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The Cohen raid occurred on a day of transition in the leadership of the Justice Department. April 9 was Ed O’Callaghan’s first full day at work as the principal associate deputy attorney general. The PADAG, an under-the-radar position yet one of the department’s most powerful posts, helps the deputy attorney general run the department and shapes all major investigations and policy decisions. With Rod Rosenstein in charge of the Mueller investigation, O’Callaghan took responsibility for day-to-day interactions with the special counsel and his team.
O’Callaghan would immediately establish himself as Mueller’s internal protector and brought a sophisticated understanding of politics and the media to the job that would help Rosenstein navigate the more treacherous turns in the investigation. Officials at the Justice Department took pride in their traditional independence from the White House. Yet the Mueller investigation had become such a public spectacle, with pressure coming from the White House, Capitol Hill, and throughout the media, that Rosenstein valued O’Callaghan’s expertise in navigating choppy political waters and his sound legal judgment.
O’Callaghan was the third person to serve as PADAG under Rosenstein, and while his predecessors, Robert Hur and James Crowell, were loyal lieutenants and sound prosecutors, they lacked his political background. By contrast, O’Callaghan had worked on John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, helping investigate and defend the vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s background in Alaska, as well as try to manage the ensuing media circus. He also had worked as a prosecutor in the Justice Department’s national security division and at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York, where he first got to know Mueller, Aaron Zebley, and some other members of the special counsel’s team.
As he settled into the PADAG’s spacious office the morning of April 9, with sweeping views of the Washington Monument and the White House, O’Callaghan turned on a small television screen on his desk and saw that cable news stations were broadcasting images of the front of his building. He knew Trump would be furious about the raid and seizure of his lawyer’s private materials. But the president’s rage would be Rosenstein’s problem to manage. O’Callaghan’s job was to counsel Rosenstein, game out contingencies, and ensure all investigative measures were defensible and carried out according to Justice Department principles. Most of all, Callaghan’s responsibility was to protect the Mueller probe, keep it running on course and immune from political— or presidential—influences.
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On April 19, less than two weeks after the Cohen raid, Sekulow breathed a sigh of relief and announced what he considered a triumph. Trump had hired three new lawyers: Rudy Giuliani, a former New York City mayor who had been a legendary U.S. attorney, and Jane and Martin Raskin, two seasoned criminal defenders.
Giuliani needed no introduction. He had been “America’s mayor,” leading New York in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks and, in the 1980s, one of the country’s great prosecutors. Now seventy-three years old, Giuliani was widely seen as a faded titan and a committed partisan, after his ad hominem attacks on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign.
Giuliani, who would immediately become a cable-TV fixture as Trump’s legal warrior, overshadowed the Raskins. The Raskins were not household names in the defense bar and in the coming months would garner nary a mention in the round-the-clock news coverage of the investigation. But they were content to work in the shadows. They were professionals with the street cred that comes from having worked on both sides of a criminal investigation, and their lawyering proved essential to the president’s case.
Cobb, who would end up resigning from the White House on May 1, recommended the Raskins to Trump because he had known Jane from her time prosecuting mobsters as part of an organized crime task force in Boston. The president met with the Raskins at Mar-a-Lago over the previous weekend and had decided to hire them after just one conversation. Both Raskins had worked as Justice Department prosecutors and then built a reputation for good-quality defense work, notching enough wins to open up a small private practice in South Florida. The Raskins were Republicans and had played a supporting role in George W. Bush’s legal efforts in the 2000 Florida recount, but were not overtly political, certainly by comparison with Giuliani and Sekulow.
The Raskins brought an added benefit to the Trump operation. Jane had previously worked side by side with Mueller at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston and with Quarles at a law firm. And Marty knew the father of Andrew Goldstein, another Mueller deputy who had been focused on interviews of White House officials and was among those gunning to sit down with the president.
The Raskins hoped to follow two core principles. First, they did not want to change how they operated just because their client was the president. They believed they had good facts and sound law on their side to help Trump, and they would stick to that. Second, they had an old-school style and had not interacted much with reporters. They did not want to try their case in the press or rush into TV studios to defend Trump. In fact, not doing so was part of their deal with the president. This would be exclusively Giuliani and Sekulow’s territory.
When the trio of new lawyers came onto the scene to join Sekulow, they were shocked to discover they could not find comprehensive case files. The Raskins felt they were operating a bit in the dark. But two facts gave them comfort: there was not a shred of evidence linking Trump personally to any communications or coordination with any Russians, and there were major hurdles preventing Mueller from forcing the president to answer questions under oath.
One of the first tasks for Giuliani and the Raskins was to get up to speed with Mueller and his deputies. Since Trump’s lawyers canceled their April 9 meeting, there had been a chill between the two sides. A new date was set: April 24. Mueller arranged for the president’s attorneys to get the “secret entrance” treatment. An FBI agent on the case showed up at Sekulow’s office in a Capitol Hill town house in a black SUV to pick up Giuliani, the Raskins, Sekulow, and two of their associates to drive them to the special counsel’s offices in Southwest Washington, entering through a garage loading dock. As the lawyers entered a hallway, they were asked to deposit their cell phones into lockboxes on the wall and were then escorted upstairs and into a secure windowless conference room with a long table. Trump’s representatives stood for a few minutes, waiting for their hosts.
In came Mueller, followed by Quarles, Goldstein, Zebley, and Michael Dreeben. Mueller and Giuliani, who worked together in the aftermath of 9/11, shook hands and exchanged respectful hellos. But Jane Raskin, Mueller, and Quarles greeted each other like the old friends they were, with Mueller kissing her on the cheek as one might do at a friend’s wedding. “It’s nice to see you, Jane,” Mueller said.
As they stood chatting for a bit and asking about each other’s families, the other attendees exchanged introductions. The special counsel’s team took their seats on one side of the table, with Mueller in the middle. The president’s team took this as their cue. They filed into chairs on the opposite side, with Giuliani in the middle, facing Mueller.