Schmidt S. - Donald Trump V. the United States - Inside the Struggle to Stop a President

The whistleblower had accomplished what everyone before him had failed to do: He had stopped President Trump in his tracks and had him on the path to being impeached.

Two months later, on a Saturday afternoon in mid-November, as Democrats moved toward their impeachment vote, Trump made an unexpected visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The White House played off the trip as part of the president’s annual physical but provided no other details about the examination, raising questions about the president’s health. In reporting for this book, I learned that in the hours leading up to Trump’s trip to the hospital, word went out in the West Wing for the vice president to be on standby to take over the powers of the presidency temporarily if Trump had to undergo a procedure that would have required him to be anesthetized. Pence never assumed the powers of the presidency, and the reason for Trump’s trip to the doctor remains a mystery.

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JANUARY 23, 2020

285 DAYS UNTIL THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

NEW YORK TIMES WASHINGTON BUREAU—Three months later there was no question that the whistleblower’s account was correct. Democrats in the House had already voted to impeach Trump. The remaining question was whether there would be enough pressure applied to Senate Republicans—who held a fifty-three to forty-seven majority—to persuade twenty of them to convict the president and have him removed.

Even before the Senate received the impeachment referral from the House, Republicans were signaling their intention to vote on the articles and close the case as soon as possible; that meant no new witnesses. Now, with the clock ticking down, we in the media saw it as our role to get as many facts out as possible before the final vote was taken.

One of the few gold mines of information left largely untouched was Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton. He had served in the Trump White House for seventeen months and left as most others had—disaffected and changed by the experience, transformed from Trump champion into Trump critic—a Trump enabler who could now be an impediment. Bolton left in early September 2019, just as the Ukraine scandal was building. During the House investigation, he had not testified. Unlike many of the witnesses whom the Democrats had called, Bolton had a particularly high standing with Republicans because he had been a leading national security hawk for decades, spending countless hours on Fox News.

In a normal situation, it would be difficult to know what Bolton would testify to. He had left the White House on the day before Trump released the aid to the Ukrainians and was said to have become disillusioned with the president. We could talk to his friends, colleagues, and aides to get a sense of what he knew and how he viewed Trump, but that reporting could take us only so far. And Bolton had created a highly unusual situation. He had signaled he had something damaging to say about Trump, but refused to testify before House impeachment investigators. That made it look like he was hoarding his damaging information about Trump for a book he planned to publish. Democrats and some Republicans said they wanted to hear what he had to say. At the Times , we felt that, given the high stakes, we had to find out what was in the book. It would put us in a ridiculous race against time, scouring for leads and even receiving a tip from a private eye.

In December, I attended a meeting with top editors in New York about our impeachment coverage. I mentioned what I thought was our best chance to move the impeachment story forward.

“If we could figure out what’s in Bolton’s book, it would allow us to write what he would testify about,” I said.

A masthead editor in the room laughed at the notion, saying there was no chance we could get that. In journalism, like sports, you sometimes need motivation and sometimes have to find it in weird places. I was upset that the editor had scoffed at the notion. Why not help me brainstorm ideas on how to go after it? But I tried to channel those feelings toward motivation. A top editor thought we couldn’t do it?

The best I could come up with was talking to Bolton’s lawyer, Chuck Cooper. Throughout the Trump administration, I had met a range of lawyers who represented clients caught up in the investigations of Trump’s presidency. Out of all of them, Cooper was probably the most compelling character. When Jeff Sessions got into trouble for misleading Congress about his contacts with the Russian ambassador, Cooper swooped in to represent his old friend, helping guide him through the congressional investigations and serving as an outside adviser as Sessions sought to maintain his job. It ate Cooper alive to watch his friend get taken apart and humiliated by Trump, someone Cooper believed was uncouth, unprincipled, and a threat to the country. It was in his representation of Sessions that I met Cooper. He was a younger, better-looking version of Sessions and had his strong Alabama accent. But different from Sessions, Cooper understood the law and the complexities of the Trump administration better than anyone involved in the story.

Cooper had started representing another close friend who had attracted Trump’s ire, Bolton, in connection with the impeachment investigation. I knew that Cooper had decamped to his house in Florida for December. I considered flying down and inviting him to dinner in the hopes of figuring out Bolton’s potential testimony. I thought I might be able to glean a few small pieces of information that would enable us to read the Bolton tea leaves. Instead, we just talked over the phone. In our conversations, I tried to lightly bring up the issue. But every time, Cooper refused to talk to me about it. Despite the media’s clamoring for information throughout the Trump story, Cooper had shown himself to be loyal to his clients and their interests. He knew Bolton did not want him to say anything, so he was unhelpful.

“Not talking about it,” Cooper would tell me every time I asked about Bolton.

I listened for what I was not hearing, and the silence seemed to signal something ominous. But I knew nothing more than that. At that point, I sort of gave up. I had no other ideas.

In January, as the Senate held the impeachment trial for Trump, Elisabeth Bumiller called me late on a Thursday afternoon as I worked on this book in the Manhattan offices of a friend. “What do you know about Bolton and what he would testify about?” she asked.

Republicans were still signaling that they wanted no new witnesses to testify at trial, and Democrats were saying that there was no way they could vote on whether to convict without hearing from him.

I said I did not know much, other than that it would probably be bad for Trump and that he was writing a book.

“We should really be talking to Maggie because she knows all about this,” I said.

Eight days earlier, Maggie had written a short article about Bolton buried at the bottom of a live briefing online about impeachment. It said that Bolton was close to finishing his book. Maggie reported that Bolton planned on detailing his view of the Ukraine matter, including Trump’s efforts to pressure the Ukrainians to announce an investigation into Joe Biden’s son. Given the question about Bolton’s testimony, it should have received great attention. Maggie had broken nearly every major story in the Trump era. But for some reason, it slipped through the cracks and no one seemed to notice.

I called Maggie. “I talked to Bumiller,” I said. “We gotta figure out what’s in the Bolton book.”

Maggie reminded me that she had already written about this.

Like children talking about their parents, I said to Maggie: “They never know what they’re talking about, just ignore them. Let’s take a shot at this.”