(Photo by PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images)
Axios dropped a bonus dispatch to its “Off the Rails” series to give readers another saucy insider view of the final days of the Donald Trump White House. This time, we’re treated to a detailed account of the December 18 meeting between Trump and his overlapping and competing lawyers engaged in a heated argument over his post-election strategy that raged from around 6 p.m. until after midnight.
The showdown, featuring Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn, former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, and administration yeoman Emily Newman on one side and former Kasowitz partner Eric Herschmann, White House counsel Pat Cipollone, staff secretary Derek Lyons, and campaign lawyer Matt Morgan on the other, with Rudy Giuliani, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien all showing up before it’s over.
Just look at this:
At one point, with Flynn shouting, Byrne raised his hand to talk. He stood up and turned around to face Herschmann. “You’re a quitter,” he said. “You’ve been interfering with everything. You’ve been cutting us off.”
“Do you even know who the fuck I am, you idiot?” Herschmann snapped back.
“Yeah, you’re Patrick Cipollone,” Byrne said.
“Wrong! Wrong, you idiot!”
To say the article describes the American government descending into a circus is an insult to the Ringling Brothers. That this story came out on the same day that we learned that Hal Holbrook died makes one of his most iconic dramatic quotes all the more poignant:
“The truth is, these are not very bright guys.” Indeed.
Whenever Axios puts out a salacious piece like this, the world marvels at the insanity and I try and work out exactly who delivered the narrative. Powell provided a comment saying that she wouldn’t speak to anything that happened in the meeting, believing that it was “confidential under executive privilege and under rules of the legal profession,” despite explicitly not being Trump’s attorney. Trumpworld really struggles with privilege, don’t they? Not that her silence is surprising since she and her fellow travelers come across as fonts of wild conspiracy theories blasting everyone from Trump judges to the FBI as complicit in a communist plot to take over the United States requiring Trump to invoke a national emergency.
One that Trump almost swallowed but for the valiant efforts of a handful of his more serious lawyers.
So unless the Oval Office is wildly insecure, the source or sources for this story must be one of the participants who took part in the hours-long meeting that spanned both wings of the White House.
“How the hell did Sidney get in the building?” White House senior adviser Eric Herschmann grumbled from the outer Oval Office as Sidney Powell and her entourage strutted by to visit the president….
As Powell and the others entered the Oval Office that evening, Herschmann — a wealthy business executive and former partner at Kasowitz Benson & Torres who’d been pulled out of quasi-retirement to advise Trump — quietly slipped in behind them.
Gosh, I wonder who provided that account! Certainly Herschmann could have an unnamed leaky lackey standing at his elbow for every step of the affair, but it sure reads like the heroic account is coming directly from the former Biglaw attorney. Not that this renders the account unreliable. Indeed, it could be entirely accurate in all major respects. But when the story highlights Herschmann telling a retired three-star general, “Why the fuck do you keep standing up and screaming at me? If you want to come over here, come over here. If not, sit your ass down,” one has to smirk that this particular detail earned a featured role in a write-up of a several-hour meeting.
Cipollone manages to come across as a principled actor too:
Cipollone, standing his ground amidst this mishmash of conspiracies, said they were totally wrong. He aggressively defended the DOJ and the FBI, saying they had looked into every major claim of fraud that had been reported.
“Standing his ground.” Regular Sir Thomas More over here. Never mind that Cipollone was placed in the meeting where Trump asked John Bolton to dig up dirt on Democrats from Ukrainian officials. The rehabilitation project is underway and it begins with “at least he didn’t go along with the martial law thing!”
Now it was Meadows’ turn, blasting Flynn for trashing him and accusing him of being a quitter. “Don’t you dare challenge me about whether I’m being supportive of the president and working hard,” Meadows shouted, reminding Flynn that he’d defended him during his legal troubles.
This puts a new light on the video where Junior grabs Meadows — with Herschmann in the background — and praises him specifically as a “fighter.” I guess that became a sore point over the final days.
Axios isn’t naming its sources and who knows how many cooks were involved in this story. But this is a glowing tribute to the patriotism of Herschmann, Cipollone, and the rest of their buddies. It’s not just that they didn’t go along with the plan, but they repeatedly have all the snappy comebacks and tough talk throughout the piece. The details matter when reverse engineering a story. Maybe their allies are just eager to build them up, but it sure looks like post-administration damage control from lawyers hoping to avoid being shunned by the balance of polite society.
Now it’s up to polite society to decide if this literal 11th hour hagiography is enough.
Bonus episode: Inside the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency [Axios]
Earlier: Oh Look, It’s A Former Biglaw Partner Hanging Out With Trump Before The Capitol Riot!
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.