The President Follows Up with Lewandowski

The President Follows Up with Lewandowski

¶Following his June meeting with the President, Lewandowski contacted Rick Dearborn, then a senior White House official, and asked if Dearborn could pass a message to Sessions.⁶¹⁸⁶¹⁸ Lewandowski 4/6/18 302, at 4; see Dearborn 6/20/18 302, at 3. Dearborn agreed without knowing what the message was, and Lewandowski later confirmed that Dearborn would meet with Sessions for dinner in late July and could deliver the message then.⁶¹⁹⁶¹⁹ Lewandowski 4/6/18 302, at 4-5. Lewandowski recalled thinking that the President had asked him to pass the message because the President knew Lewandowski could be trusted, but Lewandowski believed Dearborn would be a better messenger because he had a longstanding relationship with Sessions and because Dearborn was in the government while Lewandowski was not.⁶²⁰⁶²⁰ Lewandowski 4/6/18 302, at 4, 6.

¶On July 19, 2017, the President again met with Lewandowski alone in the Oval Office.⁶²¹⁶²¹ Lewandowski 4/6/18 302, at 5; SCR029b_000002-03 (6/5/18 Additional Response to Special Counsel Request for Certain Visitor Log Information). In the preceding days, as described in Volume II, Section II.G, infra, emails and other information about the June 9, 2016 meeting between several Russians and Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort had been publicly disclosed. In the July 19 meeting with Lewandowski, the President raised his previous request and asked if Lewandowski had talked to Sessions.⁶²²⁶²² Lewandowski 4/6/18 302, at 5. Lewandowski told the President that the message would be delivered soon.⁶²³⁶²³ Lewandowski 4/6/18 302, at 5. Lewandowski recalled that the President told him that if Sessions did not meet with him, Lewandowski should tell Sessions he was fired.⁶²⁴⁶²⁴ Lewandowski 4/6/18 302, at 6. Priebus vaguely recalled Lewandowski telling him that in approximately May or June 2017 the President had asked Lewandowski to get Sessions's resignation. Priebus recalled that Lewandowski described his reaction as something like, "What can I do? I'm not an employee of the administration. I'm a nobody." Priebus 4/3/18 302, at 6.

¶Immediately following the meeting with the President, Lewandowski saw Dearborn in the anteroom outside the Oval Office and gave him a typewritten version of the message the President had dictated to be delivered to Sessions.⁶²⁵⁶²⁵ Lewandowski 4/6/18 302, at 5. Lewandowski said he asked Hope Hicks to type the notes when he went in to the Oval Office, and he then retrieved the notes from her partway through his meeting with the President. Lewandowski 4/6/18 302, at 5. Lewandowski told Dearborn that the notes were the message they had discussed, but Dearborn did not recall whether Lewandowski said the message was from the President.⁶²⁶⁶²⁶ Lewandowski 4/6/18 302, at 5; Dearborn 6/20/18 302, at 3. The message "definitely raised an eyebrow" for Dearborn, and he recalled not wanting to ask where it came from or think further about doing anything with it.⁶²⁷⁶²⁷ Dearborn 6/20/18 302, at 3. Dearborn also said that being asked to serve as a messenger to Sessions made him uncomfortable.⁶²⁸⁶²⁸ Dearborn 6/20/18 302, at 3. He recalled later telling Lewandowski that he had handled the situation, but he did not actually follow through with delivering the message to Sessions, and he did not keep a copy of the typewritten notes Lewandowski had given him.⁶²⁹⁶²⁹ Dearborn 6/20/18 302, at 3-4.