Trump’s aides knew he needed to hire a seasoned member of the white-collar defense bar with experience in both law and political combat. The trouble was that most of the pros did not want to represent him. Trump’s search for representation became a haphazard and painful obstacle course made more difficult by the competing loyalties, false promises, and backstabbing within his team. Trump was insecure about his worth as a client and feared personal exposure, which both infected his work as president and drove him to want to thwart the investigation. The most powerful man in the world could not get a lawyer.
On May 22, Trump placed a call from the Middle East to Marc Kasowitz, asking him to officially saddle up as his lawyer. Kasowitz had long been the president’s dragon slayer, the attorney who for years had represented Trump in his business and personal matters, including a series of bankruptcies and the fight to keep his divorce records sealed. Aggressive and wily, Kasowitz had championed tough cases for Trump and won. He also had represented two of Trump’s children, Ivanka and Donald junior, against accusations of fraud. Trump trusted the street fighter and wanted him in his corner right away, although he would still need to recruit lawyers with a specialized set of skills navigating Washington crises, which the New York–based Kasowitz lacked.
Kasowitz agreed, but he soon faced a mutiny from some of his law partners. The white-haired, sixty-four-year-old litigator had built an intensely profitable firm and wooed major Wall Street players and corporations by pledging to outwork stodgier white-shoe firms. He was a rainmaker, but his firm—Kasowitz Benson Torres—had already been singed by its association with Trump during the 2016 campaign. After Kasowitz threatened The New York Times for reporting on sexual assault allegations against then-candidate Trump, some of the firm’s bigger corporate clients, including those with women as key in-house lawyers, complained. Several of the firm’s liberal-leaning partners were personally aghast when Trump won the presidency, but they recognized the possible financial upside to being “of counsel” to the president.
That optimism of those lawyers ended dramatically after May 17, when Mueller was appointed special counsel to investigate election interference and any links or coordination between Trump or his campaign associates and a hostile foreign power. The partners were mindful that their share of hefty yearly profits depended on Kasowitz’s prodigious talents as a rainmaker, yet they feared the firm’s bottom line could take a hit if Kasowitz took on a highly public role defending Trump in the Mueller probe. The anxiety was compounded by the fact that Kasowitz, a commercial lawyer, lacked the legal chops for a white-collar, major-league Washington scandal. But Kasowitz had something almost no one else did, not even some of the most senior people in the White House: Trump’s trust.
Kasowitz imagined assembling a “dream team” to shield the president. He and one of his partners, Mike Bowe, the fifty-year-old son of a fireman with conservative leanings whose hard-charging gut instincts Kasowitz trusted, set out to recruit an experienced scandal lawyer. The first few outreaches to top legal talent ended in rejection. But one offered to help for free: John Dowd. On May 18, Bowe was in his New York office near Times Square when he got an email from Dowd.
“Happy to help DJT quietly behind the curtain. . . . I am not sure he needs counsel but it would not hurt to keep an eye on it and independently advise him. I know Bobby Mueller,” wrote Dowd, who attached a New York Times article reporting that Trump’s advisers were urging him to hire a D.C.-based attorney.
Bowe told Dowd he’d think about it and talk it over with his partner. The early reaction of seasoned pros to Kasowitz’s outreach foreshadowed the difficulty to come. Kasowitz called Brendan Sullivan, the crème de la crème of the white-collar criminal defense bar; he offered to help make recommendations but told Kasowitz he couldn’t take Trump on as a client. On May 23, news broke that Trump had retained Kasowitz. The next day, Dowd wrote again to Bowe: “Great news. Happy to help pro bono anytime.”
Dowd, seventy-six, was a legal legend whose best years had been two decades prior. A former marine, he had served in the JAG Corps and become a captain in the Vietnam era. He joined the Justice Department, where in the 1970s he led the strike force on organized crime, taking on hired hit men and mobsters. Bowe and Dowd had formed a friendship consulting with each other on some cases representing marines whom they felt were getting the shaft from their command. The two lawyers liked each other and had much in common, both macho Irishmen and dogged fighters for their clients.
Bowe figured Dowd could play a supporting role on Trump’s legal team. Dowd knew well the inner workings of the Justice Department and also had a lot of contacts in Washington. On May 25, he emailed Bowe yet again to say he was on his way to New York on the Acela for an event that evening at the Intrepid Museum on the Hudson River and offered to meet up. Bowe told him to swing by at 4:00 p.m. and he would introduce him to Kasowitz. The three men met briefly in Kasowitz’s office. “Good to meet you, John,” Kasowitz said as they parted, saying he thought there might be a place for him on the team. “Mike will let you know.”
* * *
—
That Memorial Day weekend, shortly after 7:00 a.m. on Sunday, May 28, the president fired off a tweetstorm ranting about news coverage of his troubles. He was particularly incensed at a May 26 Washington Post story, still dominating the headlines, claiming his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had suggested a back channel to the Russians during the campaign. The story had spawned media commentary about whether Kushner had committed treason, making the president’s son-in-law radioactive and feeling as if he were the victim of a lynch mob. Trump decried leaks from inside his own White House as “fabricated lies” and posited that journalists “made up” sources, adding, “#FakeNews is the enemy!” Trump wanted fighters defending him on television and devising legal methods to derail the investigation, but so far only Kasowitz and Bowe were on board.
Trump summoned two trusted hands to pay him a visit: Corey Lewandowski and Dave Bossie, his former campaign manager and deputy campaign manager, respectively. Both men were political brawlers, the kind of operative Trump most admired, and Bossie was well versed in navigating Washington scandals, having worked as a senior Republican House investigator during the Clinton presidency, leading congressional probes into Whitewater and other matters.
Trump wanted to know if Lewandowski and Bossie were interested in joining the administration and running the war room operation. The pair had already met with Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon about just that proposition, and everything seemed set. But Trump changed his mind. He told Lewandowski and Bossie, “I don’t want you guys to come here and then when I fire everybody you’re part of that.”
That same day, Kasowitz and Bowe had left their home base in New York for Bedminster, New Jersey, to meet up with Kushner and Ivanka Trump to travel from the president’s private golf club to Washington together. The couple were rattled by the back channel story and wanted their advice. Before arriving in Bedminster, Kasowitz had confided to others about his growing concerns about Kushner’s presence inside the White House, telling them Kushner might have to leave due to the complications his Russian contacts created. When he and Bowe arrived, Kushner complained about the scrutiny and claimed the Post story was inaccurate. As he would argue repeatedly, Kushner said the Russians asked him for the back channel and he was confident he had done nothing wrong. Kushner and Ivanka Trump also asked Kasowitz and Bowe to help them calm down the president. The couple complained the West Wing was a circus, horribly mismanaged by Priebus and Bannon.