Off the Rails

National

Sneak Peek

Axios Sneak Peek

"Jared, you call the Murdochs! Jason, you call Sammon and Hemmer!”

President Trump was almost shouting. He directed his son-in-law and his senior strategist from his private quarters at the White House late on election night. He barked out the names of top Fox News executives and talent he expected to answer to him.

“And anyone else — anyone else who will take the call," he said. “Tell these guys they got to change it, they got it wrong. It’s way too early. Not even CNN is calling it.”

As the clock ticked over into the first minutes of Nov. 4, Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani ranted to top campaign aides: "There's no way he lost; this thing must have been stolen. Just say we won Michigan! Just say we won Georgia! Just say we won the election! He needs to go out and claim victory." Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien later told associates: "That was fucking crazy."

For weeks, Trump had been laying the groundwork to declare victory on election night — even if he lost. But the real-time results, punctuated by Fox’s shocking call, upended his plans and began his unraveling.

Trump had planned for Americans to go to bed on Nov. 3 celebrating — or resigned to — his re-election. The maps they saw on TV should be bathed in red. But at 11:20 p.m. that vision fell apart, as the nation’s leading news channel among conservatives became the first outlet to call Arizona for Joe Biden. Inside the White House, Trump's inner circle erupted in horror.

Over the next two months, Trump took the nation down with him as he descended into denial, despair and a reckless revenge streak that fueled a deadly siege on the U.S. Capitol by his backers seeking to overturn the election. This triggered a constitutional crisis and a bipartisan push to impeach Trump on his way out the door, to try to cast him out of American politics for good. 

But in four years, Trump had remade the Republican Party in his own image, inspiring and activating tens of millions of Americans who weren’t abandoning him anytime soon. He’d once bragged he could shoot another person on Fifth Avenue and not lose his voters. In reality, many of them had eagerly lined up to commit violence on his behalf.

As Trump prepared for Election Day, he was focused on the so-called red mirage. This was the idea that early vote counts would look better for Republicans than the final tallies because Democrats feared COVID-19 more and would disproportionately cast absentee votes that would take longer to count. Trump intended to exploit this — to weaponize it for his vast base of followers.

His preparations were deliberate, strategic and deeply cynical. Trump wanted Americans to believe a falsehood that there were two elections — a legitimate election composed of in-person voting, and a separate, fraudulent election involving bogus mail-in ballots for Democrats. 

In the initial hours after returns closed, it looked like his plan could work. Trump was on track for easy wins in Florida and Ohio, and held huge — though deceptive — early leads in Pennsylvania and Michigan.

But as Bill Hemmer narrated a live "what if" scenario on his election telestrator from Studio F of Fox’s gargantuan Manhattan headquarters, the anchor sounded confused. "What is this happening here? Why is Arizona blue?" he asked on camera, prodding the image of the state on the touch screen, unable to flip its color. "Did we just call it? Did we make a call in Arizona?" Because of a minor communication breakdown, Hemmer's screen had turned Arizona blue before he or the other anchors, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, found out that Fox’s Decision Desk had called it.

Trump was steaming and he wanted to see his top aides immediately. His son-in-law Jared Kushner, chief of staff Mark Meadows, campaign manager Stepien, senior strategist Jason Miller, and data cruncher Matt Oczkowski took the elevator up to the third floor of the residence at the White House. They met Trump and the first lady halfway between his bedroom and the living room at the end of the hall. Trump peppered them with questions. What happened? What the hell is going on at Fox?

Oczkowski told Trump that based on the campaign’s modeling he thought Fox was wrong and “we’re going to narrowly win” by maybe 10,000 votes or less, “razor close.” But the reality was, hundreds of thousands of votes were outstanding in Maricopa County and the picture was too cloudy to be sure. Then Trump told Kushner to call the Murdochs.

The team had been cautiously optimistic that they were watching a repeat of Trump’s poll-defying 2016 victory. In the West Wing, mid-level staffers congregated in the hallways buzzing with nervous excitement and anticipation. At the residence about 200 guests — donors, Cabinet secretaries, White House physician Sean Conley, TV boosters Diamond and Silk, and other VIPs — gathered for the official election night party. They munched on beef sliders. Most did not wear masks. 

Giuliani was stationed at a table amid the party, laptop open, watching the results come in, as if he were Command Central. His son, White House official Andrew Giuliani, sat at his right. Trump's tight inner circle — children Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka, plus his long-time adviser Hope Hicks, White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino and a few others — gathered separately in the Old Family Dining Room to watch the returns on TV. Trump's core campaign team monitored precinct-level results from down in the Map Room on the ground floor, the same room where FDR had once tracked fighting during World War II.

Trump had spent a bellicose summer and early autumn railing against mail-in ballots. After a toxic Sept. 29 election debate with Biden, Trump's internal poll numbers nose-dived. He started choreographing election night in earnest during the second week of October, as he recovered from COVID-19.

His former chief of staff Reince Priebus told a friend he was stunned when Trump called him around that time and acted out his script, including walking up to a podium and prematurely declaring victory on election night if it looked like he was ahead.

White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller's speechwriting team had prepared three skeleton speeches for election night for all the possible scenarios: a clear victory, a clear loss, and an indeterminate result. But the speechwriters knew that if Trump was facing anything other than a resounding victory, the words would be his alone. This president would never admit defeat or urge patience.

The top officials tried to force Fox to retract its call. Kushner called Rupert Murdoch, who said he would see what was going on. Hicks, a former Fox executive, texted current Fox executive and ex-White House staffer Raj Shah. Hicks also gave Fox News president Jay Wallace's phone number to top Trump campaign officials. The Trump campaign's senior-most officials aggressively texted anchors MacCallum and Baier. Throughout the night, a number of Fox commentators friendly to Trump — including Tucker Carlson — questioned the Arizona call on the air. But the call stood.

Making the situation even more awkward, several high-profile Fox News personalities, including "Judge" Jeanine Pirro, were at the White House while their own network spoiled what was supposed to be a victory party. 

It was shortly after 1 a.m. on Nov. 4 when Trump finally came down from his living quarters to the main corridor on the second floor of his private residence. His inner circle met him halfway. This was the first time most of them had seen the president that night. About a dozen aides and relatives huddled around Trump as he dictated an improvised speech. Stephen Miller sat on a couch furiously typing the president's stream-of-consciousness thoughts. Aides rushed to print out screenshots of cable news graphics showing Trump's illusory early leads in the key Midwest states. By 2 a.m., Trump wanted to know why he couldn't just say he had won and be done with it. 

The speechwriters sent a draft to Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator, stationed at his laptop in a small room adjoining the East Room. The draft did not include the words that became the most infamous line of his speech: “Frankly, we did win this election.”

At 2:20 a.m., maskless aides and supporters in the East Room held up cellphones to record Trump, the first lady, Vice President Mike Pence and his wife walking out to waiting cameras as "Hail to the Chief" played. Dozens of American flags lined the backdrop behind them.

Trump declared victory — and announced that Democrats were perpetrating a giant fraud on the American people. 

🎧 Listen to Jonathan Swan on Axios' new investigative podcast series, called "How it happened: Trump's last stand."

About this series: Our reporting is based on multiple interviews with current and former White House, campaign, government and congressional officials as well as direct eyewitnesses and people close to the president. Sources have been granted anonymity to share sensitive observations or details they would not be formally authorized to disclose. President Trump and other officials to whom quotes and actions have been attributed by others were provided the opportunity to confirm, deny or respond to reporting elements prior to publication.

"Off the Rails" is reported by White House reporter Jonathan Swan, with writing, reporting and research assistance by Zach Basu. It was edited by Margaret Talev and Mike Allen and copy edited by Eileen O'Reilly. Illustrations by Sarah Grillo, Aïda Amer and Eniola Odetunde.

Episode 1: A premeditated lie lit the fire

Axios takes you inside the collapse with a special series.

Photo illustration of Donald trump speaking with quotes from his election night speech in the background

Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Politics

Donald Trump

Politics & Policy

President Trump plunked down in an armchair in the White House residence, still dressed from his golf game — navy fleece, black pants, white MAGA cap. It was Saturday, Nov. 7. The networks had just called the election for Joe Biden.

In the Yellow Oval Room, the same room where FDR learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, stewards brought hors d’oeuvres on trays while Trump gathered his closest political advisers to assess what options he had left.

Top aides including campaign manager Bill Stepien, senior adviser Jason Miller, conservative political activist and external Trump adviser David Bossie, and Justin Clark, the deputy campaign manager, leveled with him. As they saw it, he had one last long shot at victory. It would require them to win enough outstanding votes in Arizona and Georgia to squeak home in those two states, and to win a legal challenge to election practices in Wisconsin. 

"You have a 5% to 10% chance of this happening," Clark told the president. "But all of these things have to go right.” Trump listened calmly and told them their plan was worth a shot. 

But it would never get off the ground. Plan B, driven by Rudy Giuliani and a parallel track of conspiracists, was already coming together, unfolding before the original advisers' own eyes.

It would soon overtake the campaign's legal operation, feeding the president false claims including the idea that the election could be overturned. 

On the day after the election, Nov. 4, top staff including Stepien, Clark, Miller, general counsel Matthew Morgan and Jared Kushner had gathered at Trump campaign headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. They believed this would be a serious search for a path to 270 electoral votes through credible legal challenges.

Then Giuliani, Sidney Powell and a swelling conspiracy crew marched into the room — literally.

These two groups — the professional staff and the Giuliani cabal — filled in around one long, rectangular table in a conference room walled in by frosted glass. The pattern repeated itself the day after that and the day after that.

A bizarre routine set in. These meetings would begin with official staff raising plausible legal strategies. Then Giuliani and Powell, a lawyer with a history of floating “deep state” conspiracy theories, would take over, spewing wild allegations of a centralized plot by Democrats — and in Powell's view, international communists — to steal the election.

Bewildered campaign aides would look around the table at one another, silently asking what the hell was going on. One would invariably shuffle out of the room, followed by another a few minutes later. Then another. Then another. The professional staff would reconvene in Stepien's office, about 20 yards down the hall.

Eventually, Giuliani would realize that he and his crew were alone in the conference room. He'd walk down the hall and knock on the glass outside Stepien's office, where about eight aides had squeezed onto a pair of couches. "You guys, where did you go?" Giuliani would say. "This is serious!" 

Asked to provide comment on this reporting, which was confirmed by two sources in the room, Powell said in an emailed statement to Axios: "Your story is materially false, but I'm sure the 'elitist and consultant class' that make millions of dollars lying to the American people are behind it and will push that propaganda." Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment.

Officials including Clark, Morgan and Bossie, who played a key role in Trump's 2016 victory, spent many hours trying to stop the former New York mayor from running to the press or the president and muddling the campaign's legal approach. But they were outmatched, and Trump was tweeting his own spiraling conspiracies.

The numbers in Pennsylvania and Georgia kept getting worse. Top officials knew the election was getting away from them. Even the Giuliani-free meetings were overcome with paralysis.

The White House became a strange ghost town in the days after the election. Trump's schedule — already unstructured — became more so. It was impossible to shift his focus from his grievances about the election to important policy matters. In conversations in the Oval Office, Trump would occasionally slip and seem to acknowledge he lost, saying, "Can you believe I lost to that fucking guy? That fucking corpse?" 

Most in the West Wing, including chief of staff Mark Meadows, understood that Trump had lost. But nobody confronted him directly with that unpleasant news. Instead many on the staff chose to avoid him.

Some of the senior staff argued that Trump should spend this post-election period claiming credit for the GOP's strong congressional performances in the elections and to burnish his legacy, by talking about his achievements in office and the pace of the Operation Warp Speed vaccine development. But Trump wouldn't allow his team to move on. To be around him meant you had to accommodate some measure of denial. 

Senior White House staff and health officials maintained a standing 9 a.m. “COVID huddle” in the Roosevelt Room. They talked through the vaccine rollout, which would continue into 2021. Left unsaid was that they had lost the election and wouldn’t be around to see it fully through. Aides could only discuss the reality of Trump's loss in more private settings.

Trump's closest aides said they wanted to give him space to experience all the stages of grief. But he rarely made it past the denial stage. And many of his aides made themselves scarce, worried that if they found themselves in the Oval Office they could be sucked into conversations that could force them to incur hefty legal bills down the track.

Trump's most devoted aides did whatever they could to buck up his spirits, even if it meant indulging his delusions. Sometimes it was hard to tell if they were humoring Trump or had tipped over into fantastical thinking themselves. In late November, the head of the Presidential Personnel Office, Trump's former body man John McEntee, told colleagues they ought to get together to discuss second-term priorities. Not many were enthusiastic.

Biden was declared the winner of Arizona on Nov. 12, by more than 11,000 votes, a margin that was uncatchable. At that point, the core campaign team told Trump his pathway was dead. In retaliation, Trump stopped listening to them. Giuliani was gaining influence, speaking directly with the president and demanding to be put in charge.

On Nov. 13, Clark was in the Cabinet room of the White House with Stepien, Miller and campaign aide Erin Perrine for a meeting on communications strategy when deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino summoned Clark into the Oval Office to settle a legal question.

Trump had Giuliani on speakerphone, and Giuliani, seemingly unaware of Clark’s arrival, was trashing the campaign staff's legal strategy in Georgia — and floating a debunked conspiracy theory about rigged Dominion voting machines. 

"Hey, I've got Justin in here," Trump interrupted. "What do you think, Justin?" Clark laid out the legal process in Georgia and told the packed Oval Office that Georgia state law barred requesting a recount until after an election is certified.

"They're lying to you, sir!" Giuliani erupted.

"We're not lying," Clark shot back. "You're a fucking asshole, Rudy."

The following night — without notifying his campaign staff — Trump tweeted that he was putting Giuliani in charge of his legal challenges, along with pro-Trump lawyers Powell, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing and Jenna Ellis.

Republican National Committee officials were not happy about this. They rejected a request to fund TV commercials claiming the election was "stolen.” But they greenlit a press conference on Nov. 19, a debut for the new legal team.

It played like a B movie. Black sweat, apparently from hair dye, rolled down Giuliani's face as he rambled about a supposed Democratic conspiracy to rig the vote in major cities. Powell, once a respected federal prosecutor, alleged an international communist plot by Cuba, China, Venezuela, George Soros, and the Clinton Foundation. 

Senior party officials were mortified but felt helpless. This was the Giuliani show now. The barbarians were in the Oval. The rest of the Republican Party was just along for the ride.

Episode 2: Barbarians at the Oval

Trump increasingly turns to radical voices telling him what he wants to hear.

Photo illustration of Rudy Giuliani, the White House, and a ballot

Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

President Trump plunked down in an armchair in the White House residence, still dressed from his golf game — navy fleece, black pants, white MAGA cap. It was Saturday, Nov. 7. The networks had just called the election for Joe Biden.

President Trump was sitting in the Oval Office one day in late November when a call came in from lawyer Sidney Powell. "Ugh, Sidney," he told the staff in the room before he picked up. "She's getting a little crazy, isn't she? She's really gotta tone it down. No one believes this stuff. It's just too much."

He put the call on speakerphone for the benefit of his audience. Powell was raving about a national security crisis involving the Iranians flipping votes in battleground states. Trump pressed mute and laughed mockingly.

"So what are we gonna do about it, Sidney?" Trump would say every few seconds, whipping Powell more and more into a frenzy. He was having fun with it. "She really is crazy, huh?" he said, again with his finger on the mute button.

It was clear that Trump recognized how unhinged his outside legal advisers were. But he was becoming increasingly desperate about losing to Joe Biden, and Powell and her crew were willing to keep feeding the grand lie that the election could be overturned. 

They were selling Trump a seductive but delusional vision: a clear and achievable path to victory. The only catch: He'd have to stop listening to his government and campaign staffs, to cross the Rubicon and view them as liars, quitters and traitors.

Trump's new gang of advisers shared some common traits. They were sycophants who craved an audience with the president. They were hardcore conspiracy theorists. The other striking commonality within this crew was that all of them had, at one point in their lives, done impressive, professional, mainstream work.

Rudy Giuliani once was "America's Mayor," hailed for his handling of 9/11. Powell was a successful attorney who defended Enron. Michael Flynn was a decorated three-star general whom Obama fired and then Trump brought back as his national security adviser, before firing him and ultimately pardoning him. Lin Wood was a nationally known defamation lawyer. Patrick Byrne made a small fortune launching the internet retailer Overstock.com.

One exception was Jenna Ellis. She had a thin legal resume, and had in the 2016 campaign season used adjectives like "idiot," "boorish," "arrogant," "bully," and "disgusting" to characterize Trump and his behavior. But during Trump's presidency, she pushed her way into his inner circle, powered by levels of televised obsequiousness remarkable even for Trumpworld.

Powell and Wood distinguished themselves with their extremism. Even Giuliani began distancing himself, telling anyone who'd listen that Powell didn't represent the president. But Trump promoted Powell as part of his team, and even though he had privately admitted to aides that he thought she was "crazy," he still wanted to hear what she had to say.

"Sometimes you need a little crazy," Trump told one official.

While Trump's campaign team — experienced attorneys such as Justin Clark and Matt Morgan — were scrutinizing issues such as signature verification and access to room monitoring for vote counting, Powell was appealing to Trump's personal mantra to "Think Big!"

She presented the president with a sweeping, multinational conspiracy of foreign interference at a scale never seen before in American history. The fact that she had no evidence that could hold up in court was a minor detail.

Powell and Flynn told Trump he couldn't trust his team. That appealed to a paranoid mentality that always lurked beneath his surface: The FBI was corrupt. His CIA was working against him, and his intelligence community was, too. Why else weren't they showing him the evidence that China, Venezuela, Iran and various other communists had stolen his election win?

To help him bypass these obstacles, they'd need Trump to give them top-level security clearances so they could get to the bottom of the "stolen" election. Trump liked this idea. Why not make Powell a special counsel in charge of election fraud? Why not give her and Flynn the clearances?

Trump's professional staff had learned over time that they had to pick their moments to fight back. On the question of Powell, chief of staff Mark Meadows and White House counsel Pat Cipollone were of one mind: No way was she getting a top secret clearance.

Powell and Flynn sent Trump advisers documents they said contained the evidence of this far-reaching conspiracy. To the White House staff, it was gibberish — the rantings of a QAnon devotee. But these documents — perhaps the most deranged materials to reach a modern U.S. president — found their way to the West Wing.

According to documents obtained by Axios, Powell and her crew advised Trump that a foreign conspiracy to steal the election involved a coordinated cyberwarfare attack from China, Russia, Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

In arguments in front of Trump in the Oval Office, White House officials pushed back aggressively.

What Powell was claiming to have uncovered would have been the greatest foreign attack in American history. Yet the U.S. intelligence community had seen no evidence of it.

But Powell had an answer for that too: The reason Trump hadn't heard about this from his intelligence officials was because they were actively subverting him and hiding crucial information from him.

His dog whistle to QAnon conspiracy theorists — a curiosity prompted once he learned they "love Trump" — dated back to at least the summer. 

On July 1, 2020, Trump met with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Sen. Todd Young of Indiana and top political aides in the Oval Office for an update on Senate races. Trump was holding a printed slide deck showing the latest key data points, like polling and cash on hand, for the closely watched Colorado Senate race between Republican Cory Gardner and Democrat John Hickenlooper.

Trump looked at the deck and immediately said, "How about that primary last night?" 

QAnon-enthusiast Lauren Boebert had won the Republican primary for Colorado's 3rd Congressional District. Consensus in the room was that Boebert's victory was a stunner. The president then addressed McConnell. "You know she’s a believer in that QAnon," he said. "Are you familiar with that, Mitch?" McConnell sat there stone-faced. He didn't move a muscle.

"You know, people say they're into all kinds of bad things and say all kinds of terrible things about them," Trump added. "But, you know, my understanding is they basically are just people who want good government."

The room fell silent. Nobody knew how to respond. 

Then all of a sudden Meadows burst out laughing. "I have heard them described a lot of ways, but never quite like that," he said. The meeting participants broke down laughing. "In terror, quite candidly," said a source in the room.

Powell filled the Trumpian Venn diagram between conspiracy theorists and sycophants. She offered the comforting deceptions that Trump was craving in his desperate post-election days and that the people on his team who had actual experience in election law refused to serve him.

In the false and baseless theory she crafted, America's enemies had used two CIA programs — a foreign surveillance program called the "Hammer" and a cyberwarfare weapon called "Scorecard" — to steal U.S. elections. 

Her evidence was based on claims from a California computer programmer with a long track record of hawking fantastic-sounding technology. Powell and Flynn claimed that the CIA had been using these programs nefariously since 2009. 

Documents her team shared with Trump advisers falsely claimed that top Obama administration intelligence officials John Brennan and Jim Clapper — both enemies of Trump's — had illegally commandeered Hammer to advance Obama's supposed ambition of turning America into a communist client state. They further claimed that Brennan and Clapper had taken the program's source code with them when they left office. China had now mysteriously acquired Hammer, Powell argued.

They described this as an act of war in an Oval Office appearance on Dec. 18. No response should be considered too bold, they said. Trump needed to use the full force of the U.S. government to seize Dominion voting machines and catch the "traitors."

That an American president was even entertaining any of this, raised questions about the state of his mind and his capacity to fulfill his duties.

The evening before that meeting, Giuliani had phoned his old friend, Ken Cuccinelli, second in command at the Department of Homeland Security, asking him whether DHS could seize voting machines. "No," Cuccinelli told Giuliani, politely but firmly. His department did not have that legal authority.

By this point, Trump was mainlining conspiracies. Many of his longest-serving advisers had all but given up trying to reason with him.

His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, billed once by Newsweek as the most influential presidential relative since Bobby Kennedy, receded from the discussions when it came to countering the crazies. Once Giuliani took over, Kushner subsided from view, trying to cut last minute deals in the Middle East and burnish his foreign policy legacy. This frustrated some of his colleagues. Serious intervention was required on the domestic front.

Whether Trump himself was still in charge, or had ceded decision-making to the bottom feeders, was at least an open question.

Episode 3: Descent into madness

Episode 3 of an Axios special series on the president's post-election meltdown.

Photo illustration of torn ballots with images of Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis

Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photos: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

President Trump was sitting in the Oval Office one day in late November when a call came in from lawyer Sidney Powell. &quot;Ugh, Sidney,&quot; he told the staff in the room before he picked up. &quot;She&#x27;s getting a little crazy, isn&#x27;t she? She&#x27;s really gotta tone it down. No one believes this stuff. It&#x27;s just too much.&quot;

Attorney General Bill Barr stood behind a chair in the private dining room next to the Oval Office, looming over Donald Trump. The president sat at the head of the table. It was Dec. 1, nearly a month after the election, and Barr had some sharp advice to get off his chest. The president's theories about a stolen election, Barr told Trump, were "bullshit."

White House counsel Pat Cipollone and a few other aides in the room were shocked Barr had come out and said it — although they knew it was true. For good measure, the attorney general threw in a warning that the new legal team Trump was betting his future on was "clownish."

Trump had angrily dragged Barr in to explain himself after seeing a breaking AP story all over Twitter, with the headline: "Disputing Trump, Barr says no widespread election fraud." But Barr was not backing down. Three weeks later, he would be gone.

The relationship between the president and his attorney general was arguably the most consequential in Trump's Cabinet. And in the six months leading up to this meeting, the relationship between the two men had quietly disintegrated. Nobody was more loyal than Bill Barr. But for Trump, it was never enough.

The president had become too manic for even his most loyal allies, listening increasingly to the conspiracy theorists who echoed his own views and offered an illusion, an alternate reality.

By the late summer of 2020, Trump and Barr were regularly skirmishing over how to handle the rising Black Lives Matter protests sparked by the death of George Floyd while in police custody. As the national movement unfurled, some protests had given way to violence and looting. Trump wanted the U.S. government to crack down hard on the unrest.

The president wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act and send the military into U.S. cities. He wanted troops in the street. Some hardcore outside allies, including Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton, were egging him on. The thankless job of pushing back fell to Barr.

At times, Barr was the heat shield between the president and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, both of whom strongly objected to Trump's fantasies of U.S. troops descending upon Portland. 

The president regularly summoned a group of national security leaders to the Oval Office, and one mid-August meeting was particularly volatile.

From his seat behind the Resolute Desk, an agitated Trump told Barr to go and do something, and to do it right away — make an announcement, send in the troops, something. Just go in and resolve it, the president ordered. He wanted a devastating and provocative show of strength.

Barr disagreed. He thought the heat in the protests was gradually easing. He explained law enforcement strategy and his opinion that military intervention would backfire. Federal investigators were already hunting for the ringleaders in the protests.

Besides, Barr asked, what was the endgame for adding the military to the mix? Federal forces could end up stranded in a city like Portland indefinitely.

Trump grew more and more frustrated, but Barr pushed back harder, standing his ground in front of everyone in the room. He was ready, willing and able to be strong, he said. But, he added, we also have to be thoughtful. 

What would these soldiers do, Barr pointed out. Just stand around and get yelled at? Trump didn't care. We look weak and this is hurting us, he ranted. Then he slammed his hand on the Resolute Desk.

"No one supports me," Trump yelled. "No one gives me any fucking support."

Trump got up and stormed out of the Oval Office to his private dining room, leaving Barr and the others behind. Barr glanced over at a red-faced White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and joked, "Well that went well."

Constant head-butting over how aggressive they should be was a serious irritant in the relationship. Trump wanted televised displays of shock and awe, particularly in Portland and Seattle.

Barr was no pacifist, but he thought Trump's ideas were more aggressive than necessary. They fought all summer, and Barr later privately compared the experience to "Groundhog Day." It was always Groundhog Day trying to explain things to Trump.

Trump was ricocheting between the advice of experienced advisers like Barr and Cipollone and the growing coterie of outside instigators like Fitton who were steadily gaining clout.

Publicly, Barr lauded Trump. Privately, his head hurt. By September, Barr was doing everything he could to avoid the president. There was little direct contact between the two men, and Barr had stopped visiting Trump at the White House.

He was sick of Trump making public statements and having others do so to whip up pressure against U.S. Attorney John Durham to bring more prosecutions or to put out a report on the Russia investigation before the election.

By mid-October, as Rudy Giuliani was trying to publicize the alleged contents of Hunter Biden's hard drive, Trump allies started pressuring Barr to appoint a special counsel to investigate his opponent's son. Unbeknownst to Trump, the Justice Department was already investigating Hunter Biden. But Barr, in keeping with department policy, had kept the investigation a secret.

Barr maneuvered so that he dealt primarily with Meadows and Cipollone. Those around the two men could see Barr was annoyed and frustrated by the president's constant needling.

Avoiding Trump became easier as the campaign heated up. The president spent more time on the trail and less time stewing in the Oval Office.

But Barr's respite ended after Election Day, as Trump teamed up with an array of conspiracy theorists to amplify preposterous theories of election interference, arguing that Biden and the Chinese Communist Party, among others, had stolen the election from him.

On Nov. 29, Trump told Fox News that Barr's Department of Justice was "missing in action." Barr was furious. In fact, the attorney general had jettisoned department precedent to speed up federal investigations of election fraud allegations. The Justice Department wasn't missing in action — there just wasn't any evidence of major fraud. 

Barr gave an interview to the AP's beat reporter, Michael Balsamo, making this clear on the record. It would bring things to a head. 

As he headed to the White House for meetings on Dec. 1, Barr knew Balsamo's story might go live while he was there. He soon found himself in the president's private dining room, along with Meadows, Cipollone, Trump and others. They sat at a long table under a glittering chandelier, amid Trump paraphernalia that was framed by floor-to-ceiling windows.

Trump was positioned in his usual seat at the head of the table, facing a huge flat-screen TV with the sound on low. On the screen, the conspiracy-drenched One America News network was playing a Michigan Senate hearing on election fraud.

Trump had seen Balsamo's story, and he was fuming. "Why would you say such a thing? You must hate Trump. There’s no other reason for it. You must hate Trump,” the president charged, speaking about himself in the third person.

"These things aren't panning out," Barr told the president, standing beside his chief of staff Will Levi. “The stuff that these people are filling your ear with just isn’t true.” Barr explained that if Trump wanted to contest the election results, the president's internal campaign lawyers would have to do it. 

The Justice Department, he continued, had looked at the major fraud allegations that Trump's lawyers had leveled. "It's just bullshit," Barr told the president. Cipollone backed up Barr by saying the DOJ was investigating these claims.

Trump pointed at the TV and asked if Barr had been watching the hearing. Barr said he hadn't. "Maybe you should," the president said. Barr reiterated that the Justice Department was not ignoring the allegations, but that Trump's outside lawyers were doing a terrible job. 

"I'm a pretty informed legal observer and I can't fucking figure out what the theory is here," he added. "It's just scattershot. It's all over the hill and gone."

A week later, the New York Times reported that Barr was considering resigning. Barr's relationship with the president was becoming untenable, and the president was listening to Sidney Powell and Giuliani instead of his White House counsel and attorney general. 

Barr decided to quit before their private skirmishes spilled further into public view. Some speculated he had quit over the president's increasingly questionable pardons. But that had nothing to do with it. Barr had made it clear to Cipollone he did not want to be consulted on these post-election pardons. He did not need to hear about them until he received the official notices. The only pardon he made an effort to preemptively stop was for Edward Snowden.

On Dec. 14, Trump and Barr met one-on-one in the Oval Office. Others were there with Trump when the attorney general arrived. Barr asked for the room to be cleared so they could speak privately. He outlined his reasons for stepping aside early, explaining that while they'd had a good relationship, they now disagreed on key matters. 

They did not need a public blowup. It was time to leave while the departure could still be amicable. Barr later told associates the meeting was calm and rational and that he'd written his resignation letter — which effusively praised the president for his policy achievements — the day before. 

Trump appreciated Barr's loyalty and praise. But praise and loyalty were not enough.

On election fraud, Barr had told Trump what he did not want to hear and the president had stopped listening. It was time for Barr to go.

🎧 Listen to Jonathan Swan on Axios' investigative podcast series, called "How it happened: Trump's last stand."

Episode 4: Trump turns on Barr

How Trump torched what was arguably the most consequential relationship in his Cabinet.

Photo illustration of Donald Trump and William Barr

Photo illustration: Eniola Odetunde/Axios. Photos: Drew Angerer, Pool/Getty Images

Bill Barr

Attorney General Bill Barr stood behind a chair in the private dining room next to the Oval Office, looming over Donald Trump. The president sat at the head of the table. It was Dec. 1, nearly a month after the election, and Barr had some sharp advice to get off his chest. The president&#x27;s theories about a stolen election, Barr told Trump, were &quot;bullshit.&quot;

In his final weeks in office, after losing the election to Joe Biden, President Donald Trump embarked on a vengeful exit strategy that included a hasty and ill-thought-out plan to jam up CIA Director Gina Haspel by firing her top deputy and replacing him with a protege of Republican Congressman Devin Nunes.

The plan stunned national security officials and almost blew up the leadership of the world's most powerful spy agency. Only a series of coincidences — and last minute interventions from Vice President Mike Pence and White House counsel Pat Cipollone — stopped it.

The ploy to rattle Haspel and perhaps intentionally trigger her resignation unfolded in a lurching and incompetent way, like a bad Monty Python skit, on one chaotic day in early December. 

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was ordered to fire — and then immediately unfire — the CIA's Deputy Director Vaughn Bishop. 

In his place, Trump planned to install Kash Patel — a former top Intelligence Committee staffer to Nunes who had served on Trump's National Security Council but had no agency experience. In Trump's mind, this could potentially lead to Patel running the agency without needing to get Senate confirmation.

Trump had spent his last year in office ruminating over Haspel. Some of Trump's hardcore allies, including Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, had been publicly raising doubts in his mind about her. He grew to distrust her and instead wanted a loyal ally at the top of the CIA.

She wasn't the only national security official the president wanted out.

Six days after the election, he had fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper. He replaced Esper with counterterrorism chief Chris Miller — and then stunned long-time national security hands by installing Patel as Miller's chief of staff. Patel had no military experience and was widely seen as a political mercenary bent on punishing the president's perceived "deep state" foes.

But Trump told confidants he had bigger plans for Patel: He'd replace long-time CIA veteran Bishop with Patel, and if Haspel quit in protest, then Patel or another loyalist could lead the CIA.

Patel had found favor with Trump when he played a central role in Republican efforts to counterprogram special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe. Patel was the key author of a memo in which Nunes accused the Justice Department and the FBI of abusing surveillance laws as part of a politically motivated effort to take down Trump. An inspector general later validated some of the Republican criticisms of the DOJ's process.

Trump had also become convinced that there were still all kinds of classified documents lying around, inside the CIA, that would harm his enemies — former President Obama, Hillary Clinton, former CIA Director John Brennan and others. He regarded Patel as somebody he could trust to do whatever he asked without challenging, slow-walking, questioning his judgment, or asking too many annoying questions.

Patel pushed back on this reporting in a text message to Axios in which he said such a view of him was a "total lie about how I behave with the president" and "completely" mischaracterized his "ability." He declined to comment on the president’s early December plan.

Trump had quickly brought Patel into his inner circle, trusting him with sensitive assignments, which included dispatching him to Damascus last year for secret hostage talks with the Assad regime.

Patel was traveling in Asia with acting Defense Secretary Miller when Trump abruptly summoned him back to Washington on Dec. 8. The Pentagon declined at the time to answer questions on why Patel was called back. 

Given the tensions running through the building after Trump had replaced top officials with loyalists, it set off feverish speculation among senior Pentagon staff.  

Patel had to link through multiple commercial flights to get back in a hurry. Meanwhile, Trump instructed Meadows to tell CIA Director Haspel he was firing Deputy Director Bishop and replacing him with Patel. Trump planned to name Patel deputy director of the CIA on Dec. 11. By that day, a Friday, the paperwork had already been drafted to formalize Patel's appointment. 

As soon as Cipollone learned of this, he spoke with the president and argued against installing Patel in that powerful position.

That same day, Haspel decided for the first time in weeks to attend the president's daily intelligence briefing. Reports she was on the ropes had been swirling for weeks and she'd been steering clear of the West Wing — a COVID-19 hot zone. During the briefing that day, Haspel deftly reminded Trump of what had initially impressed him about her: As Trump often put it, she was tough and good at killing terrorists.

After the briefing ended and Haspel had left the room, Trump asked a small group of his senior aides what they thought about her. 

Pence delivered a full-throated defense of Haspel, calling the CIA director a patriot, praising her job performance, and trying to reassure Trump that she had his back. Cipollone had also repeatedly defended Haspel to the president.

Trump abruptly switched course, deciding to call off the plan to install Patel. But there was one glitch: Just down the hall in the chief of staff's office, Meadows had already told Haspel that Patel would be taking Bishop's job. 

Haspel responded with the flinty aggression she was renowned for. She said she wouldn't stand for it, and that she would resign before allowing Patel to assume a position as her deputy. Meadows had presented it as a fait accompli, but this was not a decision Haspel would take lying down. Now that Trump had changed his mind, Meadows had to swallow his pride and reverse the order.

Had Pence and Cipollone not gone to bat for Haspel with such vigor — and had Haspel skipped the daily briefing that day — Patel likely would have become the CIA's deputy director or chief.

Instead, Trump on Jan. 4 awarded loyalist Nunes the Medal of Freedom — the nation's highest civilian honor and the same recognition President Reagan once bestowed on Mother Teresa. 

Meanwhile, Michael Ellis, another loyalist and former Nunes aide who'd worked on the National Security Council, was placed in a powerful new post — general counsel of the National Security Agency — with just three days left in Trump's presidency. The job's civil service designation, the New York Times noted, meant that while the incoming Biden administration could exile him, it could be more difficult to remove him altogether.

Even after Pence and Cipollone killed the "Kash Patel for CIA" dream, it lived on among outside allies of the president, including Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow and a prominent election-overturning conspiracy theorist. Patel told Axios: “I do want to say on the record that I have never met, spoken to, seen, texted, or communicated with Mike Lindell."

On Jan. 15, Trump's final Friday at the White House, Lindell visited Trump in the Oval Office. 

Washington Post photographer Jabin Botsford caught a picture of Lindell’s notes before he entered the West Wing. Among the pillow entrepreneur's prescriptions for the president was this eye-catching line: "Move Kash Patel to CIA Acting."

Episode 5: The secret CIA plan

Trump embarked on a vengeful exit strategy to install a loyalist as CIA deputy.

Photo illustration of Gina Haspel with folders and files

Photo illustration:  Aïda Amer, Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photo: Zach Gibson/Getty Images

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

In his final weeks in office, after losing the election to Joe Biden, President Donald Trump embarked on a vengeful exit strategy that included a hasty and ill-thought-out plan to jam up CIA Director Gina Haspel by firing her top deputy and replacing him with a protege of Republican Congressman Devin Nunes.