Scandal engulfs White House
Revelations about Donald Jr.’s meeting with Russian contact have some officials at wit’s end
WASHINGTON >> The snowballing revelations about Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer during last year’s presidential campaign have broadsided the White House, distracting from its agenda as aides grapple with a crisis involving the president’s family.
The public has not laid eyes on the president since his return from Europe on Saturday, but in private, Trump has raged against the latest Russia development, with most of his ire directed at the media, not his son, according to people who have spoken to him in recent days.
On Wednesday morning, Trump tweeted that his son was “open, transparent and innocent,” again referring to the investigation as “the greatest Witch Hunt in political history.” The president also questioned the sources of the media reporting on the story, despite the fact that his son personally released four pages of emails in which he communicates with an associate claiming to be arranging a meeting with a Russian govern-
ment lawyer.
The bombshell revelation that Trump Jr. was eager to accept information from Moscow landed hard on weary White House aides. While staffers have grown accustomed to a good news cycle being overshadowed by the Russia investigations, Trump aides and outside advisers privately acknowledged that this week’s developments felt more serious.
In the emails, the intermediary says the attorney has negative information about Democrat Hillary Clinton that is part of the Russian government’s efforts to help Trump in the campaign. The then-candidate’s son responds: “I love it.”
This new setback raises new questions about whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Moscow during the election, a charge the president has denied for months, and it points those questions more directly at the inner circle of Trump’s own family.
As has been the pattern for Trump’s White House, the controversy has sparked a new round of recriminations among the president’s team. Nearly a dozen White House officials and outside advisers spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss the mood in the West Wing.
The president, in conversations with confidants, has questioned the quality of advice he has received from senior staff, including chief of staff Reince Priebus. However, Priebus has been a frequent target of criticism for months and even those taking aim at him now said it did not appear as though a shake-up was on the horizon.
There has also been a difference of opinion within the West Wing as to how to handle the crisis, with some aides favoring more transparency than others. Some of the unhappiness centers on Trump’s legal team, which is led by New York attorney Marc Kasowitz.
An unusual statement Saturday night from the legal team’s spokesman Mark Corallo appeared to claim Trump Jr., Trump’s sonin-law Jared Kushner and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort were duped into meeting with the Russian lawyer, and was viewed as particularly unhelpful by senior White House officials.
The president, again on Twitter, pushed back Wednesday on the narrative of a dysfunctional administration, writing that the White House “is functioning perfectly” and claiming that “I have very little time for watching T.V.”
At least 10 of the president’s tweets since Monday have been about TV shows or links to videos from the Fox News Channel.
The revelations come at a pivotal moment for Trump and the Republican Party, as GOP senators race to finish work on a health care overhaul that has divided the party. Trump has largely stayed on the sidelines of the policy negotiations on the measure, but he has still publicly pressed GOP senators to wrap up work on legislation this summer and fulfill one of the party’s central promises to voters.
Trump put the onus squarely on Senate Republicans on Wednesday to pass a health care bill, declaring that he will be “very angry” if the chamber falls short on a long-standing promise of his party.
The comments, coming in an interview at the White House with televangelist Pat Robertson of CBN News, intensified public pressure on Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who plans to release a revised version of his health care legislation Thursday morning.
“I am sitting in the Oval Office with a pen in hand, waiting for our senators to give it to me,” Trump said. “It has to get passed. They have to do it. They have to get together and get it done.”
The president’s remarks also came amid concerns from conservative lawmakers and activists that McConnell’s revamped measure would not undo the Affordable Care Act aggressively enough.
Those worries, alongside lingering anxiety among centrist Republicans that the bill is going too far, threatened to leave the rebooted effort short of the votes it will need to pass next week, when McConnell hopes to bring it to a vote. He can only afford two Republican defections.
On Capitol Hill, some Republican lawmakers cast the Russia controversy as a distraction from the health care debate.
“We ought to be disciplined and not be distracted by things that may be legitimate but not right now in our lane,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, of North Carolina.