President Trump’s former attorney John Dowd failed to have his team prepare and debrief at least 10 senior administration officials either before or after the were interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, according to a report published Tuesday.
Dowd was the first lawyer to represent Trump amid the federal inquiry looking into whether his campaign had colluded with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election. He never looked into possible collusion himself and took Trump at his word, the New York Times reports.
Dowd’s strategy in dealing with Mueller and Trump was to cooperate with the Justice Department, including making very few deals in return for sharing secret information about the campaign, transition team, and administration.
The report said Dowd figured since he and Mueller were both Marine Corps veterans, they could reach a deal in a matter of weeks and wrap up the Russia probe quickly. That was not the case.
Instead, Mueller dug deeper into Trump’s associates over the next few months and Dowd had no idea what the federal probe was learning, because he did not speak to the witnesses ahead of time about what they planned to say, and only afterward heard what Mueller had focused on and how each witness had answered.
For example, Trump’s lawyers were not fully privy to Don McGahn, an outgoing White House lawyer, being interviewed by Mueller’s team for more than 30 hours, revealing a large amount of information to the investigators.
Dowd resigned in March amid disagreements with Trump and was replaced with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who then sat down with Trump for more than 20 hours to hear from his perspective what had happened during the campaign.
