President
Trump headed home on Saturday to confront a growing political and legal
threat, as his top aides tried to contain the fallout from reports that
his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is a focus of investigations into
possible collusion between Russia and the president’s campaign and
transition teams.
As
Mr. Trump ended a nine-day overseas trip that aides considered the most
successful stretch of his presidency, he was returning to a crisis that
had only grown in his absence. The White House canceled a presidential
trip to Iowa in the coming days and was putting together a
damage-control plan to expand the president’s legal team, reorganize his
communications staff and wall off a scandal that has jeopardized his
agenda and now threatens to engulf his family.
Mr.
Trump’s private legal team, led by his New York lawyer, Marc E.
Kasowitz, was preparing to meet in Washington to face fresh questions
about contacts between Mr. Kushner and representatives of President
Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. The president may meet with Mr. Kasowitz as
early as Sunday, and aides have recruited a series of prominent
Washington lawyers with experience in political investigations for Mr.
Trump to interview in hopes that they might join the legal team.
Mr.
Kushner, who organized the president’s Middle East stops at the start
of the foreign trip, chose to return to Washington with several days yet
to go and has been unusually subdued since then. But he has no plans to
step down from his role as senior adviser or to reduce his duties,
according to people close to him.
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Still,
there are signs that he is tiring of the nonstop combat and the damage
to his reputation. He has told friends that he and his wife have made no
long-term commitment to remain by Mr. Trump’s side, saying they would
review every six months whether to return to private life in New York.
Mr.
Kushner’s troubles are only one facet of the crisis. Reince Priebus,
the White House chief of staff, and Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s
chief strategist, also dropped off Mr. Trump’s trip early, in part to
return to deal with the political furor over the Russia investigations
and the president’s decision to fire James B. Comey as F.B.I. director.
The
White House was trying to figure out how to respond to reports that Mr.
Kushner had spoken in December with Russia’s ambassador, Sergey I.
Kislyak, about establishing a secret channel between his father-in-law’s
transition team and Moscow to discuss the war in Syria and other
issues. The Washington Post first reported on the suggestion on Friday,
and three people informed about it confirmed it to The New York Times.
The
discussion took place at Trump Tower at a meeting that also included
Michael T. Flynn, who served briefly as Mr. Trump’s national security
adviser until being forced out when it was revealed that he had misled
Vice President Mike Pence and others about a separate telephone
conversation he had with Mr. Kislyak. It was unclear who first proposed
the secret communications channel, but the idea was for Mr. Flynn to
speak directly with a Russian military official. The channel was never
set up.
As
reports emerged about investigators’ focus on Mr. Kushner, he and his
wife, Ivanka Trump, discussed the possibility of having Donald F. McGahn
II, the White House counsel, issue a statement denying that Mr. McGahn
had been contacted by federal officials about Mr. Kushner. Mr. McGahn,
who has been increasingly uneasy in his role since Mr. Trump ignored his
advice to delay Mr. Comey’s dismissal, said he was not the person to
write such a statement, suggesting that doing so would create a
precedent requiring a response to each new report. Mr. Kushner’s private
lawyer issued a statement instead.
Ms.
Trump and Mr. Kushner have complained privately about what he views as
an unfair level of scrutiny of his actions. He has dismissed the
attention on him as a reflection of his father-in-law’s unconventional
approach to diplomacy and inexperience in government, rather than
anything nefarious he has done. People close to Mr. Kushner were adamant
on Saturday that he was preparing for a long fight and not an exit from
the White House.
The
reports about Mr. Kushner dominated an end-of-trip briefing for
reporters in Taormina, Italy, where Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the
president’s national security adviser, and Gary D. Cohn, his national
economics adviser, declined to comment specifically on Mr. Kushner but
sought to play down the significance of the disclosures.
“We
have back-channel communications with any number of countries,” General
McMaster said. “So, generally speaking, about back-channel
communications, what that allows you to do is to communicate in a
discreet manner. It doesn’t predispose you to any kind of content in
that conversation.”
He
did not say whether he was comfortable with the idea of a private
citizen, as Mr. Kushner was at the time, opening such a back channel.
Behind
the scenes, Mr. Trump’s advisers were working to create a
crisis-control communications operation within the White House to
separate the Russia investigations and related scandals from the
administration’s day-to-day themes and the work of governing, according
to several people familiar with their plans and who spoke on the
condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to divulge the
details of a still-evolving strategy.
The
goal, these people said, was to give Mr. Trump more outlets for
communicating his message in an unvarnished way, while curbing
opportunities for aides to be confronted publicly with damaging
developments or unflattering story lines.
White
House aides were trying to assemble a powerhouse outside legal team
that they hoped would include seasoned Washington lawyers of the stature
of Paul D. Clement, Theodore Olson or Brendan Sullivan, and they
planned to introduce some of them to Mr. Trump as soon as this weekend.
More lawyers could also be hired onto the White House staff to help Mr.
McGahn.
The
approach is modeled on the war room used by President Bill Clinton
during various inquiries, including one that led to his impeachment for
lying under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Mr. Clinton
retained a private legal team and established a separate office to
handle questions about investigations, so that the White House could
preserve the image of governing and keep its primary focus on the
president’s broader message.
Aides
are talking about bringing Corey Lewandowski, Mr. Trump’s former
campaign manager, and David Bossie, his former deputy campaign manager,
onto the White House staff to manage the war room.
Under
the evolving scenario, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary,
would take a diminished public role, with daily on-camera briefings
replaced by more limited interactions with journalists, while Mr. Trump
would seize more opportunities to communicate directly with his core
supporters through campaign rallies, social media appearances such as
Facebook Live videos, and interviews with friendly news media outlets.
The
president, who has more than 30 million followers on Twitter, has been
told by his lawyers to limit his posts. Each one, they argue privately,
could be used as evidence in a legal case against him, and the president
went through his entire overseas trip without posting a single
incendiary message.
Among
those most adamant about limiting Mr. Trump’s access to the news media
was Mr. Kushner, who has been critical internally of the White House
press operation and has sought to marginalize Mr. Spicer, whom he views
as too undisciplined to control the president’s message. Mr. Kushner has
also favored creating a rapid-response team to counter reports like the
ones that emerged on Friday.
In
a move that many in the West Wing viewed as emblematic of his attempt
to wrest control of communications from Mr. Spicer and Mr. Priebus, Mr.
Kushner displaced an operations official from the office across the hall
from his own and installed his personal spokesman, Josh Raffel, in his
place, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Mr.
Trump’s sons Don Jr. and Eric have grown frustrated by the lack of a
solid support system or effective surrogate operation to combat the
spate of negative reports, according to three people who have spoken
with them. The sons spent Thursday at the Republican National Committee
headquarters, and they had a discussion with at least one Republican
operative about beefing up communications at the campaign committee. The
meeting was first reported by The Post.
Republican
strategists said it was vital for Mr. Trump to focus on advancing a
legislative agenda to show voters that the administration could deliver
policy changes and allay lawmakers’ simmering fears that the president’s
troubles could damage their re-election chances.
“What
they need to do is crank up the legislative side of things and say,
O.K., that’s going on, and Trump’s going to be Trump, but meanwhile,
they’re actually working to get some kind of health care plan through
the Senate, some kind of tax reform, and do what they promised they
would,” said Rich Galen, a top adviser to Newt Gingrich when he was the
House speaker during Mr. Clinton’s tenure.
Yet
Mr. Trump’s push to revamp health care has faltered in Congress, and
the White House has yet to present a detailed plan for his promised tax
cuts.
Joel
Johnson, who was a top adviser to Mr. Clinton, said the traditional
options available to a besieged president returning from overseas would
be delivering a major speech, shaking up his staff and getting out on
the road. But he said it was unclear whether Mr. Trump could do any of
those things effectively enough to recapture control of his own
narrative.
“You’re
always looking for a reset button and how do we change the
conversation,” Mr. Johnson said. “I wouldn’t want to be running the
program down there right now. I don’t know where they go.”
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