By now, Dowd had made his way onto the president’s team, and he recommended they consider also hiring Ty Cobb, a Hogan Lovells partner and veteran of independent counsel investigations back in the Clinton years. Dowd knew Cobb from their previous careers at Justice and their overlapping work in a massive Wall Street insider-trading case. Cobb was drawn to the challenge of representing Trump, but his firm refused to let him, largely because Trump was too toxic a client. Cobb agreed to retire from his partnership, with his full pension, and went to work in the White House as a special legal adviser rather than as one of Trump’s personal attorneys.
Yet Trump still lacked a big-name, credible Washington attorney on his personal legal team, one with the backing of a powerhouse firm. In an all-hands-on-deck push, Trump’s advisers reached out to Ted Olson, A. B. Culvahouse Jr., Emmet Flood, Robert Giuffra, Paul Clement, and Dan Levin. All of them followed Sullivan’s lead, giving a polite no.
Flood had been considering the team’s request that he join them, but as the president’s White House adviser. In a call in the first week of June, Flood was surprised to hear the team was considering setting up shop in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, as Bannon planned, for an on-site war room. Working from the White House grounds would look inappropriate, both for the president and for his private team, but Flood made his warning plainer. “That is absolutely insane,” he said.
Bowe thought he found the perfect recruit in Dan Levin, a white-collar pro who had worked as Mueller’s chief of staff at the FBI and the Justice Department, and who had turned down Mueller’s request to join his special counsel team. Levin had warned Mueller about hiring aggressive prosecutors like Andrew Weissmann because he thought they might seek a scalp and push to “make” a case, even if the facts didn’t merit prosecution. Levin wasn’t a Trump supporter but felt strongly that even unpopular people deserved lawyers. But Levin’s firm didn’t want Trump as a client.
For those hunting for a lawyer for the president, the most memorable contender, the one that got away, was Reid Weingarten. The longtime partner at Steptoe & Johnson, Weingarten was a legend because of his uncanny ability at trial to simultaneously woo the jury, eviscerate the government’s star witness, and cultivate a fan worship among some of the prosecutors he whupped. One of his billionaire clients, the Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn, told Trump he had to meet Weingarten: “He’s the best. I love the guy.”
Weingarten was a lifelong independent, a social progressive, and close friends with Eric Holder, President Obama’s first attorney general. He told his recruiters that he doubted he could represent Trump. He agreed ultimately to talk with Trump in June, however, explaining to White House counsel Don McGahn that he did not feel he could turn down a president’s request to meet.
Weingarten had a folksy charm and, at times, a mouth like a sailor, giving him and the president a small bit of common ground when they met in the Oval Office. As he did with most of the lawyers, Trump went through a well-worn checklist of questions about how this kind of investigation worked, all of which were softballs for Weingarten, who had cut his teeth as a public corruption prosecutor for many years. Trump wanted to know: What was Mueller up to? What would he be looking at?
Trump would later tell confidants he was shocked by Weingarten’s answer: By now Mueller would certainly have copies of Trump’s tax returns, likely going back at least five or ten years. This was a basic request any prosecutor would make for anyone under investigation for potential conflicts, the lawyer explained. Trump also asked Weingarten two questions he had been asking other attorneys in recent days: Could Trump pardon his family members? Could he pardon himself?
Weingarten declined to describe his meeting with the president. Yet Trump told others that Weingarten warned him he might be technically able to, but this legally dubious method would amount to political suicide. At the end of their meeting, the two men parted amiably, if awkwardly. Trump still wasn’t entirely sure he needed a criminal defense lawyer. After all, the president believed he hadn’t committed any crimes.
“Thanks, Reid,” the president said. “If I smell trouble, when I smell the jail cell, I’ll call you.”
Then the lawyer was gone. Weingarten met with McGahn for a post-brief after his sit-down with Trump. As McGahn would tell a few close allies, the seasoned lawyer warned him he had just one critical job now: do not let the president remove Mueller. Although Weingarten did not end up working for Trump, the president would repeatedly mention to his aides how much he liked him and recalled details from their conversation.
Ordinarily, for a veteran of the white-collar defense bar, representing a president would be a prestigious career capstone. Not so with Trump, however. These high-profile attorneys understood that many people who have an affiliation with Trump ultimately get discarded and diminished. He saw his attorneys as tools to help bend the law for him and to protect him as he took suspect or outright illegal actions. Then there was the issue of money. No one in Trump’s orbit could provide clear answers about who would pay, and Trump had a history of stiffing professionals, be they lawyers or construction contractors. What’s more, Trump had a reputation for being a notoriously stubborn client. As one lawyer who said no to Trump’s offer explained, “It’s like being the captain of the Titanic. ‘Turn left. Turn left.’ ‘No, no, I’m going straight.’”
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Trump was incensed that Comey was going to testify before Congress on June 8. He did not understand how a man he fired one month earlier could discredit him on premium television airtime. Trump’s lawyers began studying whether the president’s conversations with Comey could be shielded by executive privilege. Bowe had done some preparation by calling Flood, who said he was willing to give him some general advice about asserting executive privilege. Flood told him he would never assert it without the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel first conducting an analysis of whether it was warranted and issuing a legal opinion. Bowe thought this sounded complicated and time-consuming. Comey was going to testify in a few days. “Sorry, those are the norms,” Flood said. “That’s just the way it works.”
Trump’s team decided not to try to block Comey from testifying. Trump watched the hearing on live television from his dining room off the Oval Office, surrounded by Kasowitz, Bowe, Sekulow, and other aides. He got angrier by the second, and even before Comey finished, the president howled that Kasowitz had to hold a news conference—that afternoon—rebutting everything Comey had said. A free-for-all drafting party then began with the president barking out the language Kasowitz should bash Comey with. At one point, Trump suggested that Kasowitz point out that Comey was a liar, but his lawyers said no to ad hominem attacks.
As often was the case when aides rushed to satisfy Trump’s demands, Kasowitz ended up damaging his reputation with his televised appearance that day at the National Press Club. Speaking from prepared remarks, he inaccurately described key events in the timeline of Comey’s memo about Trump’s request that he “let this go” regarding the Flynn investigation. Kasowitz’s errors would have been easy to avoid, but he jumped to say what his client wanted.