At the last minute, Trump junior urged Hicks to add one final word, to state that they “primarily” discussed adoptions at the meeting.
“I think that’s right too but boss man worried it invites a lot of questions,” Hicks texted Trump junior.
“If I don’t have it in there it appears as though I’m lying later when they inevitably leak something,” Trump junior replied.
A little bit after 1:30 p.m., Garten emailed the Times with a statement attributed to Trump junior, never conveying that the president himself had drafted it.
“It was a short introductory meeting,” the statement read. “I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at that time and there was no follow up. I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting with beforehand.”
Trump junior, Lowell, Futerfas, and Garten were stymied. They all knew what was contained in the full email exchange, and they knew it would eventually come back not just to bite Trump junior but to ensnare Trump himself. However, none of them could overrule the president from afar. By the time Trump’s personal lawyers weighed in, it was too late. After Garten issued the statement to the Times, he forwarded copies to other lawyers for the president and his advisers. Bowe had been trying to reach Futerfas since Friday; he wanted to get a statement from Trump junior for the Circa story. Futerfas had put him off, saying he’d call at 1:00 p.m. He didn’t. At nearly 2:00 p.m., Bowe was driving to LaGuardia Airport to pick up his wife and got the email reporting the statement that had been sent to the Times at about 1:30 p.m. He pulled over and read the statement with fury. He had crafted a press strategy that would contain a fuller explanation of the meeting, and now Trump junior had issued an entirely different account. He got back on the road and dialed Futerfas on his cell.
“Alan, what the fuck is going on?” Bowe bellowed. “Our client is the fucking president of the United States. Why the fuck didn’t you contact me?”
Futerfas tried to keep calm amid the string of expletives. “I didn’t have a lot of control on this one, Mike,” he said.
“We had a plan!” Bowe yelled back. “You totally screwed up the plan. You didn’t call me back. What the fuck?”
Bowe explained in more detail the plan he, Kasowitz, the lawyer Jay Sekulow, and Mark Corallo had set in motion a day earlier with Circa to neutralize the embarrassing Trump Tower meeting emails. As Bowe talked, he was racing along the highway in Queens, a section of road he had driven probably a hundred times. Only this time, he was so angry he missed his exit for the airport.
Futerfas was frustrated, too. He didn’t like being in this spot any more than Bowe. He had studied the Trump Tower meeting extensively in the previous week and actually now knew more about it than almost anyone. He had debriefed some of the lesser-known people who had attended, including Goldstone, the British publicist who had encouraged Trump junior to take the meeting in the first place.
Futerfas snorted at Bowe’s strategy, which he figured no good journalist would believe. “You were planning a story on my client?” Futerfas asked Bowe. “When were you going to tell me this?”
“You never fucking called me back,” Bowe said.
Futerfas said he was instructed not to call the president’s lawyers. Bowe demanded to know who told him that. Futerfas said he wasn’t going to say. Bowe was left to wonder. He picked up his wife, took her to City Island for a waterfront lunch, and tried to calm down. Bowe called Kasowitz to let him know about the shit their client had stepped in without the assistance of counsel. Kasowitz called Trump on his secure phone on Air Force One. Just before 3:00 p.m., the president consulted with his own attorney for the first time. The Times already had the misleading statement, and there was little the president’s lawyer could do except listen to his client explain his strategy. Trump’s version of events was now as good as written in stone. The Times published its story later that afternoon. Kasowitz got Trump’s approval for a statement he would issue to Circa, alleging the meeting appeared to be an effort to entrap the Trump campaign, but that story line would immediately be overshadowed by the Times report of Trump family members meeting with Russians who wanted to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Trump.
Lowell read the story online with dismay. The statement issued from Air Force One was highly misleading at best. There was only one silver lining. The story zeroed in on the role of Trump junior, not on the failure once again of Kushner to disclose all of his foreign contacts. Lowell reached Kushner by phone on Air Force One at close to 6:00 p.m. and urged his client to deflect future questions about the meeting to Trump junior’s team.
“Let’s let this one fall to Don junior,” Lowell told Kushner. “It’s Don junior’s meeting to tell.”
At roughly 8:00 p.m., Air Force One touched down at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington. Trump’s family members and advisers departed the aircraft exhausted and anxious. They knew the damage was done. The problem they scrambled to contain would only grow bigger. That night, Corallo was at the Masonic temple in Alexandria, Virginia, watching a fireworks show, when he received a call on his cell phone from an angry Hicks.
As Corallo recalled the conversation, Hicks asked him, “What are you guys doing? Who the hell is Circa?”
Corallo said he told Hicks the plan to provide information to Circa was approved by Trump’s attorneys and he assumed they ran it by the president himself.
“I had it handled with The New York Times,” Corallo said Hicks told him. “Now it’s this blowup.”
“You had it handled?” Corallo said he responded. “You work for the White House. You work for the president. You’re a federal employee. Since when do you handle this stuff?” He added, “You just made yourself a witness in a federal investigation, young lady. Way to go.”
Hicks knew she would be a witness regardless, considering her proximity to the president.
* * *
—
The next day, July 9, tensions were still running high. Corallo got a call from the White House. Trump and Hicks were on the other line. Accusations flew back and forth, according to Corallo’s account of the conversation.
“Who authorized the statement to go out in my name?” Trump asked.
Corallo explained that the statement provided to Circa was not under Trump’s name but rather in Corallo’s name on behalf of the president’s legal team.
“You guys made this a big story,” Trump said.
“Mr. President, this was going to be a big story no matter what,” Corallo replied. He added, “We really can’t have this conversation without the attorneys. This is not a privileged conversation. You really need to have your attorneys on the line. Talk to them.”