The FRONTLINE Interviews

Peter Baker

The New York Times

Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, where he covers President Trump. He previously covered President Barack Obama for the Times, and presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton for The Washington Post.

This is the transcript of a three-part interview with FRONTLINE’s Michael Kirk and Jim Gilmore conducted on May 9, July 11 and Aug. 10, 2018. It has been edited for clarity and length. An asterisk indicates the start of a new interview.

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Trump’s Showdown

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We’re going to start this film in the most obvious place, which is the Jan. 6 [2017] meeting of the four Intelligence Community leaders [Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers] rolling in to talk about Russia and eventually deliver the dossier.Take me there. …

You couldn’t make it up, right?Fiction wouldn’t quite capture it.No, it was an extraordinary meeting you had of the top intelligence agencies sending their [then-]directors to meet the president-elect, a person who had not shown great interest in their work before, to kind of give him not just a tour of the horizon, which is important, but to really make sure he understood what was going on with Russia in particular; that this had been a calculated effort on the part of the Kremlin to interfere in the election, and it was directed particularly by Vladimir Putin.It was not a rogue operation; it was not people taking things on their own.It was ordered up by the president of Russia as an effort to sway American voters, and not just to disrupt things, but eventually to actually change the outcome to favor one of the specific candidates, that being Donald Trump.

You'd imagine how sensitive this would be.They're going in to tell him, basically, his election, his own victory, was tainted to some extent, and he took it that way.I think he took it as an assault on his legitimacy, and that would flavor his reaction to this whole Russia probe from that day forward; that the Russia probe, in his mind, was not an investigation into a threat to national security.Instead, it was actually a threat to him because it questioned the very basis of his presidency.

Who was that Donald Trump standing there?How experienced was he…?What did he think of those people before they even opened their mouths?

We forget, but Donald Trump is the first president we've ever elected who had not a day of experience in either government or the military, not one day.This is a leap of faith on the part of the American public to put somebody in there who had zero experience in the kinds of issues that he was then being confronted with on that day.His experience, of course, had been in business; it had been entertainment.He was a salesman.He put on a good show, but he had zero background in evaluating complicated intelligence and figuring how to turn that into policy that would protect the United States. …

Let's talk a little bit about the thing that was burning a hole in Comey’s briefcase and what he was there to actually deliver.

The intelligence chiefs talked among themselves beforehand about how to let the president-elect know about this dossier, this collection of opposition research on him, much of which hadn't been verified but was salacious and had been spreading around Washington.They knew that journalists had it; they knew it was very possible that it was about to become public, and they wanted to give him a heads-up.They wanted to tell him what they knew about it.

They came to the decision that they would have Jim Comey be the one to actually tell him about it; that Comey would stay around after the briefing and take the president-elect aside and talk to him one-on-one, because the others were going to be leaving.The others were Obama appointees who were shifting out—the CIA director, the director of national intelligence.Comey was going to stay on as the FBI director.They have a 10-year term.He wasn’t supposed to cycle out simply because you had a new president.

Since he was going to be the one with the continuing relationship with the president, they decided he would be the one to deliver the news.You can only imagine how Jim Comey thought of that.That's not exactly like winning the lottery.He was suddenly tasked with telling the president of the United States that there was a document out there describing the most lurid of scenarios involving prostitutes and so on.That had to be the most uncomfortable conversation any FBI director has had with a president in a long time.

And describe the Comey that walks in that room and sits, or stands, face-to-face with Donald Trump.

The Comey who’s in this room is somebody who had been himself at the center of the election, at every point along the way; arguably, perhaps the decisive one.He had been in charge of the investigation [into] Hillary Clinton's emails.He gets up in July of 2016 and says he’s not going to recommend charges against her, but he excoriates her handling of classified information.Both sides end up objecting to the way he handled that.

He returns in October, days before the election, to say we're reopening this because we've discovered new emails we hadn’t seen before and then days later says, “We've decided those emails are not relevant."[Comey] has been at the middle of this election and arguably is the person who most significantly influenced it other than the candidates themselves.

So when he sits down with Donald Trump, this is not a fresh relationship; this is somebody that Donald Trump is looking at who played a great role in getting him elected.Some people in the Hillary camp would tell you he was the one who got Donald Trump elected.

How does Trump react when he hears about the dossier?Do we know, a, did he already know about it, and b, if he didn’t, what does Comey tell us Trump's reaction was?

Well, from Comey we understand that Trump was particularly fixated on one of the allegations in the dossier involving prostitutes and a hotel room in Moscow, and he seemed very intent on making clear it couldn’t be true; it wasn’t true.He said, “I'm a germophobe; I would never have allowed this to happen,” this particular scenario that was outlined.That's what stuck in his mind.He didn't seem to be as interested in the larger question, which is what does it mean that the Russians might have information about him, or at least be telling people they had information about him?What does it mean for the security of his presidency and the security of the country?

He was fixated on this allegation that he had had some sort of a lurid sexual escapade with prostitutes in a hotel room and making it clear to Jim Comey it wasn't true. …

When it’s over and Comey leaves, both men do something that will keep this story going.Comey goes down to the car and for reasons that you'll explain to me begins to write virtually contemporaneous notes. …

Yeah, Comey is an inveterate note taker, somebody who has a habit throughout a career of keeping notes and records to make sure his recollection of things is strong.He decides early on he’s going to do that with particular precision with this particular president.He goes down to the car; he begins to take an account, in effect, of what that meeting was like.

We've seen with Comey over his career, he's an actually extraordinary storyteller in the sense that he remembers details of meetings and encounters that are very specific, the kind that a writer loves to have in future histories.I remember back to his days in the Bush administration when he tells a story about going up to John Ashcroft’s hospital room, and he tells it with almost cinematic detail and texture.

So he goes down to the car, he begins to scratch out notes of his first encounter, and it would be the beginning of what would be a record for him and now for the country of his interactions with this very unusual president.

There's just something about this president as opposed to any other major figure he’s come across?

Yeah.… He’s worried about Trump's habit of telling things that are not true, and he wants a record so that there won't be any confusion about what was said.I think at this early stage, he’s not yet there.But at some point along the way, he becomes worried that Trump will lie about some of the things that they might have said in private meetings.

… During this meeting, one of the things Trump and his people begin focusing on with the intelligence people there is how are they going to spin this?How are they going to explain to the country Russia's involvement in this election?And the intelligence teams are sitting there scratching their head.That's not the kind of thing, this political conversation, that usually is held in their presence.It's not something Obama or Bush would have done.And they're struck by that, that the very first instinct on the part of this new team is how do we explain this?How do we spin this to the public?

Marketing.

Marketing, exactly.Not about what do we do to punish the Russians for their interference?What do we do to stop it from happening again?What do we do to explain it to the country and defend the legitimacy of a presidency that seems at risk?

… When does [Trump] say, “This was a shakedown”?When does he come to that?

I don't think right away, but he does later come to the idea that Comey was telling him this not to give him information he should have, but to basically hold it over him; that he was, in effect, saying, “I've got this in my pocket, and you’d better basically keep that in mind."

Leverage.

Leverage.And he wanted to keep his job.That's the way Trump apparently saw it at some point.Well, Comey didn't need this to keep his job.He had a 10-year term under the statute.Short of the president’s desire to fire him, which of course he’s allowed to do, Comey had no reason to worry for his job.But Trump apparently saw it as Comey holding something over him.And again, in this conspiratorial mindset that he had, it feeds into this suspicion and skepticism that he develops very strongly toward both Comey specifically and the intelligence agencies generally.

Is it possible that he doesn't understand?… In the business world, you'd fire and hire guys all the time. …

No, I think that's right.I think he seems to see Comey as a security chief of his business, as opposed to director of an independent agency who’s charged with law enforcement in the country.To him Comey is another aide, another adviser, another subordinate.He’s supposed to be loyal to him, he’s supposed to be part of his team.Of course, that's not the way FBI directors, since the days of Watergate, have looked at their job.They’ve looked at their job as being a hybrid of being part of an administration, yes, on policy and in collaborating on big national security threats, but also being independent, particularly when it comes to issues of law enforcement and anything that might question the actions of an administration.

This really is the first time that we get a sense of the difference of rule of law on one side?

Yes, absolutely.

And something else on the other?

The concept of rule of law that Jim Comey brings to this is borne out of experience in multiple administrations, in the Justice Department in general, and a lifetime in the law.The idea that President-elect Trump is bringing into this relationship at this point is borne out of business.It's “You work for me.You're loyal to me, and as long as you're loyal to me, everything will be fine."

When you look at this meeting, … Peter, your analysis of the importance of what happened in that room is what?

I think you can argue that this meeting sets the tone for everything that is to come: a president who is insecure about his election, who feels under threat, who sees conspiracies around him and who believes that this FBI director is a potentially dangerous figure, not loyal to him.The water from this moment forward is poisoned, in effect, for this relationship with Jim Comey and for the president’s view of this intelligence about the Russia interference in the election. …

What was Trump trying to do there [when Comey was trying to hide in the drapes], do you think?

I think Trump was trying to show he was in charge.I think Trump was trying to … secure loyalty, in effect, by pushing Jim Comey to come across the room and shake his hand.He was setting the tone of their relationship.“You work for me.You're loyal to me, right?"That's what he wants to know.He wants to know, “You’re loyal to me." …

What does Comey see?

Comey sees danger; Comey sees politics.Comey doesn't want any part of this.Comey sees cameras there, and he recognizes that he is already seen by much of the American public as a political actor, not as a law enforcement officer because of his involvement in the election.He was being blamed by the left for undercutting Hillary Clinton at the end of the election, so to come over and seem buddy-buddy with this new president would undercut, he believes, his credibility.Would feed into this idea that he had helped to elect Donald Trump as opposed to doing his job as FBI director.

He sees nothing but danger in this invitation to walk across the [Blue Room].And he decides to try to be as stiff and as formal and as professional as he can.He does not want to hug the new president.He does not want to be drawn into an embrace that would make it look like they were friends.The cameras are rolling; he is acutely aware of that.And he goes in with a stiff arm to avoid the hug.

Now, the problem for him is Trump still draws him in to whisper something in his ear, … and in doing so, because of the angle of the camera, it looks like there's almost like a kiss.So his desire to avoid looking as if he was cozy with the new president is quickly shattered in that moment. …

… Let’s just spend, literally, a minute, minute and a half, talking about how Comey builds his visibility in Washington. …

Right.Jim Comey had a long and extraordinary career in law enforcement to that point.He had prosecuted the mob; he had prosecuted Martha Stewart.He had been deputy attorney general in the Bush administration, had what became a storied fight with the White House over a surveillance program that leads to this almost movie-like scene of confrontation in the hospital room of an ailing attorney general [John Ashcroft], where Jim Comey, in effect, thwarts the will of a president and vice president who want to renew this secret surveillance program over his legal objections.

All this leads to a reputation of being an independent-minded person, somebody who stood on principle, even if he did have a taste for the dramatic story.President Obama appointed him as FBI director in part to have a Republican in there who would have the credibility to lead the FBI, would not be seen as a flunky, in effect, of the president.

By the time Donald Trump comes along, Comey had a long-established career of working for the administration of both parties as an independent thinker, as an independent actor; somebody who didn't always go along with the crowd, but with a sterling reputation among the professionals in the agency that he led.

When he walks into his office after he shakes hands with Trump, one of the things that's going on inside of Comey’s head that he can't talk about is the Flynn case. …

The FBI had been monitoring diplomatic conversations, as they often do with the Russians, and they picked up this phone call that the ambassador had with Michael Flynn, who was a campaign adviser to Donald Trump and was soon to be the new national security adviser.In that conversation, there was talk about sanctions; there was talk about the relationship between America and Russia that contradicted what Michael Flynn would later say publicly.

Jim Comey knows this , of course, and he knows there's this sort of back-channel communication going on with Moscow and that Michael Flynn isn't necessarily being straight up about his relationship with Russia.

… It's a remarkable thing.He's meeting the president; he's there in the Blue Room.They’re having this extraordinary encounter, and he knows in his head that Michael Flynn, the national security adviser, has not been telling the truth about his contacts with the Russian ambassador, and he knows in his head that Flynn had lied to the vice president [Mike Pence], White House chief of staff [Reince Priebus], and he must know by this point that the FBI is preparing to interview Michael Flynn in what could only be a potentially criminal situation. …

When they interview him, it's extraordinary that they go to the White House to do it.

They go to the White House to interview the national security adviser just days after the opening of a new administration.There's no precedent you can think about that, at least in modern times.

And what happens when they talk to Flynn?

Well, when they talk to Flynn, he basically dances around what was said in this conversation.He says they did not talk about sanctions; he did not make any promises to Sergey Kislyak about what the new administration would do.He clearly is worried about being caught up in conducting foreign policy before they come into office and does not want to seem like they have traded, in some way, sanctions policy for any kind of support during the election.

But in the process of doing it, he has contradicted the intercepted communications that the FBI already has.So he’s walked right into a trap of his own making by lying about this meeting, or by lying about this phone call.

And it’s not legal for him to have lied?

It's illegal to lie to FBI agents about a material fact.It doesn't matter whether you're put under oath or not; you can be prosecuted for that, and many people have.

Comey takes the information to Sally Yates.They sit down; they talk it through.She goes up to see [White House Counsel] Don McGahn.That's the 27th, the Friday.It’s a hell of a day.We’ll go through the day.It’s an unbelievable day.

Unbelievable day.

So let’s start with Ms. Yates, the acting attorney general in her meeting with McGahn.

Well, President Trump's choice for attorney general, Jeff Sessions, hasn’t been confirmed yet, … so running the Justice Department is the holdover deputy attorney general from the Obama administration, Sally Yates.She is now put in this uncomfortable position of having to go to the White House and tell the White House counsel, Don McGahn, that the national security adviser has been lying and that he’s exposed himself to [a] potential compromising situation with the Russians.There's a reason why national security advisers are not supposed to lie about their communications with the Russians: It puts you in jeopardy of being blackmailed, potentially, or otherwise compromised.

She goes there to ring the alarm with this new White House, and it becomes a test of how they're going to react to that, and a sort of signal moment and everything that is to come afterward. …

So Sally leaves, and she gets the word that the travel ban has been started.And at the exact same time, or around that time, Donald Trump is having dinner for two.

Right.The president calls Jim Comey and invites him over to dinner.This is something that never happened to Jim Comey when he was FBI director under President Obama.He had almost no individual contacts with President Obama outside of group meetings, and he was a little wary about this.This is not something he wanted to do.He didn't want to be part of the Trump team.That's not the way he saw his role, and having dinner with the president would sort of imply a closeness that he felt uncomfortable about.And yet, what do you do?You don’t turn down the president of the United States.So he goes to have dinner at the White House. …

After the usual Trump monologue and pleasantries, they get down to it.The president is there to ask a question and ask a favor. …

What it really boils down to, what Donald Trump really wanted to know was, was Comey part of the team or not?And he asks him: “I need your loyalty.Do I have your loyalty?"This is a profoundly uncomfortable question for an FBI director.He's not there to be a loyal political confidant of the president.He’s there to be the FBI director, which has a much different role, and he says, “Well, you have my honesty,” trying to duck the question.But Trump doesn't give up.He asks three times, “Do I have your loyalty?"And finally on the last time, Comey, trying to slip around it, says, “Well, you will have my honest loyalty."

By that he means, “I will be loyal to the truth; I will be loyal to the integrity of this office,” and he hopes that gets him around this very uncomfortable position he’s been put in by the president.But it’s a remarkable moment: a president demanding loyalty of an FBI director.I can't think of any other president in the modern era who would do that.They understood, as people who had been in government before, that that's not the role of an FBI director.An FBI director is there to be part of a team when it comes to policy, but not to be a loyal part of the retinue of a president.

So we've had three interactions now: the dossier interaction, the Blue Room interaction and now this one.What's the nature of their relationship on the evening of the 27th of January?

Well, by this point, Comey is very wary of what's going on here.He’s now writing everything down immediately in memo form afterward.He has come to the conclusion that this relationship is going to be problematic, and therefore he’s going to keep records so that he can always know what happened.It turns out to be prophetic.These memos would later, of course, be critical to our understanding of these meetings and of this relationship.But you can see early on his growing concern about his position and where this will lead. …

… The vibration of letting Deputy Attorney General Yates go, that must have been felt pretty strongly at the Justice Department and at the Federal Bureau of Investigation?

Well, it was, and what a contrast from when Comey was deputy attorney general, right?When Comey was deputy attorney general and objected on principle to something that a president was doing, ultimately the president backed down and said: “OK, I don’t want you to quit.It’s important that we address your concern.We’ll find a way around it."In this case, you had a deputy attorney general say, “I'm concerned about the legal issues here; I'm not going to defend this in court,” and the response is: “You're out then.If you're not going to do what we want, you're out."There was no consideration of her concerns, no willingness to listen to her and say, “Well, maybe then we could find some other way."It was, “You do it, or you're out."The people in the Justice Department and the FBI took notice.They understood that this was going to be a different kind of a president, that this was going to be a different kind of administration.

It is reported that there are intercepts of the Flynn conversation [with the Russian ambassador], … and the president of the United States who has resisted mildly, I gather, firing Flynn, even with Ms. Yates’ visit to Mr. McGahn?

Yeah, he doesn’t fire him for two weeks.After being told that his national security adviser had lied to the vice president, lied to the White House chief of staff about a matter of pretty important concern, the president does nothing to address it other than say, “Well Don [McGahn], go figure this out."So for two weeks, he does basically nothing.Only when The Washington Post publishes the story does the president finally react and say, “Flynn’s out."He only does it because it’s made public, not because of what he’s been told by Sally Yates.

This is hard for the president of the United States.He doesn't like having to get rid of Flynn.He likes that loyalty from Flynn, I gather?

… He liked Mike Flynn.He thought that he was a patriot, a stand-up guy, war hero, and the idea of being forced to push him out went against the grain.He did have his concerns about Flynn.It wasn’t like this came out of nowhere.There had been some sort of growing worries about how Flynn was acting, but certainly, [it] put him in a position that he didn't want to be in.

In a way, Trump fights back—lot of tweets, lot of things about the news.… I know it's been simmering there, but it’s almost like a new element of strategy gets started from Trump.

Well, these early days are filled with controversy after controversy—the travel ban, so many other things are happening—and being forced to let go of his national security adviser after just 24 days really sends him over the edge in some ways about the “fake news” media, and he goes off on reporters who are investigating this kind of stuff.To him, it's all part of a plot, in effect, to get him.The media is not on the up-and-up as far as he’s concerned; it’s part of the opposition.

And he begins to say this in a more fulsome, dramatic way.It's not just that the media is wrong or fake, even; he says that they are the “enemy of the people,” to which he receives rousing encouragement from crowds who are cheering him on and agreeing with this characterization.He’s undercutting the credibility of the people who are going to report on the actions of his people and his campaign and his White House.

Then something really significant happens.He's in the Oval Office meeting, lets everybody go, shoos even Sessions out and asks Comey to stay behind so they can have a conversation.

… Yeah.Once again, Trump finds a way to talk with Comey alone.He shoos everybody else out of the room, including his chief of staff, including the vice president, including the attorney general who was Comey’s direct boss, and he brings up Mike Flynn.He says, “I hope you can find a way to let this go."Now, he doesn't say, “You have to close down the investigation,” but Comey takes it as a direction, in effect.He says he made very clear his desire: “I hope you can let this thing go.Mike Flynn is a good man."Comey says, “I agree he’s a good man,” but doesn't make any commitment about the investigation.

The idea that a president would try to tell an FBI director to stop investigating his own former aide was extraordinary and something Comey had never experienced in any of the previous administrations that he had worked for, and it really set off alarm bells for him.Here he was, once again, one-on-one with the president, no other witnesses.He understood what that meant.The president must know he was doing something wrong; that's why he shooed everybody else away.That's what Comey decided.

Once again, he goes down, and he writes down what happens, and he talks about this with some of his closest advisers.There's a choice to be made at this point, but he's not sure what to do.Has the president of the United States just committed an act of obstruction of justice?Has he tried to do something wrong?If so, what is Comey’s responsibility about that?Who does he tell?

He tries to tell the attorney general that this can't happen again: The president can't be having one-on-one conversations with me, especially about sensitive subjects.I don't think he tells him exactly what was said in this meeting.

But he says, “Don’t leave me alone."

“Don’t leave me alone with him.Don’t leave me alone.You're the attorney general; it's your responsibility,” in effect.It just shows how uncomfortable everybody is already with a president who wants to insert himself into law enforcement decisions that are traditionally left to law enforcement agencies.

Since we've mentioned Sessions, … who is Jeff Sessions in this world?How does he find himself in this job as attorney general?

Right.If Trump wanted loyalists, he could hardly find one who was more loyal than Jeff Sessions.Jeff Sessions was a longtime senator from Alabama, a Republican, conservative, hardline on immigration and criminal justice issues and the first Republican senator to endorse Trump for president.He was as loyal as they come.He was a fervent advocate on the campaign trail, close adviser to him during the election.And the reward was the Justice Department, attorney general of the United States.But Sessions was in this complicated position now where he had been a campaign adviser and had had his own communications with Russians they didn't disclose to the Senate during his confirmation hearing, and now he was in charge of an investigation into the very same campaign that he had been part of. …

Comey testifies in March, and the Russia “cloud” is all around him now.

Well, he finally says publicly what everybody knows, which is the FBI is investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 election, and he confirms this in front of these lawmakers.That's kind of a big moment.Suddenly, we're off to the races.This is now, to Trump's mind, a direct and public threat to his presidency, a threat to his legitimacy.

… To Trump, this is an existential threat.It means his election wasn’t legitimate.… And to him, this is just excuses, excuses for the fact that he was a winner.Nobody can accept that he was a winner while he was the winner as far as he's concerned.It’s sour grapes from the people who lost.But in Comey he sees—Comey is more of a threat than the Democrats.He runs the FBI.He is saying that the Russians actually did do this; that they did interfere in the election in some way or another.And the extension from that, of course, is does that mean Donald Trump is legitimately the president or not?

And if Trump is worried that not only is the guy not loyal, but he’s after me, and he started by declaring himself in my apartment, or my office in Trump Tower—

What Trump wants Comey to do more than anything is to publicly say that he, President Trump, is not under investigation.He wants Comey to exonerate him, in effect, before the investigation’s even gone anywhere.And, of course, Comey’s not going to do that.He did tell him, “Sir, you're not under investigation,” during one of their meetings.

… But he’s not going to say this publicly, because what happens if that changes?What happens if the investigation leads someplace?You're not supposed to publicly declare somebody not under investigation as an FBI director.I mean, he got in trouble as it was for discussing the Hillary Clinton investigation in public.The idea that he would pre-emptively announce that there was no investigation into the president himself before the investigation had really gone anywhere just went against the grain, so he wasn’t going to do that.

And Trump grows increasingly frustrated about this.Why won't he say this?He won't say this.He’s got to publicly say this.And it feeds into this growing anger and frustration with Comey, that this is somebody who’s not on my side. …

The other thing that Comey’s doing during this time, … moving in on Jared, the implications of that?

Right.Well, it’s not just Trump, of course, who’s under the scrutiny.It’s his own family.It's his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who of course is now a senior adviser at the White House.At one point, there's a news report saying that Kushner is a person of interest, which is a term that doesn't actually exist in law enforcement, but certainly sets off alarm bells in the White House.This is coming pretty close.This is coming pretty close to the president, and he’s not happy about it.

The allegations about what Kushner did?

Kushner had met with a top banker, a top Russian banker, who’s known to be close to President Putin during the transition.He had also had a conversation with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador, and there had been even the discussion about setting up a back channel of communication to Moscow, literally a communication method through the Russian Embassy that wouldn't be susceptible to American surveillance.At least, that seemed to be the thought.That's pretty unusual and, of course, raises a lot of suspicions.What was that about? …

In May, Comey testifies again, lot of talk about the Clinton situation.And the report that Trump watches—

And there's one thing in particular that pissed him off about that.… Comey’s there testifying again, and he's talking about the Hillary Clinton email case, being asked about the Hillary Clinton emails.He's asked about this idea that basically his actions changed the result of the election; that because he came out in October of 2016, Hillary Clinton lost.And he says that the idea that the FBI investigation could have changed the outcome left him feeling “mildly nauseous."Well, by that he meant that it’s not the FBI's job to be the determining factor in an election.He wasn't saying that he felt bad that Hillary Clinton lost.He wasn’t saying he was for one candidate or the other.He was saying that the agency should be a nonpartisan institution in America and not be drawn into partisan politics.

But what President Trump heard was an FBI director saying that he was nauseous that President Trump had won, and this made him feel more than mildly nauseous.This made him feel pretty angry.

He heads off to Bedminster, [N.J., to his Trump National Golf Club], and [advisers] Jared [Kushner] is there; Steve Miller is there.I don't think [Steve] Bannon and the other crew are not there.McGahn—

Bannon's not there.Bannon later says he objected.He says he should not fire Comey; that this was the biggest mistake of his presidency.

But there's a head of steam underway as Trump is sitting there chewing on it.

There's a head of steam, yeah.Trump is fuming.He’s just furious about this.He goes off to Bedminster.He’s with his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who’s feeling the heat himself.He’s with Stephen Miller, who’s an aggressive young policy aide, and he comes to the conclusion that “I can't put up with this anymore.I'm not going to allow this anymore.I'm going to fire Jim Comey."There's no process; there's no staff meeting; there's no “What are the pros and cons of doing this?"; there's no consultation.There's just gut instinct and raw anger.And this is something he’s going to do whether advisers like Steve Bannon or Reince Priebus tell him to or not. …

They then come back to Washington.

Yeah, they come back to Washington, and they solicit these memos from the Justice Department, from Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein, his deputy, about Jim Comey.What did they think of the way they handled the Hillary Clinton email investigation?And they were critical, and they said that he had mishandled it.He had done things that shouldn’t have been done.In effect, Rod Rosenstein’s memo echoed what a lot of the Hillary Clinton campaign people had been saying for months, that Comey had inserted himself into the election; he’d made himself too public; he had taken on a role that did not really belong to him.

These memos are then used by the president to justify the decision he had already made.He’d already made the decision not because Jim Comey had been unfair to Hillary Clinton.His view was the opposite.His view was that Jim Comey had let Hillary Clinton off the hook, so the idea that he was going to fire Jim Comey because the FBI had been unfair to Hillary Clinton, of course beggars the imagination.But these memos are used as a way to create a public justification for an action he’d already decided to take with his son-in-law and his young policy aide. …

To those of you who cover the White House on an everyday basis, did it feel like this was all coming to a head?Could you feel this coming?

I mean, we knew there was confrontation; we knew it was possible, but it was so unthinkable.It’s unthinkable that a president would fire an FBI director who was leading an investigation into his own campaign.It seemed totally impossible because the only experience we had with this in modern times, of course, is President Nixon wanting his Justice Department to fire the special prosecutor [Archibald Cox] in Watergate, and both the attorney general [Elliot Richardson] and the deputy attorney general [William Ruckelshaus] refused to do it and stepped down rather than carry out Nixon’s order.

Well, that was called the Saturday Night Massacre.It was considered a political debacle, and no president since then ever wanted to repeat anything that was seen like that.So no matter how many times presidents have grown frustrated with FBI directors in the past, they never gave any serious contemplation to the idea of firing them out of that frustration.But here was President Trump willing to do things that no other president had done, so for us covering him, it was a bombshell. …

And in the White House, the staff, is it chaotic?

Staff is completely unprepared for this.They didn't realize this is coming.The press office is suddenly thrust out there to explain a decision they had no part in, that they didn't know much about.In the White House that day, for reporters who were trying to figure out what was going on, it was chaos. …

And the explanation is, first, that Rosenstein wrote a memo?

Right.The explanation seemed [to be], well, Sessions and Rosenstein had real concerns about Comey, and they brought them to the White House, and they gave these memos, and therefore the president, in response to these memos, fires Jim Comey.Of course the president himself later dispels that cover story by telling Lester Holt [of NBC News] the next day that he was going to fire him whether those memos are written or not.He’d already made a decision that had nothing to do with those memos.

So the firing of Comey, from where we started to this moment, it tells us what about the Donald Trump presidency, Donald Trump the man and the future of this investigation?

It’s a presidency of one.I mean, in the end, there is no process.This is a president making decisions himself, often on the fly, through his own gut instinct.He trusts his own instinct in a way he doesn't trust the people he has around him.He’s willing to fly in the face of convention.He couldn’t care less about what professional Washington thinks.If he shocks people, so be it.He’s OK with that.

Now, in Comey’s case in particular, I think he may have convinced himself that this decision to fire him would be welcomed by Democrats because the Democrats hated Jim Comey just as much as he did.The Democrats blamed Jim Comey for Hillary Clinton losing.They thought Jim Comey was a showboat, too.So he may have convinced himself that this idea of firing Comey would be welcomed by the opposition party.

If that's the case, then he made a huge miscalculation.He didn't see just how much of an explosion this would cause in Washington when he fires the FBI director leading an investigation into his own campaign.

And Comey, I have to assume he never believed in his wildest dreams that Trump would fire him.

It was clearly a shock to Comey.I think he understood that the history of this was FBI directors don’t get fired in this kind of a circumstance.And yet, there must have been a part of him that thought something like this is possible.That's why he kept those memos.He didn't think the president was a truthteller, and he knew instinctively at some point this was going to come to a head; that there would ultimately be a showdown over whose version of the truth was correct, and that's why he was preparing himself with these memos.

Trump at some moment [says] there might be tapes.

Yes, “Jim Comey better hope there aren’t tapes,” he tweets. …

And Comey’s response?

Comey at first thinks this is a good thing.“Wow, there might be tapes.It's going to prove my story.It’s going to prove what I have written in these memos about what—"

“Lordy."

“Lordy, let there be tapes.Lordy, let there be tapes,” he says later.And he finds it plausible that there might be tapes, even though who tapes their conversations these days when you're president?Not a lot of good history there.But there is a history of suspicion that Trump has taped many conversations throughout his career.Lot of people used to work for him at Trump Tower suspected that he was taping their conversations.

So it seemed plausible, and it sort of triggers Comey into taking action.He takes one of these memos that describes the loyalty conversation that they had had, and he gives it to a friend of his who’s a Columbia law professor who’d been advising him since his firing about the legal issues, and he authorizes this friend of his to leak the contents of the memo—not the memo itself, but what is described in the memo, to a reporter for The New York Times, Michael Schmidt.

And Comey now says that he was hoping that what would happen is a special counsel would be named?

Yeah.Comey later says that in doing so, he hoped to trigger the appointment of a special counsel, because at that point, in his view, the only way to protect this investigation from a president who’s willing to go so far as firing the FBI director was to put it in the hands of a special counsel who would at least have somewhat more independence, somewhat more protection.That, of course, also becomes a criticism of Comey; that he was doing this to create trouble for the president of the United States, in effect; that he was seeking outcome by leaking the contents of this memo, not simply providing a truthful account of his encounters with the president; that he was seeking to go after President Trump. …

… The second week of May, and he’s just let Comey go, and the very next day Ambassador Kislyak—it’s the very next day, right?

… I mean, it’s head-spinning.But the very day after he fires Jim Comey, the president of the United States hosts in the Oval Office a meeting with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, and the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.The timing couldn’t be more ironic, let’s say.Any other president might say, “Well, maybe this is not the best day for this meeting,” because here it was, he’s fired the FBI director who’s leading an investigation into being too cozy with Russia, and in the Oval Office the very next day are these two Russian officials.They have a very chummy meeting, and the pictures that are released by the Russian side, not the American side, show them smiling and all gladhanding.

It’s later reported in our newspaper, and I think elsewhere, that the president boasts about firing Comey to the Russians.He says, “Well, he was a nut job, and now that I've gotten rid of him,” he says, “that will make things easier."It’s hard to imagine a less useful or politically helpful meeting to have the day after he’s done this.

It's then time to name a new special counsel.That job would fall to Rod Rosenstein.

… Right.I mean, it’s hard to keep track of all this stuff, but the very same deputy attorney general who wrote one of the memos that was used to justify the firing of Jim Comey then turns around and is responsible for deciding to appoint a special counsel to take over the investigation.The leak of the information about Comey’s meeting with the president precipitates this decision by Rosenstein.He’s in charge of doing it because Jeff Sessions has recused himself because he was part of the campaign.

So Rosenstein’s left in this position that's incredibly awkward of deciding that we're going to put in an independent person to look at this investigation, and the person he picks is Robert Mueller, the former FBI director under George W. Bush, stays under President Obama.Mueller had been in to see the president the day before to talk about whether he might come back as FBI director to succeed Jim Comey.It’s all kind of swirling around. …

There's a kind of gravity to the choice.

Well, Mueller is a person of great reputation at this point in Washington on the part of Democrats and Republicans.He is seen as a straight arrow, a person of great integrity, a war hero, the FBI director who took the FBI immediately after 9/11 and rebuilt it for the age of terrorism; not only appointed by George W. Bush, a Republican, kept on by Barack Obama, a Democrat, kept on even two years beyond his 10-year term because Mueller was seen as such a stabilizing force, such a reliable, respected force at the FBI that they amended the law to let him stay two years longer than he was normally allowed to stay.

So when he’s appointed, the choice actually is greeted by everybody across the board as a terrific choice, except in the Oval Office.Republicans and Democrats alike say nothing but good things about Bob Mueller, but the president of the United States sees a fix.He sees it as something being done to get him.

* * *

May 17, 2017.… Rosenstein calls over to the White House and talks to McGahn, I guess, and tells him a special counsel has been appointed.Mueller’s the guy.And he tells the president.They were having a meeting in the Oval Office.Sessions is there.Take us to the moment, what takes place and how extraordinary a moment that is.

Right, yeah.The president is furious.He’s furious at his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who’s recused himself from this investigation.He thinks that Jeff Sessions has been disloyal to him, and he tells him this to his face.He berates him over and over again: “You’ve shown disloyalty."He makes clear that he never would have appointed him attorney general that Jeff Sessions wouldn’t stay in charge of the Russian investigation.In effect, what he wants is somebody in charge in the Justice Department to protect him.He makes it very clear.

And Sessions just takes it.I mean, he’s being pummeled by an irate president to the point where he’s emotional, and he’s upset, and he’s on the verge of losing his composure.It’s the kind of scene that you just don’t hear of every day in the White House, for sure.And Sessions ends up bolting out of the White House, rushing out to his car.He said: “You want me to quit?I’m going to quit."And he’s preparing to send a letter of resignation.

Reince Priebus, who was the chief of staff, hadn’t been in the meeting, hadn’t heard about what happened, but somebody calls and says, “You need to get out there."Priebus rushes out of the White House to West Executive Avenue—that’s the street right between the White House and the Executive Office Building—and find Sessions in his car preparing to leave.He bangs on the door: “You’ve got to come out.You’ve got to come back in.You can’t leave this way.You can’t just blow up like this."

Sessions agrees to come back in to the White House and sits down with Priebus and some of the others, and they talk it through.Priebus is urging him not to resign: “We’ll fix it.We’ll find a way to resolve this.Don’t be abrupt here."But afterward, Sessions leaves, and he goes back to his office, and he writes out a letter of resignation.He’s preparing to step down as attorney general because the president of the United States didn’t think he was loyal enough.

That doesn’t happen, though.Why?

Ultimately Priebus and others convince the president not to accept his resignation; that it would be even more fuel for the fire that’s raging around him as it is because of the Comey firing; that if the president were seen as pushing out the attorney general because the attorney general wasn’t protecting him from a criminal investigation that that would convince everybody that there was something there; that there was, in fact, something the president was trying to hide, and it would be a disaster politically, not to mention the fact that they wouldn’t be able to even necessarily appoint a successor.The Senate would go nuts.Jeff Sessions was one of them for 20 years.Republicans in the Senate were not about to simply accept him being pushed out and take the president’s word on it and confirm a successor, so they could be in a situation where Rosenstein would be in charge of the Justice Department anyway in an acting capacity because it couldn’t confirm a new attorney general. …

Let’s talk about the Trump Tower meeting.July 7, 2017, The New York Times puts out this article about this suspicious meeting that took place with Russians, with Don Jr., with Kushner and others in attendance.… The reports were that this is how Mueller found out about it: He read the Times.

That’s what we’re there for. (Laughs.)

How would that affect what he was doing?How would he perhaps look at this story that is now breaking?… Take us, if you can, to any part of it—how Mueller might have looked at this.

Well, there are two elements here that obviously get Bob Mueller’s attention.First, of course, is this meeting itself.What [were] the president’s son, son-in-law and campaign chairman doing?What were they doing meeting with these Russian intermediaries?And remember, the email that was sent to Don Jr. is very explicit.It says, “We are going to provide information about Hillary Clinton as part of the Russian government’s support of Donald Trump’s campaign for president."There is no ambiguity about this.This is there in black and white.And whatever they actually talked about in the meeting, the advertised intent of the meeting was collusion.I mean, in a sense that we say there is no collusion, there is collusion right there.There is an attempt at least at collusion.

Now, it may not be legal, but the Russians are advertising that they are giving information from the government as part of its support for one candidate, in this case Donald Trump, to the campaign.That’s what Donald Trump Jr. knew when he agreed to this meeting.So if you’re Bob Mueller, you’re looking at that and saying, well, right there is contact we didn’t know about for the explicit purpose of intervening, in effect, in the campaign on the part of the Russian government.And this comes right before the release of some of these emails that end up becoming such a flashpoint in the campaign, so of course he wants to know more about this meeting.

The second thing, of course, that gets Bob Mueller’s attention is the effort to cover up what happens in terms of this meeting.The White House is not forthcoming about what this meeting was all about when first asked about it.The president is on his way back from Europe.He’s on Air Force One, and he basically dictates a statement to be released by his son saying that this meeting was only about adoptions.And this is not, of course, the full story of what was happening at that meeting or what that meeting was all about.It was intended to shroud the meeting or make the meeting seem like it was an innocent meeting, had nothing to do with what it really had to do with.

Now, adoption—anybody who knows anything about what’s going on with Russia understands that adoption is code for U.S. sanctions, because under President Obama the Congress passes a law called the Magnitsky [Act] that penalized Russian human rights abusers, and in retaliation, [Russia] suspended American adoptions of Russian children.So when you say, “I want to talk about adoptions,” what you’re really saying is you want to talk [about] American sanctions.

… Why [is] this one moment an important one that sent up red flags for Mueller?

Well, this one moment by itself gets at the heart of the question that Bob Mueller is looking at: What is the contact between Trump campaign and Russia?What was going on there?What was the intent?What was being discussed?What was being delivered?What connection was there, and what did it add up to?Then on top of that is the question of, does the president of the United States try to, in effect, impede the investigation by not telling the truth about what’s going on?Now, there’s no crime in lying to reporters, but if you’re putting out a misleading or dishonest statement to the press, it suggests, in any case, an intent to be less than forthcoming.

All right.So now there is a debate going on.

And what’s more, on top of that is the White House and the president’s lawyer then deny our story and a story then followed up by The Washington Post that says the president was directly involved in crafting this statement.“Not true,” they said.Only months later do they actually admit in a filing that in fact it was true; the president was directly involved.So they were not honest about the president’s involvement in this statement.

And we still don’t know when the president first knew about this meeting, and why is that important?

The president says he didn’t know about this meeting at the time.He didn’t know about it in 2016 when it took place even though it happened in his headquarters with his son, his son-in-law and his campaign chairman.He said he didn’t know about it until days before The New York Times [was] going to run a story about it.And what’s interesting about that, I asked him about this in an interview in July of 2017, and I said to him: “Well, now you know about it, and now you’ve seen the email that set this meeting up, in which it said the Russian government was giving information to your campaign about your opponent for the purpose of helping your campaign.What do you think about it now?"

And he kept dodging the question.I asked three times.…“Because I didn’t know about the meeting."“But you know about it now.What is your reaction to this now?What does this tell you about the Russian government involvement in 2016?"And he wouldn’t go there.

There’s an argument made now.We talked to [Alan] Dershowitz yesterday.… The argument he makes is, OK, here’s the deal: Collusion is not illegal.

Right.

Obstruction—the president, because of the Constitution, can’t —

Can’t obstruct.

He can’t obstruct.

If the president does it, it’s not a crime.

Define for me the position of the White House … that this happened and the way it happened.

Well, in terms of this meeting, what the president and his people say is: “Of course we’re going to meet with anybody who wants to give us dirt about our opponent.Who wouldn’t take this meeting?"Well, that may be true in a domestic context.If somebody comes to a campaign and says, “I’ve got something about your opponent that you ought to know about,” it’s fair to say that any campaign probably would take a meeting like that for the most part.But from a foreign power, from an adversary, from a country that is not America’s friend, that’s a different thing.And I don’t think, in fact, any campaign would necessarily do that.

A lot of campaigns would not go down that road.And you heard critics say, “Well, what they should have done was immediately call the FBI and tell them that that’s what the Russians were up to."They didn’t do that.It may not be illegal, right?It’s true.There’s no law that specifically says collusion is illegal.The question is, could it be conspiracy?Possibly.The legal arguments are really interesting.Can you make this a campaign finance law violation, for instance?Did the Russians provide something of material benefit to his campaign that’s not disclosed?

And by the way, … no foreign government is allowed to provide something of material value to American campaigns.Does [the] release of these emails, for instance, the hacking, does that constitute a thing of value under campaign finance law?That would be a stretch.That’s a legal argument, pushing the law a little bit because we’ve never had, I think, a case like that before.Traditionally, a thing of value under campaign finance law, it means cash; it means money; it means a building, a rental space for instance, the use of an airplane, something physical and tangible—not necessarily something like hacked emails.But that may be one place where the lawyers go with this.

As for obstruction, the argument is that the president can’t obstruct an investigation because he’s the head of the executive branch and the investigators report to him, and it’s his duty under the Constitution to oversee their work.This is an interesting argument, and it’s also one that would not be fully tested yet.I mean, there is an argument to be made that, yes, it is within his power under the Constitution, Article II to supervise the Justice Department, supervise investigations.But if he were to do it with a corrupt intent, you can make the argument that that’s obstruction.

And then there’s the point [that] the legality doesn’t really matter, because if we get to impeachment, if the question is whether the Congress of the United States should impeach the president, they don’t have to follow the law.This is not a legal process in the sense of a courtroom.This is a political question.Would the president’s actions constitute high crimes and misdemeanors?And that’s defined any way that Congress wants to define it.It doesn’t have to be a statute on the books per se; that they can decide that this is a corrupt use of the president’s power, if they decide a majority of the House were to approve that and two-thirds of the Senate.

… By July, Trump is again going after Sessions.He’s attacking Sessions.He’s tweeting.And you’ve got [Sen. Chuck] Grassley (R-Iowa) coming out saying: “Wait a minute, Mr. President.We don’t have [time] in our schedule to be … looking toward nominating another attorney general."Talk a little bit about that moment in time, what’s occurring and how Congress GOP stands up to the president.

Right.Well, this all starts with our interview, actually.In July of 2017, Maggie Haberman, Mike Schmidt and I interview President Trump, and we have a list of questions we’re interested in asking about.We’re pushing on this and that and the other thing, and suddenly, without any notice, he starts really trashing Jeff Sessions.“Well, Jeff Sessions, of course, recused himself and shouldn’t have done it."We had reported in the past that he was unhappy with Sessions, but we hadn’t heard him say that out loud in a public way like that.

I think I asked the question: “Well, wait a second.Should Jeff Sessions have done that?Did he make a mistake then?"And that just set him off, and he said something he had never publicly before, which is that Jeff Sessions not only shouldn’t have done it, but he never would have appointed Jeff Sessions attorney general had he known he would do that.

… And he continued along this vein for a while.He clearly intended to say this.This is something that he didn’t spontaneously throw out there.This is something clearly on his mind.He was absorbed by it.He was dwelling on it, and he wanted to get this message out.I know he wanted to get this message out, because people say, “Well, you guys drew him into this."No, we really didn’t.This isn’t where we expected to go.And he went on and off the record at different points in the interview.

He was clearly thinking through what he wanted to be out there publicly and things he didn’t think he wanted to be out there publicly.He was very aware of what he was doing.And that led to a whole series of public statements and tweets bashing the attorney general, calling him weak, in effect threatening to, if not to fire him, at least trying to push him to resign.And that stirs a real hornets’ nest on the Hill.Republicans don’t want this to happen.They’re now very upset at this idea.Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, and Chuck Grassley, the Judiciary Committee chairman, made very clear they stand by Sessions. …

After this, by July, there’s a turn in the strategy.He brings on [John] Dowd and Ty Cobb and [Marc] Kasowitz, who had been the president’s bulldog going after Mueller, and all [are] shown the door.

Sidelined, yeah.

So take us through that turn.

Yeah.Well, clearly the president needs to have a legal team, and at first he turns to Marc Kasowitz, who had been his lawyer for years and is known in New York as a real pit bull.But they have a quick falling out.Kasowitz isn’t happy about the way Trump is managing things.He doesn’t like Trump talking with Jared Kushner about legal strategy without him around.This becomes quickly very fractious, and President Trump sidelines Kasowitz and his team.

Instead he brings in Ty Cobb and John Dowd, these two Washington lawyers that have been around for a long time, and they advise a different strategy.They advise him to lay off Mueller, not to be attacking the special counsel and to cooperate, because, they say: “Look, you have nothing to hide.If you’re genuinely innocent, you don’t have anything to worry about.Give him everything he wants, and this will go away."And Trump accepts that advice, uncharacteristically decides not to go bashing the special counsel for a period of months.They hand over a lot of documents, and they make it very possible for people to give interviews and to be interrogated by the special counsel.

And the president’s lawyers are telling him, look, it’s going to be over by Thanksgiving; it will be over by Christmas; it will be over by New Year’s.And he goes along with it for a while.I think they are trying to keep him calm, right, keep him from using that bullhorn of Twitter to attack the investigators, because in their view—this is the traditional Washington lawyer view—if you attack the investigators, you are only going to make things worse for yourself.Why would an investigator be eager to decide that you are clear of any crime if you’re busy attacking him?

So they advise that strategy, and for a while the president goes along with it.But starting early in 2018 he’s getting tired of it, clearly.The lawyers keep saying it will be over soon.It doesn’t seem like it is going to be over soon.It was never plausible it was going to be over soon to begin with.Nobody believed this outside of the White House, it seemed.But for whatever reason, he accepted this explanation.But he grows tired of it, and he just decides, no, I’m done with this.I’m going to take a much more confrontational stance, a much more traditionally Trumpian approach to things.It’s his nature anyway.And Dowd and Cobb are gone.

In the midst of all this, where’s the Mueller investigation at this point?I mean, you’ve got the [former campaign chair Paul] Manafort raid, the [former campaign foreign policy adviser George] Papadopoulos arrest; Flynn pleads guilty.Take us to the other side.While things are a little calmer at the White House, where is Mueller?How is it moving forward?How is the investigation being viewed?

Well, while Trump exercises this unusual restraint in terms of the special counsel, Bob Mueller is brick by brick building his case, approaching each day of the investigation in a methodical way.He begins bringing indictments against certain people: Paul Manafort, who had been the president’s campaign chairman, on a variety of tax and financial charges; Rick Davis had been his deputy; George Papadopoulos, Michael Flynn for lying.Mueller is operating in a way that nobody really understands what he’s doing.

He manages at one point to intercept a former Trump aide coming back to Dulles Airport, wraps him up and basically gets him cooperating for two months before anybody even knows that that’s happened.This is a very methodical prosecutor.This is a very systematic investigation that he’s running.Piece by piece, he is going to pull together all the information he can.

He eventually, of course, indicts not just people around the president but a variety of Russians who were involved in the social media influence campaign, part of the effort by the Putin government to shape American voters’ attitudes, to show that in fact, there is a connection to Russia.But he doesn’t make any allegation at this point that Trump or his immediate people know what’s going on with Russia.He’s holding back.He’s still gathering his evidence, gathering his information.He’s not going to pull the trigger until he’s ready.

But that’s starting to get under Trump’s skin.

It’s getting under Trump’s skin.He keeps seeing new indictments come down.He keeps arguing that these indictments don’t have anything to do with him, that there’s no collusion, and he wants to push back.It’s just his nature.He hates the idea of staying quiet.This advice he’s getting from his lawyers goes against the very essence of his personality and his political persona, which is if somebody hits him, he hits him back 10 times as hard. …

After Sally Yates went and told McGahn the information about the Flynn investigation and the lying to the FBI, McGahn goes to the president immediately afterward and briefs him on exactly what’s going on and the trouble that Flynn is really in.… That night is Valentine’s Day, 2017, is the dinner for two with Comey where he brings up the loyalty question.Ironic?Is there something to be read from that?Did the pressure of the Flynn investigation somehow light the fuse for the president where he understood that he had to make sure that he was in control of potential investigations and that’s what led to the loyalty question?What’s your overview on that?

Trump’s never been a politician, never been in office.His view of the FBI was it worked for him, and they should be, in effect, loyal to him as opposed to an independent or at least semi-independent agency.If he was in charge, they had no business investigating him or his people.And what he was clearly thinking in those early days is suddenly his national security adviser, Mike Flynn, was under attack in effect by an Obama leftover at the Justice Department and didn’t want the FBI to pursue it.He argued, anyway, that it was unfair.Yet he’s pushing Comey to make clear whether he was going to be on his side or not.

It’s extraordinary.No president that I can think of, since Watergate anyway, demanded personal loyalty from an FBI director.That is just not the way the system has been set up.

And when you first read the fact in that memo, that Trump had been briefed by McGahn that afternoon but before the dinner, what do you think?

When he sits down with Jim Comey for dinner, it’s clearly on his mind, the Flynn thing.He’s just been told that Flynn is in trouble with the Justice Department, that he hadn’t been telling the truth.Clearly he sees that this investigation has a potential of getting out of his control and leading places that it might not be helpful to him to have lead.Mike Flynn knows a lot of things.Mike Flynn has been with him during the campaign, was with him during the transition, could be a dangerous person to have under pursuit of investigators.

And I think that going into the dinner with Jim Comey, this is on his mind.This is—“Where is this going to go?I need the FBI to be one my side.They work for me.We’d better establish in the beginning whether Jim Comey is going to be my guy or not."

In March of ’18, Mueller subpoenas Trump business records, and it just lights another fuse in the president.He explodes, and who he explodes at this time is his own lawyer, Dowd.He wants this investigation ended, and he feels his lawyers should be protecting him.Roy Cohn would have.Take us to that moment. …

In our interview in the summer of 2017, we asked him whether it would cross a redline if Mueller went into family finances that didn’t have anything to do with Russia.He said yes, it would as far as he was concerned.So when Mueller’s operation begins to look at the family finances, even though it is presumably related to whether there is a Russia connection or not, it triggers the president’s anger.This to him means that they’re going deeper and into more potentially fraught areas than they had before.

His finances have always been something of a black hole to the public.He won’t release his tax returns.We don’t really know a lot about how he got money, particularly when he was doing badly in business, so this feels like a threat.This feels like a danger, and he explodes.He explodes at this lawyer, John Dowd.“How is this happening?You guys told me if I cooperated, this would go away.It’s not going away.It’s getting worse.How could you let this happen?"

Dowd puts out a statement basically saying that the special prosecutor has no business even being in existence, taking a more assertive, public stand than he had before, clearly in reaction to his client, who is getting increasingly agitated.

But Dowd soon after resigns because he feels he can’t do his job because Trump is interfering.Explain.

Well, it’s interesting.Dowd ends up resigning soon afterward.The president is not happy with him, not happy with the way things are going.Dowd doesn’t seem to the president to be the kind of aggressive pit bull lawyer that he wants.He wants somebody to get out there on Fox News and defend him and to attack his enemies and to make the case in a public, big way.It’s not John Dowd.It’s not the way he operates.It’s not the way he wants to operate.This is clearly going in a different direction, and the two have a falling out.

John Dowd still believes in the president’s case.Even to this day he makes pretty expansive arguments about the president’s ability to do whatever he wants in terms of managing the Justice Department and so forth.And he still argues to this day that the president didn’t do anything wrong and that there’s no basis for this investigation; in fact, that the prosecutor shouldn’t have even necessarily been appointed.But he wasn’t going to be the kind of public, aggressive defender that the president wanted. …

Step by step, [Trump’s] becoming more suspicious of what Mueller is doing and suspicious of his own lawyers.We get … [to] spring of 2018, where his moderate lawyers are leaving or being shown the door.And then you’ve got the Michael Cohen situation.All of a sudden, the New York style of defense and use of lawyers comes back into the forefront.But tell us a little bit about the back story of Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels and how that blows up in the media and how it affects the White House.

Right.Well, during the final months of the 2016 campaign, a former pornographic movie star, Stormy Daniels, real name Stephanie Clifford, is talking about whether she would disclose a relationship that she said she had with President Trump while he was married to Melania.Michael Cohen is the president’s lawyer and fixer.He has made things like this go away in the past, and he took it upon himself at the very least to make this go away.

… In October, just weeks before the election, [he] pays Stormy Daniels $130,000 as part of a nondisclosure agreement.We would call it hush money.She calls it hush money.And as a result, she said nothing about this before the campaign.Well, after [Trump] becomes president, The Wall Street Journal investigates a little bit about this and discovers this payment and discovers the routing of the money through a shell company and so forth.

The question then becomes, OK, what did the president know about it?Was this done without his knowledge, without—is it his money?Whose money is it?Michael Cohen told everybody it was his money.He did it without talking to the president.The president had nothing to do with it.He was not the source of the money.It was just him trying to do a favor for a friend and a client.

Well, that beggared [belief] on the part of a lot of people.Being a lawyer for a client is one thing.Paying $130,000 out of your own pocket through a home equity loan is quite another.And the president initially said he didn’t know anything about it, only to discover later when his next lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, said, “Yeah, he reimbursed Michael Cohen for the money,” which is something that he had not admitted.Again, we get these shifting stories.We get this murky case of porn star and hush money.

This is stuff you don’t see in the White House every day.This is just an extraordinary story, and it’s not even the biggest story out there.That’s the thing.What really struck me was when The Wall Street Journal first wrote that story, it didn’t even cause this giant eruption.It would have under any other president, under any other moment.But there were so many other things going on, so many other things that are controversial, that it was just one more blip.And it took a while until the story built on itself and more attention got paid to it.

Can you give us any of the bio of Michael Cohen?Who is he?What was he to Trump early on?I mean, he started working with him in 2007, so 10 years before.He’s defined as the fixer.What was he to Donald Trump?

Michael Cohen works for Donald Trump for about a decade before he runs for president.He handles things for him.It’s not like he’s a big-time corporate attorney.He’s the guy who makes other things go away, and he’s exploring business possibilities for him and so forth.He wants to be close to President Trump; he wants to be close to the action.And when President Trump gets elected and doesn’t give Michael Cohen any kind of job in Washington, he’s very disappointed.He’s very hurt.How is this possible?I thought we were close.

It’s this really interesting relationship, very, very fraught with emotion and discussion of loyalty and dependency.And as a result, because the president doesn’t give him a job in Washington, Michael Cohen goes out then and tries to trade on his relationship with the president.He takes on big-dollar contracts with companies and foreign entities that are intended to provide insight, he says, into how President Trump works, not lobbying necessarily, but insight—well, hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of insight, including one with a bank with Russian connections.

He’s supposed to be the loyal fixer.At one point he says, “I would take a bullet for this president."There’s kind of this New York quality to the relationship that seems different than a normal attorney-client thing.And everybody is wondering, well, what does Michael Cohen know?I mean, if he took care of the Stormy Daniels thing, what else has he taken care of?What else does he know?

Then that’s the day, of course, when investigators show up at his office and his hotel room and start carting away computers and other documents.That’s when things began to look really dark in the White House...

So April 9, 2018, is when the Cohen raids take place.How does Trump react to this?

Trump is very angry at this raid of Michael Cohen’s office and home.He refers to this as a break-in, as if somehow this was illegal.He says attorney-client privilege is dead.He clearly understands that Cohen is somebody who has some secrets that might hurt him.That’s clearly the implication anyway.That’s the way it looks.And if anybody knows things, the presumption is that Michael Cohen knows them.And the investigators now have his records, now have his emails, telephone recordings if he made them.Who knows what might be on there that might be a threat to the president or the people around him?… <v JIM GILMORE> Ten days after the raids, [Trump] hires Rudy Giuliani as his new lawyer, and there is a new strategy that is about to come forward.Why Rudy Giuliani, and what does it portend?The president picks Rudy Giuliani to be his new lawyer.Part of it is because he can’t find one of the top Washington attorneys who normally do this kind of thing to work for him.All of them have turned him down.They don’t want any part of this.And part of it is because he wants somebody to be out there on Fox News bashing away at the other side.And who would be better at doing that then Rudy Giuliani?Rudy has shown himself to be loyal in the past.He’s shown himself to be a fighter....

And that’s what Rudy Giuliani starts to do.He gets out there and begins day after day hammering at the other side, turning the question from the president’s conduct to the conduct of the people who are pursuing him.That’s what the president wants.He wants a pit bull; Rudy Giuliani is going to be his pit bull.

Just define how this new structure works and how it’s all out there to win public opinion.

Yeah.Rudy Giuliani is less of a lawyer than he is a public face for the president on this issue.What he’s trying to do is give the president’s supporters something to latch onto.Instead of thinking about, did the president do this or did the president do that, Rudy Giuliani is giving them something to explain what’s going on, and the explanation is, they’re out to get him.It’s the FBI that’s corrupt; it’s the Justice Department that’s corrupt.It’s the Congress and the press, they’re all out there. …

But to do this, you have to undercut Mueller in the investigation, Rosenstein, Sessions, the DOJ and the FBI that happen to be major institutions of the Justice Department that work for the president.What are the ramifications here?

A lot of people that he’s going after are Republicans, right?These are not Democrats.Robert Mueller is a lifelong Republican.He was appointed FBI director by George W. Bush.Rod Rosenstein, lifelong Republican, he was appointed deputy attorney general by Donald Trump.Jeff Sessions, lifelong Republican, appointed attorney general by Donald Trump.FBI, by the way, largely considered a pretty conservative organization within the American governmental firmament.These are not left-wingers.These are Republicans that he is going after.

And then more broadly, what he’s doing is he’s undercutting the credibility of the law enforcement establishment of the United States.He’s portraying them as corrupt and part of a conspiracy and at the same time questioning their credibility in a way that no president has done, again, since Watergate at least.They all report to him.These are his agencies; he is the president.He has told us repeatedly who is in charge of the executive branch, and yet he is attacking his own branch of government.

For veteran law enforcement officials, Republican and Democrat, this is very troubling.It calls into question the very system that the country has relied on for years.And you hear prosecutors say, “Well, what happens when I bring a case, a bank robbery case to court, and I hear a jury say, ‘Well, you’re the FBI; we don’t trust you anymore’”?This had ramifications that go far beyond President Trump...

… How has Trump and Trump’s law changed America, the big picture here at the end?The importance of the way he’s dealt with the judiciary, the way his judicial appointments will have long-lasting effects, the way he has dealt with the rule of law, the way he has dealt with the DOJ and the FBI—what’s the lasting effect of all this?Has Donald Trump’s law won out in the end?

The lasting effect at this point is that America’s judicial system, its law enforcement system has been politicized in a very deep way.Instead of looking at the FBI, the Justice Department as reasonably neutral and professional organizations that will decide facts for us and help us sort through things, they have become just one more political actor in a system that’s been polarized now for years.American trust in its justice system has clearly been impacted.The president has said the law enforcement system is a joke.That has to have an impact.

And the question is what will happen after he leaves office.When he’s gone, will the Justice Department, the FBI, the courts, will they regain standing with the public or not?His people would say they have been exposed as political actors.President Trump’s critics would say he is the one who has politicized them.But either way, we have now transformed America’s view of its own law enforcement system in a pretty profound way.

And the judicial appointments?

The judicial appointments will have an impact for years to come.The most successful thing, arguably, that President Trump has done has been to fill judicial vacancies with conservative jurists and lawyers, all the way up now to the Supreme Court, where he has two vacancies in just 18 months to fill.That can have a long-lasting impact, years and years after he’s gone.These judges have life appointments, and it will impact the bench for multiple decades, arguably.

And that’s the trade-off that a lot of conservatives have made with him.They may not be comfortable with his policies on trade, on security, on North Korea, on all these different things that they’re unhappy about.They may not like him personally.They may not find him a good president in a lot of ways.But the one thing that he has done is to live up to his promise of installing conservatives in these judgeships.And that’s the trade-off, right?“We get the judgeships.We’ve been looking for that for years.And if we have to accept this guy as president we don’t particularly like for other reasons, it’s worth it because we are finally going to get a judiciary that respects the law as we think it should be respected."It’s a bargain that they’ve made.

Is it surprising, the effect he’s had?

It’s surprising how effective it’s been at getting judges appointed.That’s a function, in part, of Don McGahn, his White House counsel, who’s made that his central mission, I think, and has been very successful at it—in finding candidates, getting them to the Hill, getting them vetted, getting them appointed—and then [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who considers confirming judges to be one of the most important things he does and has made a real priority of that as well.The combination of Don McGahn and Mitch McConnell has made this one of the most successful things President Trump has done.

* * *

Help me understand why [Rep.Trey] Gowdy (R-S.C.) and others are suddenly on Trump's team.

Yeah.It’s a great question, isn't it?It really is, because historically, of course, Republicans had been the party of the law enforcement agency.They are the ones who have positioned themselves as most supportive of police and FBI, and for them to suddenly be taking on the bureau like this is kind of shocking.But what they're trying to position is one bad apple or a few bad apples, right?It's [agent] Peter Strzok.It’s Jim Comey.It's [FBI Deputy Director] Andrew McCabe.We like the law enforcement, [the] rank and file, but the leadership has been corrupted and politicized.That's their argument.

So Peter Strzok becomes a perfect exemplar for them, the symbol of all that they can attach to this cabal at the top of the FBI.

So it's a perfect, in some ways, symbolic moment, and actually a practical moment in some ways, for this undermining strategy. ...

Right.Well, you need another villain, right?If you're defending somebody who's in trouble, you need to shift attention to somebody else's misdeeds.And in this case, they have Peter Strzok.Peter Strzok did and said things that gave them ammunition to say: “Well, you must be biased.Therefore, the whole investigation is biased.Therefore, the whole thing is discredited."And that's a strategy: Discredit the investigation.

… Help me understand the rolling out of the indictments by Rod Rosenstein that night [of July 13] that the president is in Europe going through pageantry and man power flexing.Rosenstein is in Washington really laying it out.

Yeah.I can't remember a split-screen moment quite like this for a while in Washington.You have on one side the president of the United States visiting the queen of England, and you're watching the images of the motorcade pulling up to Buckingham Palace.And on the other side of the screen is Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general of the United States, rolling out 12 indictments of Russians for interfering in the election that brought us Donald Trump in the first place.And you can't have a more stark contrast than these two images, right?The pageantry and the, you know, extraordinary majesty of the queen, greeting our leader, our elected leader on one side,and then the other side, questioning the election that brought us that president in the first place.A movie maker couldn't have scripted this to be more extraordinary.

The indictments are themselves an amazing moment.… Here, virtually on the eve of the Helsinki get-together, the Mueller team, through Rosenstein, is rolling out such granular detail that seems to prove all the allegations.

It's an extraordinary indictment, because it names names, and it gives details.I mean, a lot of time you hear intelligence agencies say: “This happened; that happened.This government did this; that government did this.But we can't tell you what we know.You have to trust us."And people don't trust them.The people do have skepticism of our intelligence agencies, and sometimes for good reason.In this case they've rolled out specifically: “It was this agent; he works for this agency of the Russian government.Here's what he did."

They really actually decided to take a chance here, because they could be exposing how they got information in the first place to the Russians, by putting it all out there.But it's very clear that they had access not only to names and places and so forth, they had access to their computers on some level, because they are able to describe keystrokes and searches that they had made on their own computers.So they clearly penetrated, in some way, these agents who are working against the United States.

And it’s powerful and hard to rebut.In fact, nobody really does rebut it.Nobody has said these agents didn't do this, except with a casual dismissal by Vladimir Putin in front of the press conference.… These are agents of the Russian government who have been caught seemingly red-handed, directly intervening in the election. …

And as [Trump] walks out for that press conference, after whatever has happened with him and Putin, … his staff is holding their breath, I take it, [about] what he's going to say and what will actually happen on worldwide television.

Yeah.The staff has no idea what's going to happen, obviously.They weren't in part of the meeting for two hours.And this is a president who doesn't stick to the script, so you never know for sure what he's going to say.

This press conference is really unlike anything I think we've seen before.Standing next to the president of Russia, asked about the election meddling, he equates the word of Vladimir Putin with his own intelligence agencies.It could be one; it could be the other.And he goes, “Ah, they both gave me this different point of view, and who knows, right?"Asked if he would condemn Russian meddling, instead he turns the question into an attack on the FBI.

And Putin is just having a great time.Putin is agreeing with everything.You can see he’s barely containing himself over this press conference.He's never had a press conference with an American president like this before, where basically he's getting exactly what he would want.And then this telling moment, Putin is asked, “Well, sir, did you support Donald Trump in the election?,” and he says flat out: “Yes, I did.Yes, I did, because I thought he would make our relationship normal again."

Now, did that mean he necessarily sponsored the intervention that the intelligence agencies said he did?No, I don't think he was admitting that.But for him to say flatly, “I supported Trump,” completely undercuts Trump's line, which has been, “I'm the toughest on Russia; he really was for Hillary Clinton,” which of course nobody thinks was true.And there you had Putin confirming it on camera in front of the world. …

The Republican Party, the law and order party that has had these hearings earlier in the week with [FBI agent Peter] Strzok and beating up the FBI and the Justice Department, and now the party that's been anti-Russia and Cold War-oriented finds itself, its leader anyway—

Exactly.It's extraordinary.Trump is completely transforming the Republican Party, right?The party of law enforcement is beating up the FBI.The party of countering Russian aggression around the world is cozying up with the leader of the Kremlin, all in one week.And the rest of the party [is] sort of uncomfortably uncertain what to do, because at their roots, most Republicans in Congress still believe the same thing that they believed, but they don't want to take on their president, and the president is forcing them into a position that makes them deeply uncomfortable and deeply at odds with their own philosophical ideological roots.

Back down to the street level, and then we're done.Is he his own Roy Cohn?Has he become his own Roy Cohn?

He has, yeah.He has become his own Roy Cohn.He has become what Roy did for him when he was in business.He is the attack machine.He’s the one who cut your knees out from under you if you get in the way.He doesn't need a Roy Cohn because he is Roy Cohn.

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