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At Mar-a-Lago, Trump awoke early on the morning of Sunday, March 24. He got dressed in his golf shirt and khaki pants and headed out at about nine o’clock to the Trump International Golf Club. He played a round of golf, ate lunch at the clubhouse, and chatted with friends.
Giuliani was in Washington with the rest of Trump’s personal legal team but spoke by phone with the president regularly all weekend. He told The Washington Post’s Robert Costa that Trump was in a “watch and wait” mode of cautious optimism. “However, until you read the report, you don’t know exactly what it entails, so you should keep your powder dry,” Giuliani added.
Trump told friends that weekend, “From everything I hear, it’s good,” but refrained from celebrating prematurely. As Kellyanne Conway remarked to Vice President Pence, “That’s the businessman. That’s somebody in real estate who knows the deal is not the deal until after it’s notarized.”
Trump’s team had prepared responses to a range of eventualities, with a worst-case scenario that the Mueller report could leak to the public unexpectedly and be so damaging, with surprise evidence, that it triggered an immediate impeachment inquiry in the House. The drafted response was exceedingly hard-hitting, a take-no-prisoners, blood-in-the-water jeremiad against Mueller, the FBI, and their methods.
The president’s personal lawyers gathered again on Sunday at Sekulow’s office, wearing casual work clothes, with both Sekulow and Giuliani in bulky sweaters because it was chilly. A little after 3:15 p.m., Rabbitt alerted Flood in Mar-a-Lago that within the hour Barr would release the key takeaways from the report. He gave Flood the bottom line but read aloud some key conclusory sections from Barr’s letter. Flood and Cipollone then told Trump what to expect, and the president reached out to his personal legal team back in Washington.
That afternoon, Barr made an announcement that would define how the world would interpret Mueller’s findings. Barr submitted a four-page letter to congressional leaders to, as he wrote, “summarize the principal conclusions set out in the Special Counsel’s report.” The document was immediately released online.
At Sekulow’s office, Trump’s lawyers sat in front of open laptops, impatiently waiting for the Barr letter to download. It was taking forever. The letter was already circulating among members of the press, who were texting and calling Trump’s lawyers for reaction. John Santucci of ABC News was on one line asking for comment, and Sekulow, flustered by the slowness of his computer, admitted he hadn’t been able to read a copy yet. “John, will you just send it to me?” he asked the journalist.
Finally, the lawyers read it around the table.
Barr wrote that the investigation found no evidence that any Trump campaign members or associates conspired or coordinated with the Russians to tilt the election—in essence, “no collusion.” On obstruction, he wrote that the special counsel had chosen not to reach a normal prosecutor’s decision on whether Trump had committed a crime. “The Special Counsel therefore did not draw a conclusion—one way or the other—as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction,” Barr wrote. “Instead, for each of the relevant actions investigated, the report sets out evidence on both sides of the question and leaves unresolved what the Special Counsel views as ‘difficult issues’ of law and fact concerning whether the President’s actions and intent could be viewed as obstruction.”
Barr explained he therefore concluded the evidence of obstruction was insufficient. “In cataloguing the President’s actions, many of which took place in public view, the report identifies no actions that, in our judgment, constitute obstructive conduct, had a nexus to a pending or contemplated criminal proceeding, and were done with corrupt intent,” Barr wrote.
Barr’s letter included the key line from Mueller’s report that O’Callaghan had suggested adding in good faith that the report “does not exonerate him.” Nonetheless, Barr’s letter laid the groundwork for Trump to declare otherwise.
Barr had served his boss an unmistakable political victory, and a feeling of euphoria swept over Trump and his team. Jane Raskin snapped a picture on her phone that forever captures the moment they read Barr’s summary of the report. Sitting at the conference table side by side, Giuliani grabbed Sekulow by the neck to give him a hug. They looked tired and relieved.
Sekulow talked to Trump by phone. He was elated but also very practical, asking about the team’s media strategy. Of paramount importance to the president was the TV spin wars. “This is great,” Trump said. “How are you all responding? Are you going out?”
Trump wanted every television network to trumpet the news of his victory. Sekulow assured him that they had a detailed media plan. “This is very good news,” Trump replied. “I’ll see you tonight.”
Shortly before 5:00 p.m., Trump arrived by motorcade at Palm Beach International Airport for the two-hour flight home to Washington. He stood under the wing of Air Force One and offered his first reaction to the press corps: “There was no collusion with Russia. There was no obstruction—none whatsoever. And it was a complete and total exoneration.”
That night was a special memory for Trump’s lawyers, who freshened up and assembled around dusk at the Yellow Oval Room in the second-floor residential quarters of the White House to give the president a homecoming. At 7:04 p.m., they watched Marine One land on the South Lawn. Trump stepped off the helicopter, dressed in a suit and red tie, and greeted the assembled press with a hearty wave. “This is a great country,” he said.
Inside the residence, Trump’s defenders felt pride in their work during a tumultuous time when so many were rooting against them. Watching the ebullience of their client strolling across the South Lawn, they felt a swell of relief. Trump walked upstairs and grinned as he saw his lawyers gathered around the room. He had two words for them: “Great job!” Trump, who is not a hugger, heartily shook every hand in the room.
Sarah Sanders joined them for a moment of celebration and posed for a photo with Trump and his legal team, along with Flood and Cipollone, all of them beaming. Sekulow, the conductor and the heart of the operation, offered thanks to his partners. A year earlier, the president’s legal team had endured a devastating stretch after John Dowd quit and the president had no lead lawyer other than Sekulow. The team had to be re-created from scratch, and here they now all stood.
“Thank you to you all,” Sekulow told the group. “This was the best example of a team effort, where everybody brought their ideas to the table. It was a tremendous team effort and I am grateful that our paths have crossed.”
Trump was well aware that there was more to come that would not be so flattering, when some larger portion of the report would be released. But he was glad to have this phase behind him. He felt in the clear. He had won. The president offered his thanks, repeatedly saying, “Great job.” The team knew that was the highest praise. “You’re in good shape when he says, ‘Great job.’ You’re not so good when he says, ‘Let’s see,’” one team member joked.