as one of his very first members of his foreign policy team as a candidate.
Papadopoulos had had this history in the campaign of reaching out repeatedly to his bosses and recommending a meeting between the campaign and Russian officials, Russian nationals.He said he could help arrange a meeting between Putin and Trump, that Putin's government was offering one.So he becomes this conduit for connecting the Trump world with the Putin world and probably makes more than a dozen efforts to do just that.
How significant is it for a figure like Papadopoulos to be cooperating with the Mueller team?
It's significant because he is in the campaign during this time period.He has all these unusual meetings in Europe, with Russian individuals who promise a way to connect the Trump world with the Putin world.So he is talking on a regular basis with people like Jeff Sessions, campaign officials like Sam Clovis, campaign officials like Paul Manafort, the chairman of the campaign.He has a window into the campaign and their interest in connecting with the Russians that few people can provide.
… Now we're going to jump to Michael Cohen.This is before we get to the searches, but just Michael as a figure.Who is he?What type of legal matters does he handle for the president?
Michael Cohen is a kid from Queens who talks tough and is intensely loyal to Donald Trump.People have said to me, Michael Cohen would have done anything for Donald Trump, and Cohen himself has said he would take a bullet for Donald.Within the Trump Organization, even before Donald is campaigning for president, there is some concern about Michael's methods.He's a fixer.He tackles problems.He goes at people and threatens them who threaten Donald Trump.He's done that with reporters who asked questions about embarrassing or humiliating moments.He has told people he will ruin them; he will hurt them.It’s not the normal way a lawyer speaks to reporters or to folks with information.And in the course of his relationship with Donald Trump, Trump really values him for exactly what he has been seeking in the White House: 100 percent gold-chip loyalty.
It sounds like you've talked to him a bit.Comes off as a pit bull, as an attack dog?
Absolutely comes off as a pit bull and an attack dog, and also as a genuine article, like he doesn't have a lot of subterfuge and puffery.He is who he is.You see what you get. …
Do you know much about his help on Trump Tower Moscow and how Trump begins to sort of depend on him for work in Georgia and work in Russia?
Yes.Michael connects with a fellow kid from Queens, Felix Sater, who together they work to try to get a Moscow tower, a Trump Tower in Moscow.It's one of Donald Trump's great dreams to have this.He had talked about it for two decades.Michael and Felix, but Michael specifically, wants to be the one that can deliver this for his boss, and works on it in late 2015, up until early 2016, while Donald Trump was campaigning for office.It’s kind of quiet under the covers, but it's something that Michael keeps pursuing.
Let’s talk about the day that the search warrants are carried out.So it's that morning.FBI agents go to Michael's hotel at the Loews Regency, his office at Rockefeller Center, his home that's going through renovations.Can you walk us through that day as you're observing it?
The raids take place that Monday morning, which happens to be a particularly busy Monday.In Washington, Donald Trump, as president, is supposed to be getting a series of briefings about a chemical weapons attack in Syria, and his generals and his national security firmament have gathered to give him this information.
But he gets a call that is relayed from Michael Cohen's lawyer, Steve Ryan, who says Michael's home, apartment and his office had been raided, and FBI agents have carted off multiple phones, computers, and boxes and boxes and boxes of records.The president hits the roof.Cannot believe this has happened, and actually starts to ask whether this was appropriate, whether this was legal.He gets the answer that yes, of course it was.
… The president is so enraged and obsessed with what's just happened that he can't keep himself from talking about it at a public briefing that he's supposed to be giving with his generals and national security staff about Syria.He opens the meeting by complaining about how disgraceful that it is for his lawyer's office to be raided by the FBI and what a witch hunt this is and how unfair it is.He repeatedly uses the words “disgrace, a disgrace."It's unclear what he thinks is disgraceful about it, other than it appears to violate, in his mind, a sacred privilege between a client and an attorney.
It seems like a real escalating moment for Trump, in which he becomes gravely concerned about this particular part of the investigation, in some ways more than the preceding months in which Mueller has been poking around.Why do you think that is?
A good friend and lawyer contacts Trump and warns him that the things Michael knows about Donald Trump could be very, very damaging to him, to his presidency; that Michael knows essentially many of Donald Trump's secrets.He knows about a series of embarrassing allegations which were tamped down or handled by Michael, and this leads to a series of questions, for the president, about women he had relationships with before he was a candidate.
There are a couple of deals, I believe you wrote about, that catch the eye of Mueller’s team.Can you tell us about what those are?
Do you mean about the bank fraud and wire fraud?
Yeah.
So the day that Michael Cohen's office and home and apartment are raided, I wrote a story that said, essentially, he was under investigation for bank fraud, wire fraud, and campaign finance violations.These alleged crimes, if proven, have to be spelled out in the search warrant for his premises, and the case sort of centers and hinges on whether or not Michael fabricated information to get loans and borrow money against his taxi medallions.It appears that he inflated the value of these taxi medallions over and over to get more money.
What does that have to do with Donald Trump?Nothing, but it definitely squeezes Michael Cohen, and it definitely presses him to answer critical questions that have to do with his role during the campaign.Bank fraud and wire fraud are very scary and very serious crimes.You can go to jail for a long time if convicted of them.But what's the third thing Michael Cohen is under investigation for?Campaign finance violations.And that's where we get to Donald Trump.Did he illegally provide Donald Trump with services that were never compensated to help Donald Trump shut down bad stories, negative stories about him during the campaign?
… Stormy Daniels as a case study for some of the campaign finance violations or potential.Can you tell us a bit about Stormy?
Stormy is at the center of a political maelstrom.She comes forward with claims that she had an extramarital affair with Donald Trump while his wife, Melania Trump, was married to him, and I believe was taking care of their five-month-old baby Baron.… Michael Cohen agrees to pay Stormy Daniels $130,000 as part of a nondisclosure agreement that she will not talk about this story, and Michael insists that he paid for it.Later, President Trump, when asked about it, says he doesn't know anything about the payment, and you'll have to ask Michael Cohen.As it turns out, the president later reveals through his new attorney that actually he compensated and repaid Michael for this payment for Stormy, and that he knew very much about the arrangement.
Why do you think he comes clean at this point?What's the strategy there to say, “I reimbursed Michael”?
It’s going to come out.It's going to come out as part of a court case that Stormy has filed.It is going to be revealed, and it's always better to tell your truth first, before it comes out….
What do you think the risks are to some of the evidence that's collected during the raids?I mean, the volume of documents, potentially, well, the mobile devices and different communications, but then also potentially audio recordings of telephone conversations.
As we reported at the Post, there were numerous recordings that Michael Cohen made with various people, unnamed, which were seized by the FBI in these raids.We’re told that some of these recordings include conversations between Michael and Donald Trump.Those could be useless; they could be a goldmine.We just don't know yet.
Ten days after the raid, Rudy Giuliani is hired, and there seems to be, as we've begun to speak about a new legal strategy, and there's a change in the way that the president's going to fight this.… Can you help us place Rudy on the legal team?
Rudy is hired after a month-long search for attorneys.After John Dowd quits as the president's lead lawyer, there's a fairly frantic effort to find him a new lawyer.And then the Cohen raid occurs, and there's great urgency to find the president representation, and Rudy is probably the big marquee name that eventually arrives to help.
There are other lawyers who joined, Martin and Jane Raskin, who have a lot more DOJ experience in the guts of representing somebody in a white-collar case.But Rudy takes center stage, not only because he's America's mayor and he's famous as a former U.S. attorney, but also because he's pretty good on TV. That's the role that Trump enjoys about Rudy Giuliani.He is out there fighting the narrative that there's any collusion, and he is accusing the Mueller team of being tainted and biased and repeating concerns about whether or not this investigation is really fair.
They view their courtroom as the press.
Correct, because Rudy is communicating directly to the base.He's not trying to win over Bob Mueller and his deputy, Mr. [James] Quarles.He's trying to represent the president in Iowa, in Wisconsin, in Texas, communicating to that base, “This thing is cooked."
Is it a midterm strategy?Do they have the election in their mind?
Giuliani references the midterms often in interviews with us and talks about the importance of making sure that Democrats don't take over the House and the Senate.He's been very clear that that will change the equation for the president if impeachment proceedings are recommended by Bob Mueller. …
Let me ask you a little bit about the congressional allies of the president that now start to participate in this drumbeat of this idea that Giuliani is putting out there, again, sort of undermining the investigation, the institutions in some cases.House Republicans especially, really sort of turn on the investigation.
… <v CAROL LEONNIG> There's a small, vocal, and, some would argue, rabid contingent of House Republicans, some of them quite prominent, who are beating the drum that this investigation is unfair and tainted against Trump in a fatally flawed way.They make this claim in several ways.And honestly, in some ways they're not wrong.A series of texts between an FBI agent who was a very senior counterintelligence agent indicate that he really did not want Trump to become president.He discusses that at length.That’s Peter Strzok.
The other claims they make are that the FBI appears to have inserted a spy into the Trump campaign.That's not entirely accurate, but it's not entirely inaccurate either.There was a person who was a CIA informant and FBI informant over the years who was employed essentially to try to brush up against Trump campaign officials during the campaign and see if they had some knowledge of the Russian effort to influence the election results and to help Trump get elected.They use these batons to beat on Mueller and his team in the public eye.They have some nice material.It's not entirely accurate.I mean, in [Rep.] Trey Gowdy’s (R-S.C.) case, this is a former prosecutor.These are folks that have incredible respect for investigators, the FBI, the Department of Justice.What's going on?
Oh, but there's a critical moment where Gowdy turns on House Republicans who have been making these claims, and Gowdy says he sees nothing inappropriate so far in the FBI's investigation.And he is the person that Devin Nunes has entrusted with actually eyeballing all of this classified information about the origins of the investigation.So a veteran prosecutor says, “Yeah, these things happened, but that doesn't mean the case is cooked."
If we can bring Rod Rosenstein onto the scene, … he becomes a figure that many of these Republicans really attack and threaten.
Rod is not providing them with what they view to be critical information about original sources on the investigation.No prosecutor turns over classified sources and methods in an investigation, particularly a counterintelligence one.But they excoriate Rod for not providing this documentation, and say that he is stopping their oversight work, their critical oversight role.And Rod's response is, “I'm going to need a steel of spine [sic] but that's my job, and I cannot tamper with this investigation just because Republican Congress members want to beat on it."
He offers access to some of the documents.He invites Devin Nunes over, I believe invites Trey Gowdy over to take a look at some of these.
Yeah.It's not enough for them, but yeah, he does do that.
But then later, Trey Gowdy attacks Rosenstein.He sort of says: “Hurry the investigation the hell up.You're dividing the country."
That's true.While not attacking the origins of the case like his colleagues did, Trey Gowdy continues to argue that this investigation is going on too long.That echoes an important point for Trump and his lawyers, who say that.John Dowd said this to me several times: “This is hurting the president's ability to do his job.You can't be under investigation from the day you're inaugurated forward and not be impaired." …
We’ve now talked about this emerging legal strategy that the president has developed over the last year in light of these different political events.But I wonder, longer-term, if we can kind of project for a moment, what are the costs to the institutions?What are the risks to the FBI, to the Department of Justice, to these independent investigators?
There's really great alarm within the Department of Justice alumni and within the group of folks who remain at the Justice Department, about whether or not they will be able to do their jobs without fear or favor, without interference from the White House counsel, and from the president himself.There are people who have left the Justice Department sobbing, because they're worried whether the institution is going to survive.
Of course we're going to have a Department of Justice.But if you have prosecutors feeling that they can't do their job or that they have to lie, which some believed they were asked to do, then you don't have the Justice Department anybody remembers.
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