Fear: Trump in the White House(30)
President Trump is a good listener, Mattis said, as long as you don’t hit one of his third rails—immigration and the press are the two big ones. If you hit one, he is liable to go off on a tangent and not come back for a long time. “Secretaries of Defense don’t always get to choose the president they work for.”
Everyone laughed.
The subject of the meeting was the counter-ISIS plan that Trump wanted immediately. Fundamentally, Mattis said, we are doing things backwards. We are trying to devise a counter-ISIS strategy without any larger, broader Middle East strategy. Ideally we’d have the Middle East strategy and the ISIS piece would plug in underneath and support it. But the president’s tasking required ISIS first.
In the end the Combat ISIS strategy was a continuation of the strategy under Obama but with bombing and other authorities granted to the local commanders.
Mattis was worried about Iranian expansion. At one point he later referred to “those idiot raghead mullahs.”
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Early one morning in February, a team of senior intelligence officials came to Priebus’s West Wing office to brief him on how to be alert to those who might seek to influence him improperly. It is a standard warning for those with the highest security clearances.
“Before we leave,” said Deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, raising his hand, “I need five minutes with you alone in your office.”
What the hell is this? thought Priebus. He only recalled McCabe because he had met him several weeks earlier in the Situation Room.
Trump had raised hell about McCabe’s wife, Jill, a Democrat, during the campaign. She had received $675,288 for an unsuccessful 2015 campaign for the Virginia Senate from Governor Terry McAuliffe’s political action committee and the Virginia Democratic Party. McAuliffe was one of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s closest personal and political friends. He had been the top fundraiser for Bill Clinton’s reelection in 1996.
Trump had described the money as donations from Hillary. He had not let go of the issue, talking and tweeting about it later.
After the security briefing and everyone cleared out, McCabe shut the door to Priebus’s office. This is very weird, thought Priebus, who was standing by his desk.
“You know this story in The New York Times?” Priebus knew it all too well. McCabe was referring to a recent Times story of February 14 that stated, “Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the elections, according to four current and former American officials.”
The story was one of the first bombs to go off about alleged Trump-Russian connections after Flynn’s resignation.
“It’s total bullshit,” McCabe said. “It’s not true, and we want you to know that. It’s grossly overstated.”
Oh my God, thought Priebus.
“Andrew,” he said to the FBI deputy, “I’m getting killed.”
The story about Russia and election meddling seemed to be running 24/7 on cable news, driving Trump bananas and therefore driving Priebus bananas.
“This is crazy,” Trump had told Priebus. “We’ve got to stop it. We need to end the story.”
McCabe had just walked in with a big gift, a Valentine’s Day present. I’m going to be the hero of this entire West Wing, Priebus thought.
“Can you help me?” Priebus asked. “Could this knockdown of the story be made public?”
“Call me in a couple of hours,” McCabe said. “I will ask around and I’ll let you know. I’ll see what I can do.”
Priebus practically ran to report to Trump the good news that the FBI would soon be shooting down the Times story.
Two hours passed and no call from McCabe. Priebus called him.
“I’m sorry, I can’t,” McCabe said. “There’s nothing I can do about it. I tried, but if we start issuing comments on individual stories, we’ll be doing statements every three days.” The FBI could not become a clearinghouse for the accuracy of news stories. If the FBI tried to debunk certain stories, a failure to comment could be seen as a confirmation.
“Andrew, you’re the one that came to my office to tell me this is a BS story, and now you’re telling me there’s nothing you can do?”
McCabe said that was his position.
“This is insanity,” Priebus said. “What am I supposed to do? Just suffer, bleed out?”
“Give me a couple more hours.”
Nothing happened. No call from the FBI. Priebus tried to explain to Trump, who was waiting for a recanting. It was another reason for Trump to distrust and hate the FBI, a pernicious tease that left them dangling.
About a week later on February 24 CNN reported an exclusive: “FBI Refused White House Request to Knock Down Recent Trump-Russia Story.” Priebus was cast as trying to manipulate the FBI for political purposes.
The White House tried and failed to correct the story and show that McCabe had initiated the matter.
Four months later on June 8, Comey testified under oath publicly that the original New York Times story on the Trump campaign aides’ contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials “in the main was not true.”
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