Fear: Trump in the White House(67)
“John, let me put it this way,” Quarles said. “I’m 99 percent sure that it’s not us.”
“I got it,” Dowd said. He immediately called the president, knowing when that kind of story broke Trump could not focus on anything else. Trump was apoplectic.
“They’re not investigating that stuff,” Dowd said, trying to reassure him. But Trump was not trusting at all and sounded like he could find no comfort.
Four days later Dowd met Quarles on a stone bench outside the Patriot Plaza where Mueller had his offices.
“Bob and I owe you one,” Quarles said. “Bob says don’t believe what you read in the papers.”
“I got it,” Dowd replied.
“We are really embarrassed,” Quarles said.
“Why?”
“You’ve delivered more than you promised, and we’re so pleased. We’re moving along. We’re getting it done. And there’s a lot of stuff here to organize, but it came very well organized. We didn’t have to go hunt and peck. You didn’t drown us.”
Dowd knew about a target of a tax investigation who had once told the FBI that the answer to their request was somewhere in two warehouses. The agents spent years searching.
“But let’s agree going forward,” Dowd said. “I don’t want to play cat-and-mouse. You’re not on my end of the stick. I got a guy that wants to know yesterday,” and Trump’s “instincts are it’s bullshit.” Dowd added that he had checked with the Trump Organization, and they had denied they were being separately investigated. They’d received no requests for documents or interviews—standard preliminary steps. “And they said, as far as we know, it’s bullshit.” All the organization’s projects were eight or nine years old. There were no issues. Whatever Mueller wanted to see was out there in the public record someplace.
Dowd had told this to the president. “I know that, goddamn it!” Trump had said.
Dowd continued with Quarles. “Sometimes I’ve got to do this by phone and you’ve got to give me some direction. I’m not asking you to give away the store or reveal your hand. Just tell me are we going to get hit or not going to get hit. Or you have a request or you don’t. It’s not on your radar.”
“I agree,” Quarles said.
Dowd was careful not to stray, to ask about possible investigations of Jared’s finances. Trump was his client, and it was key to be client-focused.
* * *
In July, the Freedom Caucus, a bloc of 30 strong conservatives in the House, threatened not to vote for the budget unless President Trump instituted some prohibition on paying for gender reassignment surgeries and hormone treatments for transgender people serving in the military.
Under Obama, transgender troops had no longer been banned from openly serving, although new recruits would not be allowed to join until July 1, 2017. On June 30, the day before the deadline, Mattis signed a memo delaying implementation by six months to review “the readiness and lethality of the force.”
During the campaign, Trump had proclaimed himself a supporter of LGBT rights. Now he told Bannon, “What the fuck? They’re coming in here, they’re getting clipped”—a crude reference to gender reassignment surgery. Someone had told him that each surgery cost $250,000, an inflated number. “Not going to happen,” he said.
Gender reassignment surgery can be expensive but also is infrequent. In a Pentagon-commissioned study, the RAND Corporation “found that only a few hundred of the estimated 6,600 transgender troops would seek medical treatment in any year. RAND found those costs would total no more than $8 million per year.”
The interagency process had gone to work on the question. The general counsels of the departments and agencies had weighed in. The Deputies Committee had met, and there were several Principals Committee meetings. There was no agreement, but four options were developed.
On the morning of July 26, Priebus, Bannon and several lawyers reached the president on the speakerphone in the residence. He was not expected in the Oval Office for at least an hour.
Mr. President, Priebus said, we know you are going to come down soon but we wanted to give you a heads-up on a decision memo on transgender people in the military.
The four options: One was to retain the Obama policy that allowed transgender people to serve openly, two was to issue a directive to Secretary Mattis giving him leeway, three was a presidential order to end the program but come up with a plan for those transgender people already in the military, and four was to ban all transgender people from military service. The likelihood of being sued increased as they got to number four, Priebus explained. “When you come down, we want to walk you through on paper,” Priebus said.
“I’ll be down at 10,” the president said. “Why don’t you guys come and see me then? We’ll figure it out.”
Priebus thought they had found an orderly process on at least one controversial matter.
At 8:55 a.m., his phone signaled him that a presidential tweet had been sent. “After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow . . .”
In two more tweets following at 9:04 and 9:08 a.m., Trump finished his announcement: “. . . Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you.”