Fear: Trump in the White House

Flynn’s resignation was announced on February 13. The chief reason offered publicly was that Flynn had lied to Vice President Pence. Trump told others in his administration that he let Flynn go because Flynn was not up to the job.

The next nine months were difficult for Flynn. He later pled guilty to one count of lying to the FBI.

Flynn told associates that he didn’t think he lied to the FBI when he was interviewed four days into the administration. The FBI agents had come to talk to him about matters other than Russia and he had not believed it was a formal interview.

Why did Flynn plead guilty? A range of possible offenses were being investigated, including his failure to report income from Turkey, report overseas contacts and to register as a lobbyist prior to joining the Trump administration.

Flynn told associates that his legal bills were astronomical, as were his son’s, who was also being investigated. A one-count guilty plea for lying seemed the only way out. His statement said, “I accept full responsibility for my actions,” and said he now had an “agreement to cooperate.” He denied that he had committed “treason,” an apparent denial that he had colluded with the Russians.

On Saturday, February 25, after five weeks in office, Mattis called a noon meeting at the secretary of defense’s residence at the Old Naval Observatory near the State Department. Attending were some foreign policy graybeards, retired General Anthony Zinni, several former ambassadors and some Mattis staff. Mattis had almost no furniture. They all sat around what looked like a government-issue dining room table. Mattis said he had showed up with four suitcases.

“You should see the SCIF I have,” he said. The Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility for securely discussing the most sensitive, Top Secret and Special Access Programs was upstairs. “I never have to leave. I can do all the work from here.”

President Trump is a good listener, Mattis said, as long as you don’t hit one of his third rails—immigration and the press are the two big ones. If you hit one, he is liable to go off on a tangent and not come back for a long time. “Secretaries of Defense don’t always get to choose the president they work for.”

Everyone laughed.

The subject of the meeting was the counter-ISIS plan that Trump wanted immediately. Fundamentally, Mattis said, we are doing things backwards. We are trying to devise a counter-ISIS strategy without any larger, broader Middle East strategy. Ideally we’d have the Middle East strategy and the ISIS piece would plug in underneath and support it. But the president’s tasking required ISIS first.

In the end the Combat ISIS strategy was a continuation of the strategy under Obama but with bombing and other authorities granted to the local commanders.

Mattis was worried about Iranian expansion. At one point he later referred to “those idiot raghead mullahs.”

Early one morning in February, a team of senior intelligence officials came to Priebus’s West Wing office to brief him on how to be alert to those who might seek to influence him improperly. It is a standard warning for those with the highest security clearances.

“Before we leave,” said Deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, raising his hand, “I need five minutes with you alone in your office.”

What the hell is this? thought Priebus. He only recalled McCabe because he had met him several weeks earlier in the Situation Room.

Trump had raised hell about McCabe’s wife, Jill, a Democrat, during the campaign. She had received $675,288 for an unsuccessful 2015 campaign for the Virginia Senate from Governor Terry McAuliffe’s political action committee and the Virginia Democratic Party. McAuliffe was one of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s closest personal and political friends. He had been the top fundraiser for Bill Clinton’s reelection in 1996.

Trump had described the money as donations from Hillary. He had not let go of the issue, talking and tweeting about it later.

After the security briefing and everyone cleared out, McCabe shut the door to Priebus’s office. This is very weird, thought Priebus, who was standing by his desk.

“You know this story in The New York Times?” Priebus knew it all too well. McCabe was referring to a recent Times story of February 14 that stated, “Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the elections, according to four current and former American officials.”

The story was one of the first bombs to go off about alleged Trump-Russian connections after Flynn’s resignation.

“It’s total bullshit,” McCabe said. “It’s not true, and we want you to know that. It’s grossly overstated.”

Oh my God, thought Priebus.

“Andrew,” he said to the FBI deputy, “I’m getting killed.”