So Help Me God, page 26
When we landed in Washington, Karen took Audrey straight to Reagan National Airport, where she caught a flight to be by Dan’s side in the hospital. They had met while studying at Northeastern University and had grown close since. She stayed with him at the hospital for six weeks and was with him when he went home. He endured burns and a broken femur, and his hip was shattered. During his recovery, they both missed college graduation, but Charlotte went to Boston and picked up their caps and gowns. We were thankful that Dan had been spared, though I regret never having met his dad. It was a critical moment for our family, proof that even the highest public offices are no shield from personal tragedy. Karen and I wanted to visit Dan while he was still in the hospital, but the security necessary would have been too disruptive. Instead, we went up to Connecticut and visited him after he got home. Dan went through months of rehabilitation; today he’s training for a marathon.
In Washington, House Republicans had gotten off the mat and back to work on health care reform. During my whole time on the road, I had been on the phone, shuttling between calls with the president and leaders in Congress.
Our efforts seemed to be paying off; the theme from Rocky was even played during a meeting of the House Republican Conference in the Capitol. The president worked the phones day and night. During my twelve years in Congress, I had received only one call from a president. During that and other legislative pushes, I watched President Trump call dozens of congressmen and even the same member several times in one week.
Congressman Mark Meadows of North Carolina, the chairman of the Freedom Caucus, committed to the president that he would find a way forward, and, working with Congressman Tom MacArthur, a moderate Republican from New Jersey, he did just that. Both men played a critical role in the negotiations, writing an amendment giving states waivers from federal coverage standards to lower their health care costs while protecting people with preexisting conditions. The bill also cut taxes and repealed the individual coverage mandate at the heart of Obamacare. It was a plan designed to win the support of both House conservatives and moderate Republicans, and it worked. After weeks of furious negotiations, the American Health Care Act passed the House. The vote was 217–213 to repeal and replace Obamacare. It was a remarkable comeback.
The repeal of Obamacare had taken its first steps, and Republican members of the House of Representatives made their way to the White House for a celebration in the Rose Garden. The president felt that the legislators deserved a victory lap, even if more work remained to be done. In typical Trump fashion—always remember his background in hospitality—he opened the doors of the White House, letting members of Congress, many of whom had never been there, take a tour of the mansion and the West Wing. They all loved it. Introducing the president, I tried to capture the historic nature of the moment, saying, “This is the beginning of the end of Obamacare.” Clearly, I don’t own a crystal ball.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE The Summer of Russia
Save me, Lord, from lying lips and from deceitful tongues.
—Psalm 120:2
Just as the health care bill was reaching the finish line in Congress, I met with Trump to discuss the legislation’s prospects. I walked into the Oval Office and headed into the small dining room, where the president was waiting. I saw the television on the wall broadcasting the May 3 congressional testimony of Jim Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Trump asked, with some irritation, if I had seen the footage. With a roll of the eyes, I said yes, I had seen some of it.
During his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Comey said that he was “mildly nauseous” that he had possibly impacted the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. It was a little late for that. On July 5, 2016, he had held a press conference at the conclusion of the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email account as secretary of state, recommending that she not be charged for any wrongdoing. It was a showy political exoneration of the candidate, a major departure from standard FBI procedure. Then, in an abrupt about-face, on October 28, he had reopened the investigation into Clinton’s emails less than two weeks before the election. He then, on November 6, had written to Congress stating that the FBI’s original recommendation not to press charges against Clinton stood, and the investigation was once again closed. In the weeks after her defeat, Clinton counted Comey’s reopening of the email investigation as being among the reasons she had lost the election to Trump. Collusion with Russia was also on her list. Neglecting to campaign in Wisconsin was not.
The charitable interpretation of Comey’s “mildly nauseous” remark was that he was sick to his stomach that he had impacted a US election with his public pronouncements, regardless of the outcome. The less charitable version was that it was Trump’s victory that made him feel queasy. Trump squinted at the television. Why was the director of the FBI making this type of comment? he asked. What type of judgment did that display? he mused out loud. What type of judgment had his handling of the Clinton email issue demonstrated? At that moment he clearly had doubts that Comey could lead the FBI. Trump hadn’t begun his presidency feeling that way. Like me, he had respected Comey and been impressed by his career in law enforcement. We had been briefed by him after the election and after being inaugurated, including a productive session on domestic threats in the Oval Office on February 14.
At the time, the FBI was conducting an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Evidence suggested that the Russian government had attempted to meddle, to drive divisions among Americans by using propaganda on social media. It was absolutely right that the FBI investigate it. But the resistance claimed that the investigation was into the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia and into Trump himself. I would later learn that Comey had assured Trump in personal conversations numerous times that he was not under investigation.
But whatever Comey was really up to when it came to the president, that was not the reason Trump wanted to replace Comey as the head of the FBI. On Monday, May 8, I joined the president in the Oval Office, where he kept returning to the problem of Comey’s “poor judgment.” Trump and I met later that day with Attorney General Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein. Both men agreed that Comey should go. They subsequently penned a letter recommending Comey’s termination that Trump then wrote a cover letter for. Before settling on his decision, though, Trump was warned by one of the White House attorneys: if you fire Comey, it will likely trigger the appointment of a special counsel. Trump understood. “I don’t care,” he said. “It’s the right thing to do for the country.” So not only did he not fire Comey to prevent the investigation, he was told that it would likely accelerate the inquiry and did it anyway because it was the right thing to do. The firing was made official and public on May 9. In Trump’s cover letter he mentioned Comey’s telling him on several occasions that he was not under investigation for collusion with Russia. The media immediately assumed that the president’s decision had been related to the Russia investigation.
The following day, Wednesday, I was at the Capitol, visiting with legislators beginning work on the Senate’s health care reform bill. I stopped to speak with reporters. Kristen Welker, a reporter from NBC News, asked if the decision to fire Comey had been related to Russia. “That’s not what this is about,” I told her. I explained that Comey had lost the country’s confidence and the president had done the right thing.
On Thursday, the president sat for an interview with Lester Holt, an NBC Nightly News anchor, and he mentioned that he had specifically asked Comey if he was under investigation and Comey had said no. “When I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.’ ” During the interview Trump also said that he had no problem with the FBI investigation into Russian interference and expected it to go on. But the lasting impression from the interview was that Trump was frustrated that Comey had told him he was not under investigation but would not say so publicly. The press and Democrats went wild. Trump, they wrote, had fired Comey because of Russia.
By that point, Attorney General Sessions had recused himself from the Russia investigation, which was a great source of irritation to the president. Jeff, whom I knew from my time in Congress, had been an early Trump supporter and an original immigration hawk. The two had formed a strong alliance early in Trump’s candidacy. Sessions had been an enthusiastic surrogate on the campaign trail. But eventually the relationship had become strained. After Jeff was confirmed as attorney general, news broke that he had met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in 2016.
During his confirmation hearings Jeff was asked if he knew of any meetings between Trump campaign officials and the Russian government. He said no. When news of the meetings leaked, Democrats quickly jumped to the conclusion that not only had Jeff lied, but he, too, must have been conspiring with the Russians to throw the election. Jeff had been a senator at the time of the meetings and a member of the Armed Services Committee, so it had not been irregular for him to meet with the Russian ambassador in that context. And he insisted that that had been the context of the meeting.
The fact is that the Russia narrative had already taken flight long before Jeff’s confirmation in February. My view was that he should have disclosed that the meeting with Kislyak would require him to recuse himself before Trump picked him to run the Justice Department. The entire episode could have been avoided, and the president could have picked another attorney general. And with an investigation into his campaign under way, the president needed someone at the Department of Justice who would make sure that everything was handled above reproach by an attorney general who could oversee the investigation without fear or favor, especially since the involvement of FBI agents with political agendas was eventually brought to light.
In the wake of Comey’s firing—as the president had been warned—on May 17, Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who had taken over responsibility for the Russia investigation after Jeff Sessions had recused himself, appointed former FBI director Robert Mueller as special counsel. I had nothing but esteem for Mueller, a marine veteran with a long and distinguished career. But I was surprised at his selection, since the day before, Mueller had met with Trump in the Oval Office to talk about returning to his old job as FBI director. Mueller subsequently denied that he had interviewed for the position, insisting that he had met with the president to offer advice. But I know it was an interview and that Mueller did express interest in the job. I was there. In any case, the special counsel’s investigation only intensified the insanity over Russian collusion.
Near the end of that tumultuous month, Trump was openly talking about firing the attorney general. He was angry about the Russia investigation and was disappointed that Sessions had not disclosed that he would have to recuse himself before Trump had picked him to run the Justice Department. Despite all the difficulty, I thought firing him was a bad idea. I knew that in the end Mueller’s investigation would come up empty-handed. Firing Sessions while it was under way would be interpreted by Democrats and the press as an attempt to thwart the Russia investigation and an implicit admission of some sort of guilt.
Returning from an event at the Capitol in late May, I told the president, “You know, I believe God put me next to you to help you be successful.” “Yeah,” he said, probably sensing what was coming next. “Well, I’m telling you, you should not fire the attorney general. That would be a mistake. Let this play out.” I could give him my candid opinion because we were friends. In the end he would not dismiss the attorney general until a few days after the midterm elections and there was very little criticism of his move, given that the Mueller investigation was seen as approaching its completion.
There were multiple Russian collusion investigations under way, including not just Mueller’s Special Counsel, but a House Intelligence Committee probe. The ranking Democrat on that committee, California’s Adam Schiff, was regularly filling the airwaves with lies about the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. None of it was true. But the constant stream of misinformation began to shape public perception. Presidents always have to take on multiple tasks at once. It’s part of the job. But simultaneously fending off a false narrative that the president had won the White House by conspiring with a hostile nation was, to put it mildly, an unwelcome daily distraction. Some days, the Russia frenzy was so intense, I didn’t know how the president put up with it. Then I remembered that he had spent a lifetime making a living in New York City, one of the toughest media markets in the world. From time to time, after a particularly harsh attack in the press, the president would pause, look up at me from his desk, and say, “You know, Mike, it’s been like this my whole life.” That really said it all.
For my part, I instructed my staff to cooperate fully with the investigation and enlisted the services of Richard Cullen, a former attorney general of Virginia and US attorney who was recognized across Washington for his integrity and sound legal counsel. We continued to push back hard on the whole Russia narrative every time we were asked the question—and we were asked it a lot.
The story never added up, though—not just because our campaign hadn’t collaborated with Russia but because the Trump administration, in both deed and action, was far tougher on Russia than almost any of our predecessors had been. George W. Bush had looked into Putin’s eyes and been able “to get a sense of his soul,” describing him as “trustworthy.” Barack Obama had reassured Russian president Dmitry Medvedev that he would have “more flexibility” with Vladimir Putin after the 2012 election. And when Mitt Romney had described Russia as America’s “number one geopolitical foe” during a 2012 presidential debate, Obama had mocked him, saying that the 1980s were “calling to ask for their foreign policy back.” It was Obama who had refused to send weapons to Ukraine when Russia armed separatists in the Donbas region and even after Russia seized Crimea. The years following our administration showed just how wrong Obama had been in underestimating the threat that Putin and Russia posed to the West.
True, Trump made it a practice to at least attempt to be on welcoming terms with all world leaders. He had run for president in some sense as an anti-war candidate, arguing that the United States had spent too much treasure and wasted too many lives in the War on Terror. If it meant ensuring peace, building stable relations, he was willing to give other heads of state, even those leading hostile countries, a chance to find common ground. As a result, he did not loudly criticize Vladimir Putin. That didn’t mean he admired him or was in some way in debt to him. It was a strategy. “I don’t love, I don’t hate.… We’ll see,” he said about Putin in 2016.
But I knew what Putin was. I didn’t need to look into his eyes or see his soul. During my years on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I had become convinced that Putin was, as I had said during my debate with Tim Kaine, “the small and bullying leader of Russia.” Trump didn’t agree with the tone, but his policies took a similar one: he pulled the United States out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which Russia had continually violated. He imposed sanctions on Nord Stream 2, Russia’s pipeline project for exporting gas to Germany, and our administration approved the sale of lethal arms to Ukraine. And Trump attempted to fortify NATO, none of which could possibly have been welcome news to Putin or the Kremlin.
In a speech at NATO headquarters on May 24, the president called on our allies to live up to their commitment to our common defense by spending at least 2 percent of their GDP on defense. In the speech, which provoked outrage and derision and sent American journalists into fits of hysterics, Trump made no mention of America’s commitment to NATO’s Article 5, a pledge of mutual defense among member nations. Instead, he chided NATO members for failing to meet the agreed-upon percentage of GDP to be dedicated to defense spending. At the time, only three countries other than the United States were meeting the requirement. And Trump said that that was “not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States.” He had encouraged me to be cool when I had delivered the same message during my trip to the Munich Security Conference. Now he brought the thunder.
Trump was channeling the men and women who had made him president: we expect our friends to kick in, too. Trump delivered his message like a landlord speaking to deadbeat tenants—not a totally appropriate metaphor, but it was how he viewed it. NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg was a fan of the message. Vladimir Putin was not. NATO had been created to forge a transatlantic alliance against the Soviet Union. In the post-Soviet, post–Cold War world, its membership had expanded into Eastern Europe, pulling nations away from Russia’s orbit. By encouraging other nations to meet their defense spending commitment, we wanted NATO to be stronger than ever—not a goal shared by Putin.
We were also advancing Americans’ interests against Putin elsewhere. Later that year, in a conversation with John Kelly, the subject of the upcoming Russian military operation known as ZAPAD 2017 arose. That Russian military exercise, the country’s largest since the end of the Cold War, was scheduled for September. Lasting six days, military maneuvers were planned that, at the time, were predicted to involve more than 100,000 soldiers staged across Russia, Belarus, and Kaliningrad. It was an anti-NATO exercise, and it greatly alarmed Ukraine, whose leaders feared that it would be a pretext for an invasion. “We need you over there,” Kelly told me, meaning checking in with the United States’ allies in Eastern Europe.
On July 30, I was wheels up for Estonia, touching down in the capital city of Tallinn. I spoke at the Estonian Defense Headquarters in front of soldiers from the United States, Estonia, the United Kingdom, and France under a blazing sun, while the temperature hit over 90 degrees. The troops were in formation and in full gear. I later learned that a few had passed out—from the heat, not my speech. After spending time with the troops, we met with the heads of state of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, all nations that had been locked behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War and all NATO nations now.
