Marc Kasowitz and Mike Bowe shared this information with Trump during a meeting with his legal team, and he was elated. A one-two punch, he thought. The special counsel’s team was politically biased, and Mueller himself could be disqualified from leading the probe. The president became particularly enamored with the idea that Mueller was conflicted because the two men had what he called a “business dispute.” Mueller once belonged to Trump National Golf Club in Northern Virginia and sought to recoup some of his membership fees when he moved. Trump’s lawyers tried to get their client to realize this was not a strong case of a conflict of interest, but the president could not be persuaded. He wouldn’t stop mentioning the business dispute as a fatal flaw in Mueller’s appointment.
Testifying June 13 before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who officially oversaw the special counsel probe, tried to assuage fears building in Washington that Trump intended to terminate Mueller. “I’m not going to follow any orders unless I believe those are lawful and appropriate orders,” Rosenstein said. He added, “Special Counsel Mueller may be fired only for good cause.” Rosenstein’s remarks were intended to affirm the Justice Department would uphold the rule of law, irrespective of any impulsive decree by the president. But they did not persuade Trump to drop the issue.
About 7:00 p.m. the next day, June 14, The Washington Post reported that Mueller had expanded his Russia probe to include an examination of whether Trump had attempted to obstruct justice. Trump himself was now under investigation, which was precisely what he had spent the spring pressuring his FBI director and intelligence agency heads to publicly deny. The administration was stuck in an unremitting season of investigations and the president was enraged. Around this time, he called Chris Christie.
“Should I fire Mueller?” Trump asked the New Jersey governor.
“Mr. President, if you fire Mueller, you’re going to be impeached,” Christie replied. “Sure as day follows night, you will be impeached.”
“Do you really believe that?” Trump asked.
“I absolutely believe that,” Christie said, arguing that even Republicans in Congress could vote to impeach him for terminating the special counsel. “If there’s anybody who’s encouraging you to fire Mueller and somehow that will end your problems, it will only compound your problems. Don’t do it.”
Around 10:00 p.m. on June 14, Trump called Don McGahn on his cell phone. He was steaming hot and wanted to find out if the investigation really was trained on him—and, if so, how could this have happened? He told the White House counsel to talk with Rosenstein and push the deputy attorney general. He had to remove Mueller because of what the president believed were conflicts of interest.
“You gotta do this,” Trump told McGahn. “You gotta call Rod.”
McGahn was more than a little annoyed by Trump’s obsession with Mueller’s conflicts, which he considered silly and of little merit. He again told the president that the conflicts case was not very strong and that his personal lawyers should be raising the issue, not the White House counsel. But on a night when every cable news channel was fixated on the news that Trump was a subject of a criminal investigation, the president was not thinking rationally and would not take no for an answer.
“I’ll see what I can do,” McGahn said, giving his boss a noncommittal answer to get him off the phone. McGahn hung up, shaking his head at the president’s unreasonable demands.
The next day, June 15, should have been a moment of celebration for both Trump and McGahn. The Supreme Court associate justice Neil Gorsuch’s investiture ceremony was at 2:00 p.m. that Thursday. Installing a conservative on the court was the first major achievement of Trump’s presidency, a key campaign promise fulfilled, and Gorsuch’s smooth nomination had largely been orchestrated by McGahn.
But Trump rose early and began venting his anger at the obstruction probe on Twitter. For weeks, his lawyers and aides had tried to wean Trump off Twitter, fearful that his comments could create greater legal exposure for him. Kasowitz would plead with Trump, “Enough of the tweeting. You’ve got to stop talking about the case. Enough. Just let us do our jobs.” But they eventually resigned themselves to merely managing his missives.
“They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story. Nice,” Trump tweeted.
“You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history—led by some very bad and conflicted people!” he wrote in a second tweet.
McGahn later told associates that he contemplated skipping the ceremony altogether because the testy talk with Trump over the phone the night before had so deflated him. But he attended, figuring the investiture was history and he would be mad at himself if he didn’t witness it. The leaders of all three branches of government came together for the solemn ceremony and congratulated McGahn as the proud father.
That weekend, Trump made his first visit to Camp David, the famed presidential retreat in the Maryland mountains. He seemed to be in good spirits as he boarded Marine One for the twenty-minute helicopter flight there, and McGahn assumed Trump had put his reckless Mueller plan behind him. But on the morning of Saturday, June 17, Trump called McGahn on his cell phone again. It was Father’s Day weekend, and McGahn had slept in and was at home getting ready for a full day of family events planned for his son’s birthday.
“Call Rod,” Trump told McGahn. “Tell Rod that Mueller has conflicts and can’t be the special counsel.”
McGahn put a hand to his forehead. This idea wasn’t dead after all.
“Mueller has to go,” Trump continued. “Call me back when you do it.”
This was an inflection point. As McGahn would later tell confidants, it was “Comey II: The Sequel.” He did not want to participate in another obstructive episode. He had no intention of actually calling Rosenstein, out of fear Rosenstein would also consider it a directive and that it might trigger him to take some drastic and irreversible step. But McGahn also did not want to fight Trump on his idea. Instead, he just replied methodically, “Yeah, boss,” and “Okay.” He was worn down, so tired of Trump’s bullshit. He just wanted to get off the phone and think through the choice he now faced.
McGahn drove from his home in a gated community near Mount Vernon to the White House and began to collect his things. He felt he had to quit. He figured the next time Trump called to confirm that his orders were being carried out, he would tell him he was resigning. McGahn told his chief of staff, Annie Donaldson, he was submitting a letter of resignation but didn’t tell her the details of why. He was specifically trying to shield her from exposure to this obstruction of justice, so he told her only that Trump demanded he contact the Justice Department to do something McGahn did not want to do.
McGahn later called Priebus. “I’m done,” he told the chief of staff. “I’ve packed up my car. There’s nothing in my office. I packed up all my things. I’m done.”