The FRONTLINE Interviews
Robert Bennett
Former lawyer for President Clinton
Robert Bennett is an attorney who represented President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
This is the transcript of an interview with FRONTLINE’s Michael Kirk conducted on May 30, 2018. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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Give us a little sense of what you know about Roy Cohn, and who Roy Cohn was in the world of law.And if you know who he was to Donald Trump, that’s all the better.
Well, Roy Cohn was a New York lawyer who attached himself to Sen. [Joseph] McCarthy in the McCarthy era.He was generally viewed as a brilliant lawyer, but an unscrupulous one; that he was someone who did not play on a 100-yard football field, but extended the yardage when it served his purposes.I've read a lot about him.I didn’t know him, but I was aware of some of his activities and cases.He was someone who sort of said: “You never settle.You never give in.You always fight.You demolish, just demolish your opposition.And there is not etiquette involved.There is no respecting your opposition.You crush them."
I think, unfortunately, Donald Trump admired that, and I think very much of what the president is doing—and I like the president; I've met him many times on a social level, I should add—[he] just has accepted that that’s the way lawyers should be representing clients.There's no nuance.You don’t use a surgeon’s scalpel, but you use a butcher’s meat ax.And Donald Trump has followed that.
Another lawyer we’re following up in the New York world … is Michael Cohen, who, in the latter stages, before Trump comes here, is working for Trump and really functioning as a fixer more than an attorney.Can you give me your assessment of what a wealthy magnate like Trump would use somebody like Michael Cohen for?
Well, it looks like he’s using him to do the fixing, you know.… I don’t know Cohen, so to be fair to him, I just really can't give an opinion of him.But it looks like maybe that’s the way Trump was going, because he certainly had at his disposal some really, really fine lawyers.
I should add one other thing.Even if you get a fine lawyer—there was a wonderful New York lawyer named Arthur Lyman a few years ago.You could not question the man’s intelligence and skill and experience.He came down here, and he headed a committee.He was the lawyer to a committee doing an investigation, and he really didn’t do very well.Someone made the remark, which I think I've never forgotten, is Arthur knew all the words, but he didn’t know the music of Washington.And I think Donald Trump is tone-deaf when it comes to the music of Washington.It’s not enough to know the words; you’ve got to know the music.
What may fly in the New York courts will not necessarily fly here.And when you have a case which is not just strictly law but involves politics, ethics, the whole gamut, you’ve got to have these different skills.Now, that may be an unfair criticism of Lyman, who I thought was a magnificent lawyer, and I envied his skills, to be candid with you.But there's a special music of this town, and I learned that by representing a lot of very high-profile people here.
What's the music?What is the music?
Well, the music is, you don’t make things personal.You don’t make them personal.And if you make them too personal today, that person could get you tomorrow.I think that’s one of it.People still like to engage in the view that we are civilized, and we handle things in a civilized way here, and no matter how outrageous some congressman is beating up your client, you can say it, but you don’t act like you really would like to act.That’s the best I can do on that.
There's a moment … where [FBI Director] Jim Comey is over at the White House, the Blue Room, two days after the inauguration, and he’s trying to hide in the curtains, he says, in the draperies, 6’8” Comey.And Trump pulls him over.
I remember.
You’ve represented a president who was in trouble.You’ve represented very powerful people who have had cases being built about them.Describe for me those circumstances, will you, with Comey and Trump.Trump is new, and he’s the Trump we’ve just talked about, and Comey is the very picture of probity and Washington, in that sense.Set it up for me, will you?
Well, I think, first of all, if you're Comey, or in that position, it’s very important for you to show the world that you are an independent person, that you're not in the pocket of the president.So when you walk in, when you are in a room, and the president hugs you warmly, that rubs up against the image of independence.I'm sure that’s what bothered Comey, that he was bothered by the familiarity: What message does that convey to the folks out there?And probably somewhere in the back of his head, he would say, if I find for him, there will be somebody who will say: “Well, of course.Didn’t you see that meeting?"And they go up and kissed, you know.I think that was poor judgment on the president’s part.I don’t think in that instance Comey did anything he shouldn’t have done.He really didn’t have a choice.
What do you think the most powerful man in the world is thinking at that moment, pulling Comey across the room?
Of course I don’t know.
Sure.
But you know, “We can be friends; we don’t have to be enemies; I like you; I hope you like me”—that kind of thing.“You can trust me; I can trust you.We’re on the same side of these issues,” all of which would rub up against what Comey felt his job was.
When they have that dinner for two at the White House, the president asks him for loyalty, whatever that means.You’ll help me define that, maybe.If the president is your client, would you have wanted that dinner to have occurred?
No, I would have counseled against the dinner, and I would have tried to communicate to the president’s aide, chief aide, whoever that might be, “This is not a good idea for either of our principals, and here is why."I would have done anything and everything to stop it.
Why?
Because it doesn’t look right.The image is—you know, I spent years as a federal prosecutor.I never had lunch or dinner with anybody I was investigating.People don’t think you can maintain your independence if you're doing something like that.It's a bad image.And that’s another thing about Washington.It’s not just the words, but it’s the music.It’s the image.
So speaking of music, he fires [Acting Attorney General] Sally Yates.Literally that day, she has come to the White House with information about [National Security Adviser] Mike Flynn, talked to [White House Counsel] Don McGahn about it.If you're McGahn, by the way, do you walk that right up to the president?What do you do with that information when the acting attorney general comes up to the White House and drops that on you?
Well, I think it was a fair warning.I don’t fault Yates for doing that.But it’s a very difficult job to be White House counsel, because you have to juggle so many different roles.
So that night is the dinner for two.And then I think four days later, she’s fired.Yates is fired.The signal that sends across Washington?If you're advising the president, and he wants to do it—this is about the travel ban ostensibly.
Well, it’s a very bad move.Look, if I could just backtrack on one thing.When I was representing President Clinton, I worked very closely with a magnificent lawyer in this town, Lloyd Cutler.He was one of the giants of the profession, and he was White House counsel.He and I very early fixed on a strategy.Our strategy was that we wanted President Clinton to get re-elected, and we wanted President Clinton to fill out his term, and everything we did, every question or issue or opportunity that came up was considered in light of our goals.
Now, I don’t think President Trump and his team had a strategy or a goal in the beginning.If they did, they probably would have said, “This is a dreadful idea to have the president sit down and have dinner with Comey."I mean, that’s part of the music.Also, it’s knowing how the media will deal with things.I mean, my God, if you're under investigation, and here you have a guy like Comey, who takes very seriously his image of probity, you’d say: “Well, wait a minute.That’s a terrible idea.That puts him on the spot.That may require him to say or do something you don’t want him to say or do."
But they didn’t have a strategy.They have a strategy now, very clearly, in my opinion, and I figured what it was before Rudy Giuliani actually came out and articulated it.
Absent understanding the music, and having absolutely no songwriters around him, the president of the United States, it seems like, is kind of his own lawyer for the purposes of this.
Yeah, but don’t forget, in fairness to Trump, how would he know how things are done?He won an election that even he didn’t think he would win.That’s what I mean.Anybody who has been in politics, anybody who has been involved in these kinds of issues, knows that you do certain things, and you don’t do other things.Trump had no idea.To Trump, this was just like dealing with another real estate guy to discuss the sale of a building or the lease of a building.He probably had no idea how bad it looked to do that and how his actions would be interpreted.
And that the word “loyalty” would have such a different meaning to Jim Comey than it had to the president.
Right.And you know, here in this town, there is this notion of appearance of impropriety.When I represented the Senate in the Keating Five, we emphasized the appearance of impropriety.But that’s a term that I don’t think Donald Trump probably ever heard of.When you're sitting down at dinner with the guy who is ultimately investigating you, you don’t sit down and have dinner with him.And in the Keating Five case, a senator would say, “Well, I did give Charles Keating this money, but I didn’t intend”—well, the appearance of impropriety.
Let’s go into Jeff Sessions for a minute.How important is it to Trump that he has somebody like Jeff Sessions as his attorney general in his mind at the very beginning of the administration?
Well, I think it was very important, because don’t forget, it was Jeff Sessions who was one of the very first prominent powerful people who told the country: “This guy is OK. This guy is OK. Take him seriously.He’s much more”—I'm paraphrasing.He didn’t use these words.So that was important to him.But Trump, again, misunderstood the message that Sessions was giving.Sessions is an old hand in this town, and Trump, therefore, felt that for him to recuse himself, which was clearly the proper thing to do, no question about it, that this was an act of disloyalty; that this was an act against him.You're either with him, or you're against him.And that’s just not true.So that was a real blow to him.And it told him that, gee, things don’t work here like I thought they would.
So in some ways, it’s the education, the legal education of Donald Trump, through this.And the lessons of the education are going to become pretty hard and come pretty fast and furious. …
Yeah.And the day after your lesson, it’s on the front page of The Washington Post or The New York Times.
Well, that’s it, isn't it?Of course we’ll stop here and there where he berates Sessions so mightily, but certainly, according to the Times today, he understood them, both intuitively and practically, that this investigation was coming hard at him, and he didn’t have a soldier in that fight.
Well, the president does not appear to be a man of nuance.And nuance is very important.The attorney general is a member of the Cabinet.He is an ally of the president.He is executing the laws that the president, the regulations the president hopes will be applied.But at the same time, there is a degree of independence to him, because he runs the FBI, and he runs these other things.And I don’t think the president and the people who he attracted as lawyers and advisers, they didn’t appreciate the differences and the nuance of, “Yes, you can do this, but you can't do that."
Can you imagine being White House counsel at this moment, where the president is very angry at the attorney general and talking about how to get him to unrecuse himself?
I think it would be a virtually impossible job, especially since Mr. Trump doesn’t really like to listen to people.Don’t forget, I had the advantage with President Clinton of having a client who had been, I think he’d been the attorney general of his state, and was well-versed in legal things.But he was smart, too, and he knew how things worked and didn’t work.Not that he didn’t make mistakes.We all know that he did.But he didn’t make these kinds of mistakes.
And what do we know about Trump the client?
Well, I don’t know anything specific, but it would appear, if you look at the pattern, that he does not follow the advice of his lawyers.He acts as his own lawyer, and he doesn’t like to take—you know, he sees lawyers as Roy Cohn, and the right lawyer for him in this situation is not a Roy Cohn.
And then he decides … he’s got to get rid of Comey, got to fire him.He’s getting advice from [senior advisers] Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller.Even [Chief Strategist] Steve Bannon is saying, “No, don’t do this; this is crazy."Don McGahn is saying: “Don’t do this.This is a big mistake, Mr. President."If you're in the room with him, what do you say at that moment?
Well, I would have said the same thing: Work with him.See, my whole strategy would have been completely different than the strategy that they had, but—
What?
You don’t fire the man, because people are going to ask you why.What did he do?It was a first step in giving support to the notion that there was an obstruction of justice.What is the reason that you fired Comey?What did he do?And that was a very bad step.But it did deliver a message to other people that hey, he’s going to exercise his presidential power.I think that was a real mistake.
Define obstruction of justice.What is the definition?We don’t have a working definition yet in this conversation.
Well, without giving a jury instruction on it, which many of them exist, [it] is that you interfere with the investigation that’s taking place.You lie; you influence witnesses.That’s obstruction of justice.That you destroy documents; you don’t produce documents.Those are all things of obstructing justice.It is a very dangerous thing to get involved in, because it is something the Justice Department cannot ignore, because it is at the essence of our law enforcement system.You can't have people obstructing justice.If they obstruct justice, no matter who they are, it just gives a message to people in the country that they can, with [impunity], interfere with an investigation.
Intent?
Yes, intent is—in most all these things, intent is very important.That’s why now everybody says, what was his intent in firing Comey?What were his reasons for firing Comey?Now, if you fire one person, and then you fire a second person, and then you start creating a pattern, and you can get all these different pieces together, and the ultimate finder of fact can infer an obstruction of justice, if you piece together enough of these things—
Let’s piece [together] ourselves, just for a moment.Is the loyalty dinner, the asking for loyalty—is that an obstruction of justice?
Well, in and of itself, most of these things would not be.
Not the loyalty dinner.What about, he shoos everybody out of the Oval Office at some moment, including the attorney general, stays alone with Comey, looks at Comey and says: “Mike Flynn’s a good guy.Can you go easy on him?"
Well, this is something that people could disagree on.I myself don’t think that, in and of itself, would be an obstruction of justice.These cases become searches for intent.After you have the basic facts, the investigators and the prosecutors search for intent.And if you have enough of these incidents, you can conclude the intent was bad.It was a negative intent.
I could argue that it was not inappropriate.It was inadvisable; it was reckless.But in and of itself, to say to Comey, “Look, I'm not getting in the way of your investigation, but I just want you to know Flynn is a fabulous guy and served our country well,” so if you just had that, you’d be OK, I guess.But when you start adding all these things together, it starts looking like there was an obstruction intent to obstruct an investigation.
And then you fire Comey, the chief investigator.
Which is very foolish, because he should have known that someone else would take his place.
And your thoughts about what seems to be, whatever it is, involving [U.S. Deputy Attorney General] Rod Rosenstein to write a memo that’s about how Comey kind of blew the Hillary Clinton investigation and should have his wrist slapped for that, and using that as the rationale for firing Comey?What do you make of that, as a counselor to presidents?
I don’t know, you know.I don’t know.But I bet Rod Rosenstein wishes he never wrote that memo.But I don’t know.It looks pretty lame now.Didn’t look so lame when it was first mentioned, but now it looks pretty lame, because there are so many other things that have happened.
The very next day, Ambassador [Sergey] Kislyak and Foreign Minister [Sergey] Lavrov are in the White House, in the Oval Office.There's no press pool there.It’s Russian media that reports the story, takes the pictures.Then Trump calls Comey a “nut job,” says it’s a tremendous burden lifted off of my shoulders….Your thoughts about that, counselor?
Well, it’s ridiculous.It’s outrageous.If I were his lawyer at the time, I would have gone, “My heavens."You don’t sit down with what may be the primary enemy of the United States and make statements like that about an official of the Justice Department.I mean, that’s just reckless, and it’s irresponsible, and it leads to all sorts of negative inferences.
And then he goes on television with Lester Holt, the anchor from NBC News, and I don’t know why, but he kind of pushes the Rosenstein thing, wads it up and throws it into the gutter and says: “No, it was my idea.I wanted to get rid of the guy.He was on me, and I just, you know—we had to stop this."
Right.Well, it looks bad.So you start stringing all these together, and that’s how a prosecutor would present the case.He probably wouldn’t argue that any one of these things was an obstruction, but that, when you string them together, these improper acts, even if they are not in and of themselves criminal, amount to an intent to obstruct justice.
Rosenstein, because Sessions has recused himself, … he decides to create a special counsel for this case.Why, do you think?
Well, I think it was clearly, clearly the right decision to make, because you would know that a target of the investigation or the end result of it could involve your bosses.It could involve all sorts of people who were not your traditional defendant and that you would want to be in a position where whatever findings came out, you could say, this was an independent investigation; it was not in any way influenced by technically the employee of the person being investigated.
A U.S. attorney is in a very awkward position, you know.In every U.S. Attorney’s Office, there is a picture of the president of the United States.So what do you do?You take the picture off the wall during the investigation?I mean, that was a smart thing for him to do.And—
But you fought … against what a lot of people thought of as the rogue idea of independent counsels, and even special counsels.A lot of people now are coming in this room and saying to us: “This is a really bad idea, special prosecutors.This is the worst example.Here we go again.A guy who can go completely rogue, and there’s never any end to it."
Well, there is a difference between an independent counsel and a special counsel.Lawrence Walsh, when I was representing former Secretary of Defense [Caspar] Weinberger, who was a Republican appointee, Lawrence Walsh had nobody checking on him, nobody, and the case of independent counsel went up to the Supreme Court, and Justice [William] Rehnquist said, “Well, it’s OK, because at the end of the day, the attorney general can fire him."But in the real world, that’s never going to happen.So I think they’ve acknowledged that there may be those special cases where you need to get a lawyer or prosecutor of unimpeachable integrity to handle these things.
And this is that case?
Yeah, I think this was a very legitimate exercise in this case.
[Robert] Mueller builds a hell of a team.You know much about the team?
I know some.I know Mueller very well.
Tell us about him.
Oh, he’s a—I know him well.He has unimpeachable integrity.He’s a Republican, which many people forget.He’s a lawman, and he’s doing a great service to the country.He would not hesitate to say Trump did nothing wrong, and he would not hesitate to go the other way.If I committed a crime, he is the last person I would want investigating me.And if I was accused of a crime that I didn’t commit, I would want him to investigate me, because I think he would have the courage to make the right decision.
Here’s how the president of the United States hears that Mueller is on the trail.They're in a meeting in the Oval Office.Rosenstein calls McGahn and informs him that he’s not only created a special counsel, but that the special counsel is Robert Mueller III. McGahn hangs up.Sessions is in the meeting; Trump is in the meeting.And he says, “Special Counsel Mueller."Trump loses it, basically eviscerates Sessions, blaming him for so much of it.Have you ever heard of or seen anything like that in the Oval Office in response to almost any news?
No.No.No, I have not.When Kenneth Starr was appointed, and I was representing Clinton, we did have conversation about him.But I just don’t feel I can go into this.But nothing like what went on here.I think President Trump felt that Jeff Sessions would be loyal to him and would protect him, whereas he probably felt, after talking to people, that Mueller would call it the way he saw it and didn’t see his job as protecting him.That’s probably why he was outraged.I don’t know whether President Trump ever had any experience with Mueller.I just don’t know.Maybe he did; maybe he didn’t.But my guess is that he was angry because he felt he was losing control.The president seems to be a control freak, and I think he felt that Sessions was in his pocket.And to Sessions’ credit, he disqualified himself.I know Jeff Sessions.I certainly disagree with Jeff Sessions on a lot of political things.But I like him, and I do believe Sessions is a man of principle.And Sessions realized, “I can't stay in this case,” and he made the absolute right decision, in my opinion.
Let’s see where we’re going.So about the Mueller team, any thoughts about what he’s doing, what he’s creating?
Well, he created a very formidable group of investigators and prosecutors who have expertise in the various aspects of the case.
You’ve got white-collar-crime specialists.You’ve got financial people.You’ve got money laundering.You’ve got all dimensions.You’ve got a constitutional lawyer who’s word-checking everything you assert, and [making] sure every T is crossed and I is dotted.
And what is remarkable in this town, there are no leaks coming out of the Mueller investigation.I mean, that’s almost unheard of in Washington.But Mueller is—I have no doubt he would fire anybody who leaked.You have a very sophisticated group of investigators and prosecutors.And when you compare it to the Trump legal team, it was like the New York Yankees against some Little League team.
Speaking of the New York legal team, he brings Marc Kasowitz down from New York, not literally, but he hires Kasowitz, who had been an attorney of his up in the scene we’ve already described.Here comes Kasowitz.Again, I don’t know that he knows the music; he may know the words.What was your impression?
Well, I don’t even think he knew the words.He was basically a very aggressive, attack, civil litigator.It wasn’t until he hired John Dowd—
Don’t get ahead of me for one second.He comes, and what he does is something that you described you shouldn’t do, which is he makes the political personal.He goes after Mueller.He goes after the people on Mueller’s team.He says they're Democrats.He literally, instead of arguing points of law or whatever he might argue, or having any probity himself, he attacks these people themselves.
Well, you don’t attack, because these are the people who are going to be making at least the initial decisions.I have handled many cases where I've gone in, and I've said, “Look, let’s not make this personal.I want an opportunity to make a presentation to you,” but if your surrogates are out there attacking you, and saying you're dishonest, and you're politically influenced, why should you expect to be treated in an appropriate way?That’s why some of his lawyers argued that they shouldn’t be doing this.
They're in the midst of all of that, and the president has gone off to the G-20 summit in Germany.He’s talked to Putin about, “Did you/didn’t you?"The New York Times calls the communications office and says, “We have information about a meeting with Don Jr. at the Trump Tower the summer before with the Russians."… The president, from Air Force One, with [former Communications Director] Hope Hicks and no lawyers in the room, talking to Kasowitz on the phone, but definitely not with legal counsel, writes a statement which doesn’t exactly turn out to be the specific truth of what they know.Now what, counselor?Now what do you see?
Well, it’s another point that—it’s another fence post into the fence, about why have this meeting?And you start putting all these things together, and you create a, “Gee, there's only one answer to this.There was an attempt to influence. …"I think it’s the same meeting, where somebody said, “Oh, well, we were talking about the adoption of”—I mean, that was laughable.If that’s what you were discussing, you wouldn’t have these particular people there.You’d have some lower-level people who deal with adoptions.It was a preposterous statement.And of course, the FBI and Mueller would say, “What is going on here?"
Why is the president writing statements anyway?If you're the president’s attorney, what would that be like to be on the phone with Air Force One, saying, “No, no, no, no, no”?
No.I mean, that’s not what is done.Now, it’s perfectly appropriate for the client, the president, to say to his lawyer, “Look, I think we should say this; I think we should say that."And then the job of the lawyer is to say, “No, I wouldn’t say this, because here is how it will be interpreted, or here is how the media will treat it."But to write a statement, I mean, that’s just amateur hour.But in fairness to these lawyers, I mean, they couldn’t control their client.They still can't control their client.
… I guess now it’s not even a question about what the Russians were doing and what Trump, [former Campaign Director Paul] Manafort, and Kushner were doing, being in that meeting.
Well, that’s right.And you're seeing something quite unusual that—I don’t remember ever seeing it before.It doesn’t mean it hadn't existed, [but] you have the intelligence community going crazy here.You watch [former Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper —my heavens, you don’t usually see that.These are people who operate, for the most part, behind the scenes.They're going nuts.Why are they going nuts?[Because] Russia is considered someone we have to watch out for, and the idea that there is this intimacy, the idea that we would use these people to help us in an election, is incredible.They went nuts, absolutely nuts.
He goes shopping for attorneys, of course, at some stages.Does he ever ask you?Did anybody ask you?
All I will say is that I never spoke to the president of the United States about representing him.But I won't go any further than that.
He asks—it’s been reported eight different firms turn him down, say there's no advantage.… [Is that] fairly representing what the feeling is here in town about working for Donald Trump at a moment like this?
Well, I think you have to be a little more specific.There's plenty of lawyers that, if asked, would take it, if they were lawyers who wanted to get their names out there or were not well-known.But top lawyers would be concerned … Big firms are very risk-averse.Would this affect our ability to recruit, especially women, especially liberals, especially independents?That would be a factor.My guess is, and it’s only an educated guess, is a lot of lawyers would say—I'm trying to be careful here not to get into certain things—“Look at all these people who have been hired by him.Has anyone’s reputation been enhanced?"I don’t think you can identify a single person, lawyer or otherwise, whose reputation has been enhanced by signing on with the president.Now, there may be one or two people who have come out in sort of a neutral position, but most everybody has been diminished in some way.
So if you're a lawyer who has built up a reputation over many years, and it’s a good reputation, you have to ask yourself, “Do I want to take the chance of having my reputation diminished?,” because people blame the lawyers very often for the actions of the client.And you can't, because of the privilege, you can't go out and say, “Well, it wasn’t my idea."I'm sure that was a big factor with many lawyers.They didn’t want to be diminished.
Also, there were clients of firms, big firms, who didn’t want their lawyers getting all wrapped up in this mess.And I'm sure, without knowing, that calls were made to prominent clients, and [they would] say, “Harry, how do you feel about our firm taking this on?"And if Harry says, “I think you should not take it on,” that’s going to—if the client’s paying you a ton of money, that can be—that lawyer who got the call will be told, “Well, you're not going to do it here."
John Dowd—who is he?
I happen to be very fond of Dowd.And I'm fond of him not for his legal work so much, but he was a tough Marine.… He is a wonderful person in many ways.
John doesn’t see nuance.He’s a very black-and-white guy.He’s somewhat of a bull in a china shop.I've used this expression before, but he tends to use the butcher’s meat ax and not the surgeon’s scalpel.And this is an area of politics law, morality, you need the surgeon’s scalpel.You can't go in there and just start whacking away, and John has a tendency to whack away.
Sounds like a good fit with Donald Trump.
Well, that’s not a good fit, because you have to have somebody who says: “Hold on.This is not about you feeling good; this is about you winning.Let’s keep our eye on our goal."That’s what a lawyer has to do with a client.You're dealing with people who have been enormously successful in their life, and they think they can handle everything.
You know, I love to fly-fish, and I always release the fish but for one.There's one on my wall, and under its mouth, it says, “You know, if I’d kept my mouth shut, I wouldn’t be on this wall."It’s an important point with people who have been successful and have gotten ahead because they do talk, because they're persuasive, because they're strong and they're aggressive, and they're alpha males or females.In this business, you have to have a lawyer who says, “No, stop,” and to have your client listen to you.
Ty Cobb.
Well, I think in the spirit of full disclosure, I should tell you Ty was my partner, and he left the partnership to take on this job.Ty is an excellent lawyer.He’s a very experienced lawyer.My guess, from everything I read, is he was a voice of moderation.He was, you know: “Don’t do this.Let’s not keep saying these things about Mueller; we’ve got to deal with him."… If you have to deal with somebody, you don’t—I don’t mean you go bring him flowers when you go meet with him, but you don’t insult him personally and question his integrity.And I'm sure Ty was making that pitch.And I'm sure that that was interpreted as a sign of weakness, and it wasn’t a sign of weakness.
You can have an iron fist, but you’ve got to have it in a velvet glove, and I think that Ty eventually became in the minority of that view of moderation.
You used to watch him on the Sunday shows, and it was like he was talking to an audience of one, straight to the president, knowing the president is watching.He would say things like: “This is all going to be over by Thanksgiving.This will all be over by—”
Well, that was a mistake. And I think maybe what he was doing was saying: “Look, keep your powder dry.It will be over soon.I know you're restless.I know you're”—But knowing Ty, that’s my guess of what he was trying to do.… Ty’s an excellent lawyer.He was, in my opinion, probably the best lawyer Trump had in his group.
At some moment, Mueller is never stopping, though.There's production of lots of documents, lots of other things.It is true that under Cobb, things slow down.The hostility seems to abate for a few months in there.But he keeps coming.Mueller, he’s got [former foreign policy adviser George] Papadopoulos; he’s got Flynn; he’s got Manafort.He’s raiding Manafort at 6:00 in the morning, coming in there and getting it.And then they turn to Cohen up in New York, and they hand it over to the Southern District of New York.I guess they hand it over.And sending what kind of a message?Almost like it’s testing the president and his willingness to keep his powder dry.
Yeah.Well, I don’t know.I doubt very much if that was the motive.I think there's a more innocent explanation, that, yes, I know, under my authority, says Mueller, I can look at things that come up during the course of my investigation and can follow them.But this stuff, Cohen, this is off a little bit too much, and I'm limited on time.I'm being criticized by the White House for taking too long.I’ll let the Southern District or the state prosecutor handle some of this stuff.
It’s during this time that the president decides to get more aggressive, for whatever set of reasons.Dowd leaves.Cobb leaves.Some of it’s about should he do an interview or not?Should he be deposed or not?You have experience with a president who was deposed in a case.Your advice to this particular president about the value or necessity of a deposition or an interview?
That’s very hard to answer, because I don’t know what the president’s answers would be to the questions.Well, the general principle—and I’ll get specific.The general principle would be that you would never put a client in to be interrogated by the likes of Mueller unless that client, telling the absolute truth, would exonerate himself.You can't put him in if he’s going to say, “I did this; yeah, I did that, but I—”… Now, right now, it wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense for him to go in and testify, because I don’t think he could make it go away.
Why not?
Well, there are just too many things he would have to explain.I always have to realize I'm talking about our president, the president of the United States, and I'm sort of old-fashioned, you know. (Laughs.)He does not have a history of telling the truth.And the bottom line is that if you—a favorite technique of prosecutors is to charge you with false statement or perjury, and they're not that difficult to prove, especially false statement.Some of the things they're looking at, at the president, are very difficult to prove….False statements, 18 U.S.C. 1001, is one of the easiest things to prove.You just show the guy made a false statement.
That’s how they got Flynn.
That’s right.So right now, I agree with it.But you see, you have to have an original game plan.I don’t want to discuss things that I shouldn’t discuss, but take President Clinton.Paula Jones files this lawsuit, and they want to depose the president.Well, the approach we took was, let’s see if we can limit the amount of time, which we did.Let’s minimize the risks by having the judge who’s hearing the case sit in the deposition, which is very unusual.Let’s have various areas that are cut out, that they can't get into.
Now, why would we do that?Well, because our strategy was, we want to get him re-elected in 1996 and have him serve out his term.And if you have the president of the United States refusing to be deposed, legally a court can enter a default judgment against him.Alternatively, the American people would say: “Wait a minute.This is awful.You can't have the president refusing and thumbing his nose at the legal system."But we had a goal, and so it made sense at the time.They didn’t have a goal in the beginning, you know.They were running hot and cold all over the place.
It feels like they have one now.
They do have one now.I'm convinced of it.
And some of it is Rudy as a sort of megaphone.But also, it feels like—we haven't talked at all about this, because it’s not in your province, but this tweet, Fox, press conference, drumbeat, “witch hunt,” this undermining the FBI, the personalities, Comey, Rosenstein, Sessions.Now it just feels voracious, but really, since the Cohen thing, but the attack, the undermining, the “Spygate,” the coining of phrases, it feels like a legal-political strategy that might cut in their favor in some way.
Well, I think you're absolutely, absolutely right.I think it is a strategy that might very well work.And what is that strategy?It is the following: It is undecided whether you can indict the president of the United States.There's Office of Legal Counsel memoranda that suggests you can't.No court has decided it.I'm not sure if that memo is right.I have no doubt, in my own mind, if the president shot somebody—as the president said, “If I'm in the middle of Times Square and I shoot somebody, people wouldn’t be bothered”—he’d be indicted for that.I have no doubt about it.Now, they may delay the trial until after he’s out of office, but I can't conceive of a court saying, “You can murder somebody when you're president and avoid being indicted."
But let’s say it’s one of these political messy things.What are you facing?You're facing a recommendation from Mueller for impeachment.That’s why the coming 2018 elections are so important.If the Republicans maintain their position, he probably won't be impeached.If the Democrats win, my judgment is he probably will be impeached.But nobody thinks, to my knowledge, that the Senate will switch parties.And the way impeachment works, it’s not the end; it’s the beginning.People don’t understand that.It’s an allegation, basically.So if the Democrats take over, and he’s impeached, the trial on the impeachment is held before the United States Senate, with the chief justice of the United States presiding.And I don’t see a Republican Senate with the chief justice presiding as convicting the president.
I think they have focused on a strategy that is, “Let’s do anything and everything to discredit Mueller, to discredit the investigation, so that he will not be impeached in the first instance, and certainly, if he is, that he’ll be acquitted; he would be acquitted by the Senate."That’s what their strategy is.And I felt that was their strategy for months.So I was pleased that I was confirmed, in my own mind, when Rudy Giuliani gets out and basically says that’s their strategy.And I think it may be working.
But here’s the problem, and here is why I am personally so troubled about it.In the process of defending himself this way, the president and Rudy, who was one of my heroes based on 9/11—one of my daughters, we almost lost her there.He was a hero to me.But they are doing tremendous damage to our institutions, to the media, to the Justice Department, to the FBI.Can you imagine some FBI agent now going out to interview somebody in Iowa on some case, and people who normally respected the agent don’t even want to let him in the door?Tremendous damage is being done to our country, tremendous damage.
And the press is getting—you know, I talk to a group every year of Rumsfeld Fellows.And these are very smart young people [who] come in from the Eastern bloc, and they ask why the United States is what it is.And I say two things.I say, “It’s the freedom of the press."And I said: “… The first thing a dictator does is he gets rid of the press.They're the people who keep our politicians accountable.And the second thing is our justice system.If you're in Kazakhstan, and you have a lawsuit, you know that you can get a fair shot, a fair hearing before a United States judge.You can't say that any other place in the world.Those two things."
And what is our president doing?He’s destroying them.Well, he’s trying to destroy them.He won't destroy them, but he’s trying.
It’s a terrible strategy.I don’t like that strategy.It’s a high-risk strategy.But I'm not convinced that it won't work at the end of the day when a Republican Senate acquits him, and he’ll say, “See, I told you from the beginning this was all corrupt, and this and that."And he moves on.So that’s their strategy, and it’s an evil strategy.It’s a very bad strategy, but it may work.
You know, the mafia killed off witnesses.That was a strategy, and it often worked.This is a different kind of strategy, which probably, in the bigger picture, is more damaging.
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