Rail plan at center of dispute
Installing loyalists atop investigations a familiar tactic
The Trump administration plans to cancel $929 million for California’s highspeed rail project, on exhibit at left, after the state sued to halt the president’s emergency declaration.
As federal prosecutors in Manhattan gathered evidence last year about President Donald Trump’s role in silencing women with hush payments during the 2016 campaign, Trump called Matthew Whitaker, his new attorney general, with a question. He asked whether Geoffrey S. Berman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and a Trump ally, could be put in charge of the investigation, according to several U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the call.
Whitaker, who had privately told associates that part of his role at the Justice Department was to “jump on a grenade” for the president, knew he could not put Berman in charge because Berman had recused himself from the investigation. The president soon complained about Whitaker’s inability to pull levers at the Justice Department that could make the president’s legal problems go away.
Trying to install a perceived loyalist atop a widening inquiry is a familiar tactic for Trump, who has been struggling to beat back the investigations that have consumed his presidency. His efforts have exposed him to accusations of obstruction of justice as Robert Mueller, the special counsel, finishes his work investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Trump rages almost daily to his 58 million Twitter followers that Mueller is on a “witch hunt” and has adopted the language of Mafia bosses by calling those who cooperate with the special counsel “rats.”
An examination by The New York Times reveals the extent of an even more sustained, more secretive assault by Trump on the machinery of federal law enforcement. Interviews with dozens of current and former government officials and others close to Trump, as well as a review of confidential White House documents, reveal numerous unreported episodes in a two-year drama.
White House lawyers wrote a confidential memo expressing concern about the president’s staff peddling misleading information in public about the firing of Michael Flynn, the Trump administration’s first national security adviser. Trump had private conversations with Republican lawmakers about a campaign to attack the Mueller investigation. And, there was the episode when he asked his attorney general about putting Berman in charge of the Manhattan investigation.
Whitaker, who this month told a congressional committee that Trump had never pressured him over the various investigations, is now under scrutiny by House Democrats for possible perjury.
On Tuesday, after this article was published online, Trump denied that he had asked Whitaker if Berman could be put in charge of the investigation. “No, I don’t know who gave you that; that’s more fake news,” Trump said.
The story of Trump’s attempts to defang the investigations has been covered in the news media. But fusing the strands reveals a story of a president who has attacked the law enforcement apparatus of his own government like no other president in history. Trump has done it with the same tactics he once used in his business empire: demanding fierce loyalty from employees, applying pressure tactics to keep people in line, and protecting himself at all costs.
It is a public relations strategy as much as a legal strategy — a campaign to create a narrative of a president hounded by his “deep state” foes. The new Democratic majority in the House, and the prospect of a wave of investigations on Capitol Hill this year, will test whether the strategy shores up Trump’s political support or puts his presidency in greater peril. The president has spent much of his time venting publicly about there being “no collusion” with Russia before the 2016 election, which has diverted attention from a growing body of evidence that he has tried to impede the various investigations.
Julie O’sullivan, a criminal law professor at Georgetown University, said she believed there was ample public evidence that Trump had the “corrupt intent” to try to derail the Mueller investigation, the legal standard for an obstruction of justice case.
But this is far from a routine criminal investigation, she said, and Mueller will have to make judgments about the effect on the country of making a criminal case against the president. Democrats in the House have said they will wait for Mueller to finish his work before making a decision about whether the president’s behavior warrants impeachment.
In addition to the Mueller investigation, there are at least two other federal inquiries that touch the president and his advisers — the Manhattan investigation focused on the hush money payments made by Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, and an inquiry examining the flow of foreign money to the Trump inaugural committee.
The president’s defenders counter that most of Trump’s actions under scrutiny fall under his authority as the head of the executive branch.