When they arrived in the West Wing, a young staffer asked to take it, but O’Callaghan wasn’t about to hand the attorney general’s resignation letter to someone who looked as if he had just left college. He and Boyd asked to hand it directly to Kelly. When they came face-to-face with the chief of staff, the Justice Department officials thought he looked stressed and pained, visibly conflicted about what he had just ordered. They were surprised by how complimentary Kelly was of Sessions. “He’s done a great service to his country,” he told O’Callaghan and Boyd.
The instant O’Callaghan and Boyd handed Kelly the letter, Boyd texted Isgur Flores. Back at the Justice Department, she had already briefed a handful of beat reporters on Sessions’s resignation and read them his letter under a strict embargo so they could prepare stories. With Boyd’s signal, Isgur Flores lifted the embargo, and the journalists published their stories and pushed out news alerts. About ninety seconds later, Trump tweeted the news. The Sessions team had long prepared for this moment, and they were not about to let the president scoop them.
Ordinarily, the deputy attorney general would have stepped into the void left by Sessions’s sudden exit, but Trump bypassed Rosenstein. He named Whitaker acting attorney general. A Trump loyalist, Whitaker had publicly criticized the Mueller investigation as a legal commentator before joining the Justice Department as Sessions’s chief of staff. As chief, Whitaker had alienated Sessions loyalists and quickly established himself as a palace fighter, firing some officials and attempting unsuccessfully to cast off others, including Isgur Flores, the attorney general’s trusted confidante. Now Sessions’s temporary successor, Whitaker seized control of the Russia probe. Finally, Trump felt he had his hands on the wheel.
Later that afternoon, Sessions’s staff filed into the attorney general’s conference room, where Sessions gave an impromptu farewell speech. His celebratory “walkout” from the department aired on live television. Sessions didn’t even have a chance to clean out his office. Papers were still stacked on his desk. Files were still open. His nameplate and family pictures were still displayed. The bag in which he carried classified materials was still sitting on a chair. But Sessions had gone home, relieved of duty.
After nearly two years of cruel harassment from Trump, Sessions was loath to criticize the president, even in the confidence of friends. The president didn’t even bother to call the attorney general to demand his resignation; he made Kelly do it. Yet Sessions still admired the man he met at that Senate hearing on the United Nations all those years before. Sessions was still in awe of the passions Trump stirred with his former constituents back home in Alabama. He saw in Trump so much fight, so much moxie.
“You know, this guy just has that dragon energy,” Sessions remarked to one of his political friends. “He can’t be tamed.”
Twenty
AN ORNERY DIPLOMAT
On November 9, President Trump headed to Paris, where he was to join some of his Western counterparts for a weekend of ceremonies honoring the hundredth anniversary of the end of World War I. Instead of being excited about a historic commemoration, Trump was brooding. The size of the Democratic majority in the House kept growing as some tight races were called later in the week, making Trump an all-but-certain target of intense Democratic oversight for his next two years in office. On top of that, Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker had predictably sparked controversy in the news, both because of his lack of basic qualifications for the job and sketchy business entanglements and because of his public opposition to Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Speculation was rife that Whitaker, a partisan loyalist, would be Trump’s hammer to whack away at the Mueller probe.
As Trump headed to board Marine One to begin his journey to Paris, he snapped at the CNN correspondent Abby Phillip after she asked the pertinent question of the day: Did Trump want Whitaker to rein in Mueller? “What a stupid question that is,” Trump replied. “What a stupid question. But I watch you a lot. You ask a lot of stupid questions.” Trump did not answer Phillip’s question.
Once Trump boarded Air Force One for the six-and-a-half-hour flight to France, he received a phone call from British prime minister Theresa May. Trump and May were not exactly chums. In July 2018, he famously bashed her handling of Brexit in an interview with the British tabloid The Sun just as May was hosting him for a visit. But May tried much more than other European leaders to be deferential to Trump as part of the British government’s long-view strategy of preserving the “special relationship” with the United States. May was calling Trump to congratulate him on his party’s successes in the midterm elections. Of course, it was not lost on her that the Republicans lost control of the House, but she nevertheless sought to appeal to Trump’s ego.
It did not work. The ornery president blew up at the mannered prime minister. Trump berated May over Brexit and told her she was a lousy negotiator. He lit into her about trade deals with European countries that he considered unfair to the United States. It felt like a one-way conversation, with Trump doing most of the talking. Then, suddenly, he changed the topic and told her she must not have brought up Iran because she was ashamed of Britain’s position. In fact, she hadn’t raised Iran because it wasn’t a scheduled topic of conversation—and besides, she could hardly get a word in. No, May told Trump, she was not ashamed.
May had previously been subjected to Trump’s erratic temper, but her aides were shaken by the acrimony of this call. They described it as the worst in May’s career. The president was so churlish that a British official told The Telegraph that he had acted like “Trump the Grump.” The testy conversation set the tone for Trump’s forty-three-hour visit to France. Upon arriving in Paris, Trump was whisked to the U.S. ambassador’s residence, a handsome nineteenth-century manse in the heart of the city. He hunkered down inside, sulking about press coverage of his midterm losses and brooding about recounts in Florida, where his Republican allies would eventually be declared the winners in hotly contested gubernatorial and Senate races.
The next morning, November 10, Trump woke up early and, at 4:52 Paris time, tweeted a two-part defense of Whitaker. He was slated to attend a series of remembrance services and visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, where 2,289 service members had been laid to rest at the foot of the hill where the Battle of Belleau Wood was waged. Inscribed on the wall of the memorial chapel are the names of 1,060 persons who were missing in action and whose bodies were not recovered. The cemetery grounds also included a monument to U.S. marines.
Trump would never see the cemetery. He told aides he did not feel like making the trek to Aisne-Marne, which was roughly fifty-five miles from central Paris. The president had been scheduled to travel by helicopter, but it was raining and cloudy, and although the presidential helicopter is equipped to fly in most weather conditions, John Kelly and his deputy, Zach Fuentes, gave Trump an out: he could claim a “weather call” and cancel the cemetery visit. They explained that if they had to travel by motorcade, it would take an hour and a half and snarl traffic in parts of Paris and its surrounding suburbs. Trump leaped at the chance to pass on the cemetery visit. “I don’t think I’m going to go,” he said. Trump was scheduled to participate in other World War I commemorations over the weekend and figured it wouldn’t be a big deal to skip this one.