Peril

by Bob Woodward

As Ebola czar, Klain reminded Biden he decided to build 17 Ebola treatment units in West Africa, in every potential site where it might flare up. Of the 17 units, he said, nine were never used. I got whacked later for wasting money. But since they took two months to build, it would have been too late if they had waited to see if they were needed. That is the way epidemics work. You must stay in front.

Buy everything the United States could need, or risk it not being available when it counts. The early shortages—of masks, protective equipment for health workers, ventilators—had certainly been a factor in the virulent spread of the airborne virus in the first months of the pandemic.

“Look,” Biden said in one transition meeting, “don’t underestimate it. Overestimate it. If we wind up with too much vaccine, if we wind up with too many vaccination sites, if we wind up with too much of everything, I’ll take heat for that. But what I don’t want to take the heat for is coming up short.”

Biden had named his 54-year-old transition chair, Jeff Zients, to be the White House coronavirus response coordinator.

Zients was not a doctor or a scientist, but a management guru who also had held top economic posts in the Obama White House, including acting Office...

“This is stressful,” Biden said, “and it may or may not work. Just always tell us the unvarnished truth and we can deal with anything.”

As a businessman, Zients’s philosophy was to overwhelm a problem, plan like hell, commit assets, reevaluate and readjust daily if necessary, and then recommit.

Natalie Quillian, a national security expert and former senior adviser to the White House and Pentagon, was named Zients’s deputy. The two spent weeks trying to understand how Trump planned to actually get shots in arms, but cooperation and information from the Trump administration had been spotty and insufficient. Worse, the Trump team did not seem to have a comprehensive vaccine distribution plan.

Klain updated Biden. “They fucked it up completely,” Klain said. To build their national strategy, Quillian then divided their task into three baskets.

One, increasing vaccine production and supply. Two, getting enough vaccinators to give the shots. Three, acquiring the sites, clinics or stations for people to get the shot.

Fauci was the face of the medical side of the U.S. coronavirus response. Biden had offered the 80-year-old scientist the job of chief medical adviser.

They also planned to use the Defense Production Act, which gives the president broad emergency powers to mobilize the resources and manufacturing capabilities of U.S. private companies, to boost vaccine production, testing and equipment. Trump had used this authority to increase the production of ventilators.

“Fairness and equity,” that was Biden’s mantra. He wanted it at the center of his plan, along with efficiency.

The federal government could partner with health centers to facilitate direct access to vaccine supply, funding and personnel.

Biden’s team soon presented him with their first estimates for the priorities he wanted in his initial spending package: more than $150 billion to buy vaccines, another $150 billion to vaccinate, and $150 billion to reopen shuttered schools.

After Congress passed a $900 billion stimulus in December, Trump sounded like a Democrat when he railed against the bill’s new $600 stimulus checks as a “disgrace” and “ridiculously low.” He said checks should be “$2,000 or $4,000 for a couple.”

As it stood, Democrats had 48 seats in the Senate. But if Democrats Jon Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock could both win in Georgia on January 5, they would have 50 seats.

Biden and Schumer agreed to weaponize Trump’s words and make $2,000 checks the keystone of the Georgia campaigns. The only way to guarantee those checks is a Democratic Senate majority, they argued.

“People are going to be bored with him,” he continued. McCarthy mocked Biden, saying that when some voters describe a Biden campaign rally, “They say circles. Not circles of people but circles where people should stand in,” to maintain social distance.

“You have any idea how easy it would be for me just to leave on January 20th and get in Marine One and fly away?” Trump asked them. He seemed tired. “I’ve got my golf courses. I’ve got my friends. I’ve had a really good life.” But he said the presidency was stolen so he would fight.

Trump did not close the door on the idea. He wanted action. Powell said he could seize voting machines. She said it was necessary since the machines had been manipulated by corrupt, anti-Trump forces. Several lawyers heatedly said Trump could not do that.

“Lawyers,” Trump sighed, “I have nothing but lawyers that stop me on everything.” “I’m very embarrassed by my lawyers and the Justice Department,” he added. Trump looked at Powell. “At least she’s giving me a chance.” The siren song of declarative presidential action.

“You got to do it the right way. You got to run it through the Department of Justice,” he said. “You can’t, you can’t just kind of order this up tonight.”

“I want to get these machines and I have the right to do so under the Act,” a reference to the National Emergencies Act, which formalizes emergency presidential powers. FDR had used the act to address the Great Depression, and Truman had tried to use it as a means of countering a steel strike during the Korean War, but the Supreme Court eventually told Truman in a landmark case, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, that a president could not seize the steel mills, or any private property.

Trump fumed. “I need lawyers on TV. I need people who go on TV. Sidney goes on TV. Rudy goes on TV. “Get Rudy on the phone.”

When Giuliani heard Trump’s instruction, he spoke up immediately. He took pride in being Trump’s main lawyer. What was this special counsel business? He did not like it.

Giuliani and Powell would barely acknowledge each other. Powell was never made a special counsel.

“If I thought a special counsel at this stage was the right tool and was appropriate, I would name one, but I haven’t, and I’m not going to,” Barr said, adding he would not appoint a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, either.

Pence explained to his fellow Indianan that Trump was pressuring him to intervene to ensure Biden would not secure the needed 270 votes during the certification and push the election to a vote in the House of Representatives.

While the Democrats held the current House majority, the 12th Amendment of the Constitution stated the voting on a contested election would not be done by a simple majority vote. Instead, the amendment states that the election vote would be counted in blocs of state delegations, with one vote per state: If no person have such majority… the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote.

The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted.

Quayle turned to Trump’s assertion that the election had been stolen from him. He told Pence those statements were ridiculous and eroded public trust. “There’s no evidence,” Quayle said.

There was a lawsuit in federal court to compel Arizona’s governor to “decertify” Biden’s win in the state, which had enraged Trump ever since Fox News called Arizona for Biden at 11:20 p.m. on election night.

Still, Quayle said, it is nonsense to say the election was stolen, and to even entertain the idea of blocking Biden in January.

Just follow the Constitution.

Lee was one of Trump’s most reliable GOP supporters, but he was also a legal wonk and a former Supreme Court law clerk for Justice Samuel Alito. He had appeared on Trump’s short list for Supreme Court nominations and had an impeccable legal pedigree. His father, Rex Lee, was solicitor general in the Reagan administration and was the founding dean at the law school at Brigham Young University.

He considered himself a strict constructionist, meaning he believed the Constitution designated specific powers to Congress, but no more than stated in the original language.

In a long discussion, Lee felt they came to the exact same conclusion that the Congress had no role.

“Mr. President,” Graham said, “there’s no doubt in my mind that there’s a lot of shenanigans going on in Georgia and other places but it’s just not going to rise to the level of overturning the election.”

Graham’s strategy was now not to try to convince Trump he lost—he had lost that battle—but to convince him he could not change the outcome.

Trump persisted. He could not understand how he won 74 million votes and lost. His pollsters and campaign staff told him if he ...

“Mr. President, you lost a close election. You need to be thinking about ‘The Great American Comeback.’ ” “Why won’t you let me play it out?” Trump asked Graham twice during the round. “I’m going to let you play it out,” Graham said after the second time. “There’s certain things I can’t do, and you know what they are. But let’s play this out. Keep shining a light on election processes that you think were tainted.” Graham said he, too, believed some mail-in-ballots were suspect. “Keep fighting” in the courts, he said, but do not go to the extreme.

But Trump couldn’t get that 74 million out of his head and kept coming back to it. He didn’t believe that Biden got 81 million—7 million more.

Graham toggled between support and tough love, friendship and realism. “Mr. President,” Graham said, “I’m not going to argue with you. When you win 19 out of 20 bellwether counties. Win Florida and Ohio. When you get 74 million votes and you lose, that’s got to be hard to take.” “You better believe it’s hard to take!” “It is what it is,” Graham said. “That’s life.”

The risk became real when Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, a Yale Law–educated freshman and former Supreme Court law clerk for Chief Justice John Roberts, announced on December 30 that he would object to the Electoral College certification on January 6, becoming the first senator to do so.

There was no out. Pence would now be forced to emcee his own defeat, and Trump’s, on national television, as rivals and allies pounded lecterns.

His allies, led by a group called “Women for America First,” had filed a National Park Service permit for January 22 and 23 in Washington. But they amended their permit application for a rally and instead reserved space at Freedom Plaza near the White House for January 6.

In August, Bannon had been charged in a federal Manhattan court for defrauding donors on a private project called “We Build the Wall,” an attempt to sidestep the government and build Trump’s wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump did not seem to care. Maybe Bannon would get a pardon.

“an alternate slate of electors in the contested states is going to vote and we’re going to send those results up to Congress.”

Lee had kept telling Mark Meadows and others in the White House and GOP that the vice president was a counting clerk, period. No other role. It was power concisely articulated and capped by those seven words in the 12th Amendment: “and the votes shall then be counted.”