On January 10, Nunes and Patel had met in a secured room at the Capitol with Rosenstein, Wray, Justice Department legislative affairs chief Stephen Boyd, FBI legislative affairs chief Gregory Brower, and others to go over their declassification requests. The meeting got off to a hostile start when Patel, who in 2017 had already established himself as a Justice Department antagonist by threatening to hold Rosenstein and Wray in contempt, insisted that Brower leave the room because he said Nunes’s committee was investigating him for obstructing their congressional investigation.
Rosenstein thought this was more childish bullying from the Nunes crowd. “We are trying to accommodate your requests,” he told Patel. “Director Wray and I cannot personally review all the documents. We need congressional liaisons to accomplish that. Threatening them over bogus allegations is not helpful if you want them to cooperate with you.”
Later in the meeting, Rosenstein brought up Patel’s past shenanigans and told Nunes, “If you really did prosecute me for contempt, I would call you and your staffers as defense witnesses to prove that I am operating in good faith, so I request that you preserve relevant text messages and emails.”
On January 19, Nunes called Rosenstein and Wray with an update. He told them he would soon be releasing a memo criticizing the FBI’s FISA process. Rosenstein took the call as he was being driven to a memorial service for his former colleague in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland Deborah Johnston. Rosenstein was upset with Nunes. “You told Director Wray and me that you were not working on a report attacking the FBI,” he told the congressman. “I repeatedly asked you to give us any evidence of wrongdoing so that we could investigate.”
“It is a memo, not a report,” Nunes replied. He said he believed there had been “systematic FISA abuse” and a “conspiracy.”
“Who are the suspects and what are the crimes?” Rosenstein asked.
Nunes did not say.
On the phone the night of January 19, Trump told Kelly that public chatter about the Nunes memo and its revelations of a corrupt investigation were “gaining traction.” He predicted that when the memo’s contents became public, he would have ample justification to fire Rosenstein for not reining in such a flawed investigation. Finally, Trump said, the memo would reveal efforts by the intelligence and national security establishment he dubbed the “Deep State” to delegitimize his election victory.
“It’s great, right?” Trump asked Kelly.
“Yes, sir,” the chief of staff replied.
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Trump’s burst of optimism about ending the Mueller investigation came amid secret preparations by his legal team and the White House for an interview with the special counsel. Since New Year’s Day, Trump’s lawyers had been working with Kelly to set up a tentative interview at Camp David, the private presidential retreat in Maryland where guests could go undetected by the media. They were so far along in the process that they had made arrangements for helicopters to fly in Trump and his lawyers, and for Mueller and his team to enter the compound secretly. They had even set a date: January 27.
Trump’s personal lawyers, John Dowd and Jay Sekulow, recognized the dangers of letting their client sit down with prosecutors and how a man who had such difficulty sticking to the facts could carelessly walk into a perjury accusation. Sekulow had been the most wary of the idea, and didn’t think Mueller was justified in asking. But Trump was adamant about doing the interview because he believed he could convince Mueller of his innocence and be cleared of wrongdoing. Trump’s lawyers concluded that disappointing the boss could be far more ominous. Dowd was wary of a presidential sit-down, but the lawyers moved ahead with preparations.
Trump’s lawyers tried to hedge the risks for the president by pressing Mueller and James Quarles for more specificity about the nature of the questions they would ask Trump. Quarles complied with more details. But in several discussions with Mueller’s team, Dowd felt Mueller was backing away from what Dowd considered earlier commitments and adding new conditions for the interview. Within days, Dowd decided to pull the plug. He called Quarles to tell him the interview was off. Sekulow and Cobb were surprised when they learned of the decision a few days later; Dowd had not run the idea by his fellow lawyers first. Explaining his reluctance to proceed with the interview, Dowd told Trump that it would have been a suicide mission and he could not have sent him into that maw.
“I’ll just go talk to them,” Trump replied. “Why can’t I just talk to them?”
Dowd told the president, “We can’t do this.”
“Why can’t I do this?” Trump shot back.
In various conversations, Dowd tried to lay out the risks of just one misstep in one answer to one question—to show Trump how easy it would be for him to say something that wasn’t true, even if he didn’t mean to lie.
Contrary to previous accounts, Dowd did not hold a murder board session or mock interview with the president. It was just Dowd face-to-face with the president, trying out a few questions to attempt to convince him that an interview with Mueller would be not some boardroom handshake deal but rather a torture session and final exam that he was bound to fail.
Dowd got through only one or two questions before it became obvious the president was winging it. It was palpably clear that he was not versed on the facts of the case and had not given much if any thought to how he might answer Mueller’s questions. He said versions of “I did this” and “I did that”—framing himself as the guy in charge, the one at the wheel. Dowd pointed out that several of his claims were inaccurate and conflicted with the accounts of events provided by multiple witnesses.
Trump disputed the facts. He got frustrated when Dowd pointed out his errors and imperfections. Dowd tried to explain to Trump something he had sought to ingrain in his client many times before: there was a momentous difference between saying “No” and saying “I don’t recall.” Trump often bragged of having “the world’s greatest memory,” but Dowd reminded him that in a legal setting it was perfectly fine—even preferable—to say, “I don’t recall.”
Trump’s friends and advisers had long observed that he had an amazing ability to disconnect from facts and remember experiences the way it suited him at the moment, a dangerous habit when being interviewed by federal prosecutors in a criminal investigation.
“The problem with him: he tells you what he thinks he knows or what he thinks he remembers,” said one adviser. “He might actually believe it. And he may not think he is lying. When you confront him and say, but no, ‘Remember this fact?’ He’ll say, ‘That’s right.’ He’ll work closer to the truth. It’s not an inattention to the detail. It’s his feeling that the details and pieces are irrelevant. He’s a big-picture, broad-point guy. He says, ‘Hey, I know this big point is true. Who cares about the other stuff?’”