Fear: Trump in the White House(66)
Mattis countered. Annihilating ISIS was the assignment President Trump had specifically given him.
“I’ll basically cut a deal with you,” Bannon proposed. If Mattis would support the containment of China, he would back off on the pressure to get the U.S. out of Afghanistan.
Afghanistan was a linchpin in the Chinese One Belt, One Road plan to expand its trading network to Europe.
“Steve,” Mattis said, “I’m kind of one of those global trading guys. I think all that trade stuff’s pretty good.”
Bannon was appalled. Trump was right. The generals didn’t know anything about business and economics. They never really cared about the cost of anything.
CHAPTER
24
Over the weekend of July 8 and 9, The New York Times published two stories about a previously undisclosed meeting in Trump Tower in the middle of the campaign. Don Trump Jr., Manafort and Kushner had met with a Russian lawyer who, among other things, was offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. There were the usual denials, restatements and confusion among the participants. It was a huge story, suggesting—but not proving—some kind of subterfuge and clandestine cooperation with Russians.
The president was in orbit and called Dowd to complain about leaks and the press.
“Mr. President, it’s horseshit,” Dowd told him. And so what? Getting dirt on people was commonplace in campaigns and the nation’s capital. It even had a name—“opposition research” or “investigative reporting.” That’s what half of Washington seemed to be paid for. Is there something wrong with that? No. Dowd knew that opposition research teams and investigative reporters would take dirt from anyone, even foreign governments. All the media posturing was disgusting. They were treating it like the crime of the century. The New York Times and The Washington Post thought they were the special counsel and the law of the land. The stories were a big nothing burger, Dowd concluded.
On July 17 Trump tweeted: “Most politicians would have gone to a meeting like the one Don jr attended in order to get info on an opponent. That’s politics!”
Dowd was determined not to be distracted by the daily drip from the media. He wanted hard evidence. McGahn religiously dictated all significant meetings or discussions with the president to his executive assistant, Annie Donaldson. She had 17 hours of notes relating to matters being investigated by Mueller and his team.
Dowd gave Mueller these notes and those of seven other lawyers. Nothing was held back. He told Mueller, “Bob, read Annie Donaldson’s notes if you want to know what was in the head of the president.”
All this was done with the president’s blessing. Dowd would talk to him and say, look, here’s the categories of documents. We’re going to give him this. We’re going to give him that. “Constitutionally he has no right” to the documents and testimony, “but just out of respect for law enforcement, since you’re the chief, let’s just let him do it. Not get in the fight.” Dowd concluded that the president seemed fearless. He never said no.
Dowd told Mueller, “This is what I told the president, so don’t make me look like an idiot, okay? And we’re going to make you look good. You make us look good. But you’ve got to get it done.”
Mueller received 1.4 million pages of documents from the Trump campaign and 20,000 pages from the White House. Dowd believed no documents had been destroyed. In all, 37 witnesses gave interviews to Mueller’s team voluntarily.
McGahn, Priebus and the vice president’s staff had put together a six-page White House summary of the entire Flynn matter from contemporaneous recollections. Dowd considered it the Bible on Flynn and delivered it to Mueller. He believed that no one, other than Flynn, had lied to investigators, and Mueller had not needed to pressure or jam anyone.
When Dowd was sending the campaign records to the congressional investigating committee, he told Mueller’s deputy Quarles, “We’re sending copies to the Hill. How about if I just deliver a copy to you?”
Quarles accepted. Dowd thought he and Quarles worked well together. They could meet and talk, whereas Mueller was so rigid, he sometimes seemed like marble.
* * *
On July 20 Bloomberg dropped an apparent bombshell: Mueller was investigating Trump’s finances including “Russian purchases of apartments in Trump buildings . . . the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and Trump’s sale of a Florida mansion to a Russian oligarch in 2008.”
Dowd called Quarles to ask about the story.
“Well,” Quarles said, “Bob never comments.”
“Give me a break, pal,” Dowd replied angrily. “I’m taking care of you, now you take care of me.” As they both knew, “a denial from the White House doesn’t get anywhere.” Dowd continued, “The deal was, with you guys, if you guys added to the investigation, we’d get a heads-up first.”
“That’s right.”
“Because you gave us the subjects to cover,” Dowd said. “And every once in a while you guys add things and we put it on a list. I didn’t hear about condos in Florida or selling this estate.” Dowd said he was aware of some matters under investigation in New York about Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and Felix Sater, who tried to develop a Trump Tower in Moscow. “You know, Jimmy,” Dowd added, “when you ask me a question, I give it all to you. So I need a better explanation.”