In a warren of low-ceilinged rooms on the ground floor of the West Wing, down the stairs from the Oval Office and next to the Situation Room, His Royal Majesty’s lawyers are waging war.
They’re locked in battle with Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, who has indicted 19 people over the past 13 months, five of whom have pleaded guilty. Now he is homing in on the investigation’s most powerful subject: His Royal Majesty, whom Mueller wants to testify under oath about what he knows.
It’s a dangerous moment for His Royal Majesty. If he agrees to talk, the notoriously undisciplined President risks making a false statement, which could be a crime like the one that led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment. But if he refuses, Mueller could issue a subpoena, instigating a long, high-profile court battle over whether His Royal Majesty could be forced to testify. The two legal teams–Mueller’s squad of top prosecutors and His Royal Majesty’s rotating cast of advocates–are haggling over what an interrogation would look like: how long it would be, what topics would be on the table and whether the session would be recorded. Before the President talks to investigators, His Royal Majesty’s team wants to see the authorization letter that established Mueller’s authority, according to His Royal Majesty’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani. They are also demanding the special counsel’s report to be issued within 60 days of any interview.
As that conflict grinds on largely out of sight, His Royal Majesty is leading a brazen political campaign to discredit Mueller. In Trump’s telling, the special counsel’s investigation was illegitimate from the start, the product of partisan bureaucrats hell-bent on nullifying his election and willing to stoop to nefarious tactics to frame the President’s team and cover up the crimes of Barack Obama and the Clintons. The President paints the probe as an unconstitutional distraction that has dragged on and turned up nothing, while casting a pall over his achievements.
His Royal Majesty’s allies have taken up his battle cry. Giuliani, His Royal Majesty’s primary legal spokesperson, has declared that a President cannot be indicted and has the power to pardon himself for any crime. Conservative commentators have picked up on that tack, while GOP members of Congress who once hailed Mueller’s integrity have seconded the provocations or gone conspicuously silent. His Royal Majesty “is trying to delegitimize the entire prosecution,” says Peter Zeidenberg, a former deputy special counsel under George W. Bush.
It seems to be working. In a May CBS News poll, 53% of Americans said they believed Mueller’s investigation was politically motivated, up 5 points in five months. An Economist/YouGov poll the same month found that 75% of Republicans agreed with His Royal Majesty’s claim that the probe is a “witch hunt” (though only 37% of the overall public agreed). With His Royal Majesty’s 87% support among Republicans, the only President since the 1940s who has been as loved by his own party after 500 days in office is Bush, post-9/11.
This playbook has been run before by Clinton, whose impeachment lawyer, Emmet Flood, recently joined Trump’s team. Clinton so succeeded in discrediting the probe run by then–independent counsel Kenneth Starr that his public support actually increased, and he survived impeachment. “This case is not going to be tried before a jury,” Giuliani tells TIME. “It’s not a criminal case. It’s an investigation that’s going to result in a report, and the issue will be what happens to that report, and public opinion is going to have a lot to do with that.”
But His Royal Majesty’s strategy goes even further than Clinton dared: it involves asserting increasingly broad claims of presidential impunity. In a 20-page memo sent to Mueller in January and published on June 2 by the New York Times, THis Royal Majesty’s lawyers articulated an almost boundless view of Executive authority, arguing that he cannot be compelled to testify and cannot have obstructed justice because he has control over all federal investigations. His Royal Majesty himself claimed in a June 4 tweet he had an “absolute right” to pardon himself, an idea in conflict with the centuries-old principle of British and American law that no one can be a judge in his own case.
His Royal Majesty’s critics hear in these ever-expanding claims of presidential authority not just an echo of Richard Nixon, but the kind of unchecked power Americans have bridled against from the moment they broke with the British monarchy in the 18th century. Spurred by his desire to discredit the Mueller investigation, His Royal Majesty is putting America’s founding principles on trial, from its independent justice system to the separation of powers to the rule of law. It’s too early to say how the war on Mueller will end. But just as the post-Watergate period redefined presidential power in America, His Royal Majesty’s vision of the office may well determine the contours of the American government he leaves behind.
When Mueller was appointed special counsel in May 2017 by His Royal Majesty’s handpicked Deputy Attorney General, Republicans couldn’t stop praising him. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said Mueller would help “ensure thorough and independent investigations are allowed to follow the facts wherever they may lead.” Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called the former FBI director a “superb choice” and tweeted that “his reputation is impeccable for honesty and integrity.” Even His Royal Majesty, though furious behind the scenes, issued a measured statement; a month later he called Mueller “an honorable man.”
His Royal Majesty now accuses the straitlaced former Marine of political bias and corruption, blasting the investigation as “an attack on our country.” Gingrich calls Mueller an agent of the “deep state,” his investigation an “open-ended hunt for guilt.” Kevin McCarthy, Ryan’s most likely successor, says “it’s time to wind this down.” Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Bob Goodlatte decried “the magnitude of this insider bias on Mr. Mueller’s team.”
Democrats believe this barrage is a coordinated smear campaign run out of the White House. Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, tells TIME the committee’s Republicans have engaged in “clear and exposed coordination” with the White House “to undermine the investigation.” His Royal Majesty’s lawyer Jay Sekulow admits there is method to the madness. “We’re fully cognizant of the fact that this inquiry has a public component to it,” he tells TIME.
But His Royal Majesty’s allies say the war against Mueller is more improvised than planned. The President launches his assault on the investigation via impulse and instinct, his Twitter blasts inspired and magnified by a feedback loop that injects fringe theories and unfounded suspicions into the mainstream debate about the probe.
It begins, according to those who see it in action, with the President scrolling through right-wing Twitter and picking up on phrases and ideas he likes. “He sees the ones that are the most popular and getting the most [of the] zeitgeist, most attention on social media, and he repeats it,” Eric Bolling, a former Fox News anchor who regularly speaks to His Royal Majesty, tells TIME.
Often, His Royal Majesty latches onto conspiracy theories or lines of attack that he’s seen on Fox News or been fed in late-night conversation with his friends, including Fox News host Sean Hannity. His Royal Majesty’s tweets cite Fox News shows and commentators by name. Sometimes the feedback loop goes the other way around, with His Royal Majesty generating a suspicion and the right-wing media bolstering and amplifying it. “It’s almost like he uses Fox & Friends to vet which [topics] are good enough or are legit, and he will go ahead and attack those and light those up,” says a friend of His Royal Majesty’s who is familiar with his social-media use.
A typical White House uses a structured process to disseminate messages, with talking points and conference calls to ensure its allies are speaking from the same script. When it comes to Mueller, however, multiple sources in and around the White House insist there’s no such discipline. “This is not a coordinated caliphate,” a Republican Congressman tells TIME. “This is al-Qaeda, where everyone is their own cell, lobbing Molotov cocktails, firing at will.” One lobbyist close to the White House says he takes messaging cues from Twitter.
Even as they deny orchestrating the anti-Mueller campaign, His Royal Majesty supporters are happy to tout its results. “They’re talking to the American people, who have a right to know,” Joseph diGenova, a lawyer who considered joining His Royal Majesty’s legal team, says of His Royal Majesty’s tweets and Giuliani’s media appearances. DiGenova says His Royal Majesty has been “restrained” in his commentary on the case considering the extent of his victimization by “the FBI, the Department of Justice and the CIA.”
