The FRONTLINE Interviews

Jeffrey H. Smith

Former CIA General Counsel

Jeffrey H. Smith is a former general counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency. He has also served as general counsel of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and was designated by Sen. Sam Nunn to sit on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Iran/Contra Committee. He is currently a retired partner at Arnold & Porter, an international law firm.

This is the transcript of an interview with FRONTLINE’s Michael Kirk conducted on May 10, 2018. It has been edited for clarity and length.

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Trump’s Showdown

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Jeffrey H. Smith

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… When the four IC [intelligence community] fellows went in on Jan. 6, went into that room to talk to President-elect Trump about what they knew, [then-FBI Director James] Comey is carrying the Steele dossier.… What does walking into a room like that with the president-elect of the United States of America, especially this one, what do you figure those fellows are thinking, worrying about, trying to do, hoping for?Put me in that room with them, will you please?

Most of them, I'm sure, had never met the man before, so they were trying to take a measure of him.Would he listen to them?Would he ask good questions?How did he approach these issues?Did he understand the gravity of what he was being told about the threats we face and the Russian threat to our electoral process in particular?And they were hopeful, I believe, that the campaign bluster they had not seen on the campaign trail, they wouldn't confront it in that room.

Jim Comey has said he was dismayed that the president didn't ask those kinds of questions.I think it gave them all a chilling feeling that this was going to be a very different president who lacked utterly preparation for the job, as we have seen.

Can you imagine Comey, experienced investigator and prosecutor, very capable attorney, controversial figure for what he’d done about the Hillary Clinton email, handing that hot-potato dossier over to President-elect Trump in the privacy of the room?You're there alone with the man.Put yourself in Comey’s [place] and tell me what you think was happening.

I can only imagine that he was thinking: “I'm going to do this man a favor, although he doesn't appreciate it.He doesn't understand the importance of knowing what's out there, and my job is to convince him that one of the jobs of the FBI is to come and tell him unpleasant things.I have to just straighten up and do it, and I just have to hope that he appreciates what I don’t expect him necessarily to appreciate it at the time, but I hope he’s a smart enough person and a wise enough person to understand that these are things he needs to know."I take it from Mr. Comey’s subsequent remarks that that's not what happened.

In fact, it doesn't take very long for President-elect Trump to say: “It was a shakedown.Comey was here to exert leverage on me."What does that tell you about the future of this administration and the rule of law?

It tells me that he brought to the office no real understanding of our system; that he didn't understand the role of the president; he didn't understand the rule of law.He had operated as a real estate developer and a superb salesman.He had been dealing with zoning boards in Atlantic City and local councils in Scotland to build golf courses and banks to borrow money, and he had no genuine appreciation of what he was getting himself into.

Probably the people from the senior levels of the intelligence community who met with him thought, “This is going to be very difficult to educate him as to what his responsibilities are and the consequences of his words and his actions,” because he had no instinctive feel for it the way all of his predecessors have had.

… When you look back, we can go back to his dad, Fred the builder, his interactions with [New York Mayor] Abe Beame and others in politics in New York and the local level as they grew up, the influence of Roy Cohn, the ongoing surrounding of himself by attorneys whenever anything occurred as a sort of natural response—but a certain kind of attorney, not you, not Jim Comey, not eventually [Special Counsel] Bob Mueller, a different kind of attorney.What kind of attorney?

This is like someone playing amateur AAA ball and suddenly finding himself pitching the seventh game of the World Series.He had no idea.He had never been in this league before.He had never confronted issues at that level.He was just utterly unprepared and seemed not to understand what was happening, or the significance of all of this.Consequently, he reacted as he always has, which is to counterpunch, to take what Roy Cohn had taught him about how to behave in the world of New York City social life and real estate, and that's not the way to govern a great democracy.

… Let’s walk just through a few of them, and you can tell me what the warning signs are from things that he does.On Jan. 22, two days after the “carnage in America” inaugural, he calls Comey across the Blue Room—Comey’s trying to hide in the drapes, according to Comey—and shakes his hand and tries to pull him in and whispers in his ear before the cameras.What's the president doing there?

He’s trying to co-opt him.He’s trying to effectively say, in the guise of recognizing Comey in the midst of law enforcement officers, which is a noble thing to do, he appears to be engaged at the same time in an effort to say: “Walk over here, Mr. Comey.You now work for me.You owe your allegiance to me as your liege and master."That's what I took away from that little vignette.

I think that's the way he has treated a lot of people, because that is how I believe he thinks a president should be treated, and it gets to the issue of this expectation of unfettered loyalty.That's what he expected, and I think that's what he was trying to elicit from Jim Comey, as well as to demonstrate to everybody else that you come to me; I don’t come to you.

Another window into how he feels about the way the process works, from his point of view, [then-National Security Adviser Mike] Flynn is in a lot of trouble.Sally Yates knows it.Comey has an intercept.He says to Acting Attorney General Yates: “We have an intercept.He's lying."They send a couple of FBI agents over there to the White House.They interview him; they catch him in the lie.She's armed with this, goes up to see [White House Counsel] Don McGahn and say[s]: “You have the national security adviser of the United States of America sitting here.He’s vulnerable."Doesn’t say what to do about it.“He's vulnerable."She assumes now it will get taken care of.

It takes 18 days before The Washington Post writes a story and he gets fired.What does that tell us?

I'm not too terribly troubled by the 18 days.It was early in the administration.They couldn’t figure out what to do, so they did nothing.I would like to have seen it done much sooner, but picture yourself in that early administration.They had very little idea what they were doing.There were very few experienced professionals around the president, so I'll give them a little break on the 18 days.It probably should have been sooner, but I'm not too terribly troubled by the delay.

That is on Jan. 27, when Yates goes up there.That afternoon, the travel ban has been initiated.She's the acting attorney general; she doesn’t know it’s coming.She doesn't even hear about it until she, I think, reads it in The New York Times or somebody calls her and says, “Look at the Times’ website."She checks her iPad.And that night, it’s dinner for two, President Trump and Comey, in the Green Room , I think.And at that dinner he says, “I want a pledge of loyalty."When you hear that, what do you hear?

You have to, in circumstances like that, you have to try to see it as a teaching opportunity.I have no idea what I would have said, and I would like to think I would have had the diplomatic skills and the courage to say: “Mr. President, let me talk to you a little bit about your responsibilities and the rule of law and what my responsibilities are as director of the FBI and why it’s in your interest to not interfere.Presidents don’t interfere for good and sufficient reasons, because they’ve gotten in trouble every time they’ve tried to do it, and it’s not a good idea for you to do it."

I don't know that would have worked, and I don't know how skillful I would have been at trying to convey that message.But given what I’ve found in circumstances like that is giving examples where presidents or others have failed because they didn't understand and they stepped over the line helps, because nuances of lines of authority, and the FBI does this and you do that—I'm not sure that would have had an impact on the president.But if he had said, “This is what got Nixon impeached,” maybe that would have stuck.

He instead finds himself having to agree with the president on “honest loyalty."

Yeah.It's easy to say, again, what I found in circumstances like that, it’s always a good thing to say, “You know, you make a very good point, Mr. President, [and] I understand why you think that way, but let me give you a conflicting view."Edward R. Murrow used to say when somebody would say something to him outrageous, he would say, “Well, you may be right,” and some way of not immediately challenging the president, but finding a way to say to him: “This is not in your interest.It’s not in the country’s interest, and it will come back to bite you, and here's an example."That's the only way, in my experience, the only way to handle those things.

… From what you can tell, what does [the president] mean by loyalty?

Well, I've worked on Capitol Hill, and I've worked with a lot of elected leaders.They do expect a degree of loyalty, but it’s not the kind of loyalty that I think Mr. Trump was talking about: loyalty in the sense that you won't go out to the press and badmouth your boss after you’ve just had a discussion with him; that you'll be discreet; that you'll be respectful; that you understand he is the president or he is the secretary of state of the secretary of defense, and you have an obligation to faithfully work with that individual and not undermine him.

I think what President Trump has in mind is a very different kind of loyalty and a dark version of loyalty, one that says: “Above all else, you will work for me.You will protect me.You will be my servant.All this other stuff about the rule of law, that's fine, but you’ve got to understand your job is to protect me, just like Roy Cohn protected me and Michael Cohen protected me.That's what I want you to do."

That's not at all a proper form of loyalty.That's a very destructive and undemocratic form of loyalty.

It doesn't take very long for the president to deliver a kind of demonstration project about what happens if you're not loyal, and that is, he fires Sally Yates.

Well, that's true.And Sally Yates’ stock has increased as a result of having been fired by the president.By that I mean her standing among lawyers, her standing in the country has, in my judgment, increased because of an act of integrity at a time of difficulty.

What were the implications, do you think, to the public and to the Justice Department rank and file, the lawyers, the other people who work there, when this quickly—I understand Sally was temporary anyway, but when this quickly the president removes her?

It's very destructive.We are a government of laws, not men.But it’s men and women who execute those laws, who make the Constitution real.And when the president attacks individuals who are carrying out what they believe to be their constitutional responsibility, and he does so in the pre-emptive and public way, that undermines their effectiveness.It shakes them to their core, and it makes them feel bullied.And they will pull back a little bit, try to keep their heads down and do their job.But at the same time, they're going to dig in even harder to do their job because they have faith in their institutions of justice; they have faith in the courts; and they're going to just dig like the dickens to make sure that the rule of law survives, because I think pretty quickly, a lot of people in the Department of Justice and in the FBI felt that this was a very different kind of president and he had a different view of the rule of law, a different view of the role of law in our society.These career people, many of whom I know and have worked with for the 40 years I've been in Washington, have said: “We're not going to let this happen.He is the president, and we will do what he says, but there are limits, and we are going to do all we can to carry out what we think is appropriate.But when it isn't, we will say so."

Sally Yates said, “We're not going to enforce this order,” and that was a courageous thing to do.And he fired her.But the next person to step up probably would do the same thing.

Do you know Comey?

Not well, but yes, I know him.I've been on a commission with him, and we've seen each other occasionally.I do not know him well.

Your sense of him?

A man of great rectitude who believes in his soul in the rule of law and in the Constitution.One can criticize what he did with respect to Hillary Clinton, but I do not criticize the genuine motive he had, which was he saw [that] as the right thing to do at the time.And I am not going to criticize him for that.I think he is a man of great rectitude, and time will, I think, prove that as history unfolds.Jim Comey will be seen as a man of great courage and integrity at a time when the nation needed it.

[Attorney General] Jeff Sessions?

Don’t know him.

Reputationally?

I'm not sure I know enough to answer that.

Comey finds himself alone with the president again in the Oval Office.The others leave; [Jared] Kushner leaves; Sessions is shooed out.He sits there.This is after the firing of Mike Flynn.President says: “Good guy.Hope you can see your way clear,” or whatever he says, “to let this go."You're a lawyer; you're sitting in that seat.What do you hear when the president says that?

I'd say: “Mr. President, I can understand why you think that, but my job is to enforce the law and to investigate, and I appreciate what you've told me, but I can't do that.We have to continue to investigate.It’s our obligation to continue to investigate.It’s really up to the attorney general to decide whether to prosecute, and we really should not be having this conversation without the attorney general present."

And Comey, I think, says that he wishes he had said something like that.Of course, anytime these things come up, it's so easy to look back and say, “I wish I had said this,” or, “Had I been there, I would have said that."But you know, the Oval Office is a very intimidating place, and the attorney general has just been shooed out of the room, and there's probably a brief conversation of a minute or two.It’s hard to criticize Comey for not saying more, and I think Trump was behaving just like he behaved when he was trying to close a real estate deal, by peeling off one of the other partners, potential partners, and saying something to them in private that he thought would close the deal.

That's what he thought he was doing.But when you're president of the United States and you're talking to the director of the FBI about a criminal prosecution, you cannot do that.

But if you do, you can understand how unbelievably hard it would be to look that man in the eye, especially that man, and say, “No."

It’s courage.It’s profiles in courage.I mean, I'm a graduate of West Point, and we had hammered into our heads all those years ago, 50-some years ago now, the Cadet Prayer, which was “[Make us] to choose the harder right [instead of] the easier wrong and never [to] be content with a half truth when the whole can be won."And that's hard to do, but that's what we have to expect of our most senior leaders, not only the career people but frankly the elected ones.Truth is hard, but in the end, we have to adhere to truth, because if we proceed down the road of lies and falsehoods, ultimately we fail.

Comey goes back to the Justice Department and sits down with Sessions—he talks about it in his book—and says: “You can't leave me alone with this guy.Your job—you cannot leave, as the attorney general, cannot leave the director of the FBI alone with the president of the United States."And he says in his book, Sessions just looked at the table, and his eyes darted back and forth a lot.What kind of a pickle is Jeff Sessions in as attorney general at this moment?… <v JEFFREY H. SMITH> I don't know Sen. Sessions, but I do know that the role of Cabinet officers is to insulate the professional people from inappropriate political interference.…The job of the attorney general is to insulate the FBI from inappropriate political interference, and I can only imagine that at that moment, Sessions realized that he did not do what was expected of him.I think he is smart enough and savvy enough to understand what his responsibilities are.The question is, does he have the spine to do it?[On the attorney general], … the president of the United States, of course, this president and every president, says: “I want Bobby [Kennedy].I want my brother Bobby over there.I want a fixer over there; I want an enforcer over there.I want him to protect my back.…” <v JEFFREY H. SMITH> Well, the difference with Bobby Kennedy is he could say to the president, “Listen, Jack, this is a terrible idea."The question is whether the current attorney general or any attorney general can say that to the president unless he or she has independence of intellect, mind and soul.And if you don't have that, then you don’t have, in some ways, the most critical element of the job.Trump at this time, of course, realizing that he doesn't seem to be able to put the squeeze on Comey, decides to counterattack, you could say a counterattack on the rule of law.Fox News, tweets, press conferences, “fake news,” “Stormtroopers”—all these words start to come out, and many of them are hurtled at the Justice Department and by extension, and even directly at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.… To what effect, do you think?

Initially I think people brushed it off as inappropriate and still in the campaign mode.There is a tendency, a practice in the bureaucracy to give the president plenty of running room at the beginning and to excuse a lot of rookie errors.I think that's good; it's appropriate.But this began to take on a darker tone and a more troublesome tone over time, and it begins to sink in, And by now, all of these attacks on the FBI, and you may want to talk about that later—

I will.

—but in the initial days, what it signaled [to] the FBI is that we have a very different kind of president, and we are going to have to figure out how to deal with him.The same thing was going on in the intelligence community, by the way: “How do we deal with this president?He doesn't listen to facts.He has his own view about what's going on in the world, and we're having a hard time getting through to him that some of the things he thinks are true aren’t true."

But in the law enforcement community, they began to worry about their own ability to do their job.And when Comey was fired, it was a terrible shock.

… I talked to a couple of FBI agents yesterday, and they said that what lit them up is when Trump said his wires had been tapped by the Obama administration.They just, given everything that had been decades of cleaning up the FBI from the Martin Luther King moments … with FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] and everything else, how hard it is to surveil, they all said, “Oh, my God, this is just dead wrong, and what are we going to do about it?"Apparently Comey himself was apoplectic about the allegation.

I had the same reaction, which was it was just political balderdash, and grasping at something and wanting it to be true because it gave him the ability to make irresponsible statements and criticize the FBI and Obama.It was highly inappropriate; it was wrong.But my guess is if you asked him today, he still would think it’s true.

Comey’s argument was, according to the FBI agents who were highly ranked, was to go into the top levels of the Justice Department and say: “You have to release a statement that says this is wrong.The president is wrong.We have never done this, and we're not doing this anymore.We didn't do it to him.It’s very hard to get a warrant,” da, da, da, da.But the Justice Department, of course, refused to do it.The effect on people?

I can only speculate that the view was, does the Department of Justice have our back, and are they going to find a way to talk about domestic surveillance for national security purposes in a way that doesn’t compromise legitimate activities, but at the same time makes very clear to the people that we were not wiretapping the president-elect.

And the absence of a very clear statement—and there are a lot of complexities that would have had to go into that.For example, was there incidental collection of somebody on the campaign, and would that be considered wiretapping even though they weren't the target, and so on?We were collecting against foreign targets in this country.You can imagine lots of reasons why people could wring their hands and say, “Well, if we start down this road, we’ll never be able to fully answer, and then people will be suspicious, so we won't do anything."But the absence of a clear response that the American people could understand bothered the bureau, to be sure, and I think they were right to worry.

So by March, Comey is finally allowed by the Justice Department to testify and say there is an investigation.It’s an open investigation.It’s looking at this and that and this and that and the relationship of the Trump campaign to the Russian spying.It drives the president crazy.He really thinks of it as the Russian cloud over his presidency.He hires attorneys.He’s got [John] Dowd; he’s got [Ty] Cobb.He’s got everybody doing the best they can, and Dowd and Cobb are saying to him: “Don’t worry.This is going to go away.Let's just get into some production and send stuff out."

Talk to me for a little bit about the challenge of keeping President Trump in the box to the extent that you can for those attorneys as they were trying to keep the lid on.

We've all had difficult clients, and it’s hard.I think this president, as a client, would be one of the most difficult assignments any attorney would ever have.First of all, there's the issue of the truth.He doesn't seem to want to listen to things that make him uncomfortable.Secondly, he is so superbly confident of his own judgment.I mean, after all, he won the presidency when nobody thought he could.He survived four bankruptcies; he’s built this great company, in his own mind, and “Why should I listen to these people who are telling me things?I know what I'm doing."

To a lawyer, that's just a disaster, because experienced white-collar lawyers know how to deal with a client who’s in the crosshairs.And President Trump is a perfect example of what not to do when you're the subject of an investigation.He is repeatedly saying things and doing things that is digging the hole deeper for himself, and his attorneys appear to be unable to stop him.

There's an argument among those who are closest to him, especially his son-in-law, Mr. Kushner, finally, by early May, that they get rid of Comey.A step that everybody in February said would never happen is not only possible but necessary, even in political terms.[White House Chief Strategist Steve] Bannon, of course, is saying absolutely not, but McGahn is aghast at the idea that this would happen.

Comey, I'm certain, thinks about it but doesn't think it will really happen to him.… The meaning and consequences of the firing of Jim Comey in our rule-of-law conversation?

It is hard for me to conclude that he fired Comey for any reason other than to try to shut down an investigation of himself and his family.I can see no other reason why he did it.And all of these other explanations, they ring hollow, and they're not true.Why did he want to fire Comey?What was he trying to cover up?Did he know something he had done?Was he worried about things his family had done and he just didn't want the FBI looking into them?And he foolishly thought that firing Comey would make that go away?

If it did anything, it just made him look more guilty and made the ranks of the FBI say: “He fired our director because we were investigating him?Let’s put 10 more agents on this, and find me the 10 best agents out there, and we're going to go find out what's going on."I think in many respects, that's exactly what's happened.

And the word and the worry that you have … about the message being sent to the American people, especially his base, represented by the firing of Comey?

It’s a disaster, and it’s gotten worse over time.Every time he talks about corruption at the highest levels of the FBI, every time he personally attacks individual FBI special agents by name or FBI attorneys by name, he just undermines the reputation of the FBI, which is critical.We've seen instances very recently where defense counsels have said in jury trials to the juries: “You can't trust this FBI agent.Even the president of the United States says the FBI is corrupt."We have seen jurors in the course of jury selection who say they don’t trust the FBI because the president has said they're corrupt, and they listen to Sean Hannity [on Fox News], and the FBI is corrupt.

Now, that's a sizable portion of the country that believes that.How can we have an enforcement of our laws if the premier law enforcement agency of the country is not respected by the people because the president says they're corrupt?Moreover, think about how our partners around the world view the FBI. If the FBI gets a lot of its information from their liaison services in Europe and elsewhere around the world, Trump's not very popular in those countries.

If we go to a country and we need, let's say, information from the German national police, Trump's not popular.The German police, the German political leadership may say: “Gee, the president of the United States says the FBI is corrupt.Why should we give them this sensitive information we have about an investigation?"

It has very dramatic and dangerous consequences for our law enforcement agencies and for the security of the nation.And Trump, in my judgment, is doing it solely because he is trying to protect himself and his family from a legitimate criminal investigation.

When [U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod] Rosenstein selects Robert Mueller III as a special counsel, what did you think when you heard that?

I thought it was brilliant.I don't know Mueller, but his reputation was on par with Jim Comey’s, if not even better.I mean, this is a Marine combat veteran who rose to be one of the most effective U.S. attorneys and directors of the FBI in our history, a man of unquestioned integrity, very experienced, very smart.And he assembled a team of some of the very best prosecutors and investigators in the Department of Justice very quickly because he knew what he was about to undertake, and he wanted people who had handled the most difficult cases both factually and legally over the last decade.He knew a lot of them, and that made it so much easier for him to put together this team that I think will eventually get to the bottom of what's going on.We're beginning to see it almost daily with the effectiveness of Mueller's investigation and the seriousness of the investigation and where it’s taking us.

… What are the dimensions, and what are the stakes in this contest?

The stakes are enormously high, and they're getting higher each day as the Mueller investigation proceeds and gets closer and closer to the president and the people immediately around him.We don’t know where this is going, but I can think of no person in this country or no group of people that I would rather have in charge of it than Bob Mueller and the people he has assembled.

There are two aspects of this case.One, of course, is the criminal investigation, and that I think we're seeing a lot about.But the other responsibility that Mueller and the FBI have is the counterintelligence dimension of this.That is to say, what happened here?What are the consequences for our national security of the Russian interference in our election, and not necessarily what can be done about it—their job is to find facts, but in finding the facts, what did the Russians do; how did they do it; and, to the extent one can determine, what were the consequences of what the Russians did?Then it’s up to the Congress and the intelligence community and the Defense Department to figure out how to counter that.So there are really two aspects of Mueller, and we should keep our eyes on both aspects.

So if he’s marching along in his direction, Trump never a guy who goes lightly, loves to call himself a counterpuncher, he’s got a strategy, too.“I can't fire Mueller; the attorneys have said you just can't fire your way out of this."So there's a kind of two-pronged attack.He’s ramped up the Fox, Breitbart, Jeanine Pirro [of Fox News’ Justice with Judge Jeanine], Hannity coming after them, I mean, really coming after the FBI now.[Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew] McCabe, boom.Just boom, boom, he’s really coming hard, I think trying to break them down just to, as you suggested already, to diminish their credibility in this society.Justice Department, too.So that's phase one.Let's talk about that.

That's really tragic, because in an effort to try to save his own skin and that of his immediate family and supporters, he’s damaging the premier law enforcement agency in the world and the Department of Justice, which is the finest ministry of justice certainly that I know.The consequences for the American public in the long run are significant.If the American people lose faith in those two institutions, it will take years to rebuild them.Think of the damage done by Watergate and how long it took the American people to have faith in their government, and many never recovered that faith because of what President Nixon did.

This is very, very serious.Now, I've known a lot of young lawyers who have gone into the Justice Department.They're very enthusiastic.They're committed to the rule of law, and I admire that.But over time, this is destructive not because of the people in the Department of Justice, but the trust that the American people has in them.Once you destroy that trust, even in a sizable majority , it's very hard to rebuild, and the consequences are terrible.

… I just want to ask you something about Watergate.You're old enough to remember, to know about it.

I was here.

I'm sure.I was watching it on a TV set in Idaho, but it was in there somewhere.In what way does this resonate with you?Everybody talks about Watergate; everybody talks about Nixon.You are somebody who can help us understand the differences, the distinctions, the stakes, the relevance, the whatever, Watergate and whatever you want to call this.

It has the same feel to me.It has the same rhythm of unfolding events one after the other, each one of which seems worse than the one that preceded it, and ultimately tells me that this presidency is not sustainable.I do not see it having a good end.I do not think it will come easily, and I worry about the consequences of how all of this plays out.No one can be sure where it’s headed, but I do not see it ending well.

I was a young army JAG officer in the Pentagon during the Watergate episode, and as it began to deteriorate, even as a captain, I could feel it in the Pentagon that the commander in chief was coming unmoored.One would hear things around the building, or you would see things in the newspapers.I was working in the secretary of the army’s office, and my immediate boss was the deputy undersecretary of the Office for International Affairs, a career foreign service officer, a career ambassador.

He called me into his office a few days before Nixon resigned, and he said: “Jeff, I'm not supposed to show you this, but it’s important.I want you to see it."And he showed me a cable from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the field commanders saying, “If you get an execute order from the national command authority,” meaning from the president of the United States, “do not carry it out unless you get confirmation from me and the secretary of defense that it’s a genuine order."

I had to read this a couple of times to appreciate what I was looking at.But it has never left my mind.It's as clear as it was yesterday, sitting in that office reading that cable, that these were the institutions of government who were saying, at that terrible moment, that we have a responsibility to carry out our duty, and if the president is going to try to do something that is a disaster, we're not going to do it.

You had said this will end badly; this will be a difficult ending, or whatever you said, Jeff.What do you mean by that?

Nobody can be certain, but let’s play this out just a little bit.We don’t know what Mueller's going to find.We don’t know whether he will seek to indict the president.We don’t know where that is headed, but as a political matter, I think there has to be some kind of a tipping point where the facts are so overwhelmingly bad that the president’s ability to govern is impaired, his ability to respond to a foreign crisis if he’s facing the prospect of criminal prosecution or impeachment here.

If the Democrats take the House in November and they do move to impeach him, which I think will happen pretty quickly, then it goes to the Senate.Will the Senate find the necessary two-thirds vote to convict him?I don't know, but it’s probably doubtful.If that happens, I could envision a wounded president stirring up crowds either directly or through surrogates that are out there, and I can see people in the streets protesting the impeachment trial in the Senate, and I don't know whether it would get violent, but this is a president who has encouraged violence during the campaign.His reaction to Charlottesville was chilling.

When he holds rallies and points to the press and says, “The press is dishonest; it's all fake news, and the press is the enemy of the people,” and people in the audience cheer him, my blood runs cold.I hope none of that ever happens, but we have to think that these are possibilities, and it is incumbent upon the elected leadership in this country of both parties to be very, very careful as this unfolds and stick to the rule of law.Our democracy is preserved by the process of law.We have mechanisms to resolve these things.We have impeachment in the Congress; we have reports; we have separation of powers.We have 230-some years of governing ourselves.

Every time we've been through a national crisis, our institutions have responded well, and our democracy has become more perfected as a result.Civil War gave us the Emancipation Proclamation [and] the 14th Amendment.World War II gave us the U.N.; it gave us the beginnings of the integration of the armed forces and the beginnings of the civil rights movement.Watergate gave us a lot of reform and law that is good.

Will this crisis also produce changes in our law that make us a more perfect union?That remains to be seen.

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Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation

Koo and Patricia Yuen

Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding is provided by the Abrams Foundation; Park Foundation; the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen. FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. Web Site Copyright ©1995-2025 WGBH Educational Foundation. PBS is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.