When former FBI Director James Comey testifies Thursday about Russia’s attempted meddling in the presidential election, the White House may be without a rapid response effort for the biggest showdown of President Trump’s political career.
On one of the most intense days of Trump’s presidency, the three television networks — NBC, CBS and ABC — will broadcast Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee live to millions of viewers.
But a widely rumored response team spearheaded by Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie — two former Trump campaign officials who did not receive positions in the administration — is now unlikely to materialize, three sources told the Washington Examiner.
Now White House aides are left with little else to say about how they’re preparing for a congressional hearing that promises to deliver a day or more of negative coverage for the president.
Asked whether the administration has prepared any kind of team to respond to Comey’s testimony, a White House official told the Washington Examiner those were “questions for outside counsel.”
Trump has retained Marc Kasowitz, his longtime business lawyer, to shepherd the White House through a special counsel probe of his presidential campaign and its alleged collusion with the Russians. White House officials recently began referring all questions related to the Russia controversy to Kasowitz, a move that has helped the press secretary and his deputy escape the daily drumbeat of inquiries that had come to dominate press briefings.
If the West Wing had planned to set up a dedicated response unit ahead of Comey’s testimony — during which he is expected to accuse Trump of requesting an end to the FBI’s investigation of his former national security adviser, Gen. Mike Flynn, and could also dispute the president’s claim to have received assurances about not being a target of the investigation — aides had not done so less than 48 hours before the congressional hearing was set to begin.
“The ‘war room’ was the idea of Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie as a vehicle to get them into the White House. They failed,” said a source close to the president.
White House officials’ efforts to steer reporters to Trump’s outside counsel could prevent them from having to answer for each of the allegations Comey may lob at the president.
But Comey’s testimony could tempt Trump to respond forcefully on Twitter or during a speech scheduled for the final half-hour of Comey’s appearance, thereby undermining the cautious strategy of deferring to Kasowitz and the lawyers.
The president has not shied away from airing his grievances with Comey on social media in the past. Shortly after stories surfaced that suggested Comey had taken notes of Trump’s request that he drop the Flynn probe, Trump warned the former FBI director on Twitter that he better “hope” the White House had no “tapes’ of their conversation.
The tweet left White House officials struggling to fend off questions about whether the president secretly records his meetings and whether he has stashed away tapes that could prove useful in the Russia investigation.
At least one pro-Trump organization plans to run an ad on national television attacking Comey as he testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday. The Great America Alliance, an organization that supports the president but is not affiliated with him, is running an ad reminiscent of a campaign attack spot accusing Comey of being “another DC insider only in it for himself.” The ad buy is worth $400,000, the leader of the group told the Washington Examiner.
A second outside pro-Trump organization, America First Policies, is trying to keep the focus on the administration’s policies, as some of former President Bill Clinton’s surrogates did when he was mired in controversy.
“This week America First Policies launched a substantial advertising campaign to highlight President Trump’s recent trip abroad and also began an effort to urge the Senate to move forward on Obamacare because, unlike the mainstream media, we are focused on the issues that matter to the American people and putting America First, not whatever narrative the press corps thinks is important,” said the group’s spokesman Katrina Pierson.
Pierson was the national campaign spokeswoman for Trump last year. In that capacity, she dutifully defended Trump on television whenever the coverage turned negative.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer wouldn’t say Tuesday whether the president planned to watch Comey’s testimony. He noted Trump will have a meeting on infrastructure with mayors and governors that day before his speech to social conservatives.
“The president’s going to have a very, very busy day,” Spicer said. “As he does all the time. And his focus is going to be on pursuing the agenda and the priorities that he was elected to do.”
Trump is considering using Twitter to respond to the hearing in real time on Thursday, according to multiple reports Tuesday.
“The president is the most effective messenger on his agenda, and I think his use of social media, he now has a collective total of close to 110 million people across different platforms, gives him an opportunity to speak straight to the American people which has proved to be a very, very effective tool,” Spicer said.
Asked if his tweeting actually harms Trump’s agenda, Spicer argued that “The same people who are critiquing his use of it now, critiqued it during the election, and it turned out pretty well for him there.”
