Philip Rucker and Robert Costa, June 9, 2017<\/p>\n
The world waited nearly a day before the tweet finally came.<\/p>\n
All day Thursday, many people expected President Trump to weigh in but he had nothing to say \u2014 on his preferred medium of Twitter or anywhere else. He let others do his talking.<\/p>\n
During James B. Comey\u2019s extraordinary Senate testimony, it was Donald Trump Jr., the president\u2019s 39-year-old son, who played his father\u2019s usual role of Twitter foil, firing off snarky \u00adput-downs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs this a joke?\u201d Trump Jr. asked<\/a> at one point.<\/p>\n It then fell to Marc Kasowitz, the president\u2019s personal lawyer, to deliver Trump\u2019s formal response: a scathing, pugnacious rebuttal declaring the president\u2019s innocence, implying that Comey lied under oath and labeling the former FBI director a \u201cleaker.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump let Kasowitz have the last word \u2014 at least for the \u00admoment.<\/p>\n Friday morning he finally took to Twitter, posting, \u201cDespite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication…and WOW, Comey is a leaker!\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier in the week the president had been spoiling for a fight with Comey, but he was convinced by Kasowitz and his senior aides to stay cool and lie low, according to about a dozen White House officials and other Republicans close to Trump, some of whom spoke only on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy.<\/p>\n \u201cThe best thing said on this is nothing,\u201d said former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, a Trump friend and former Justice Department official. \u201cKasowitz, who is a fine lawyer, answered it \u2014 and I know from personal experience that he has the \u00adpresident\u2019s trust.\u201d<\/p>\n Kasowitz and White House advisers, including Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Counsel Donald F. McGahn, argued to Trump that they had a rapid-response operation in place Thursday to defend him as vociferously as he would defend himself, according to people familiar with the \u00addiscussions.<\/p>\n [Trump, furious and frustrated, gears up to punch back at Comey testimony<\/a>]<\/i><\/p>\n Trump agreed Wednesday not to directly engage on Comey, and by the time the ousted FBI director took the witness stand, tweeting \u201cwas not something he was considering,\u201d one senior White House official said.<\/p>\n \u201cKasowitz was able to persuade the president that he would not give a Washington-style, tepid defense,\u201d said a top Republican figure who is close to the White House. \u201cTrump\u2019s big charge with his staff is that they don\u2019t defend him aggressively. And Kasowitz convinced him that not only will I defend you, but I will attack Comey where there\u2019s room to.\u201d<\/p>\n Kasowitz, a New Yorker who most recently defended Bill O\u2019Reilly against allegations of sexual harassment at Fox News Channel, has counted Trump as a client on and off for many years. His combative presentation was on full display Thursday as he read from a statement that contained two typos. (He misspelled \u201cpresident\u201d as \u201cpredisent,\u201d and the surname of Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats as \u201cCoates.\u201d)<\/p>\n Trump watched some of Comey\u2019s testimony in the morning with legal and political advisers in a small dining room off the Oval Office outfitted with a 60-inch television, but his aides also scheduled counterprogramming in the form of meetings and \u00adpublic events.<\/p>\n Later in the morning, for instance, as Comey was stilltestifying, Trump met with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and national security adviser H.R. McMaster about foreign policy issues.<\/p>\n Trump sent no tweets, ignored questions about Comey called out by reporters and stuck largely to his script by not mentioning the issue in a speech to the Faith and Freedom Coalition. The one potential exception came in a line he delivered in the context of religious liberty that could also be interpreted as an indirect reference to the Russia probe.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are under siege, you understand that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s advisers and allies \u2014 some of whom consider the president\u2019s Twitter presence self-destructive \u2014 celebrated the restraint he displayed during the day and kept their fingers crossed as the sun started to set. \u201cIt\u2019s not \u2018mission accomplished\u2019 yet,\u201d one ally said Thursday evening.<\/p>\n Trump, who is known to record major congressional hearings and other cable news shows on his TiVo device, was almost certain to flip on the television after retiring to his private living quarters after dinner, one White House official said. That may explain his delay in reacting. Sometimes Trump takes hours or even days before launching tweetstorms, taking time to absorb and stew over how an event is being covered in the media before responding.<\/p>\n [James Comey testifies: Former FBI director says he could not trust Trump to tell the truth<\/a>]<\/i><\/p>\n Throughout the day Thursday, the White House sought to \u00adproject an air of calm.<\/p>\n \u201cIn terms of the mood in the White House, I would say that it\u2019s a regular Thursday at the White House,\u201d said principal deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. \u201cWe\u2019re carrying on.\u201d<\/p>\n Lara Trump, one of the president\u2019s daughters-in-law and a former campaign aide, entered the White House press room Thursday afternoon and told reporters<\/a> that she had just met privately with Trump and \u201che looks very relaxed\u201d and is doing \u201cas well as anyone could do\u201d under the \u00adcircumstances.<\/p>\n Trump considers himself to be his most effective spokesman and advocate \u2014 something his actual spokesman, White House press secretary Sean Spicer, is quick to remind reporters.<\/p>\n Several people close to the president pointed to Kasowitz as the most obvious explanation for Trump\u2019s sudden restraint, recalling that Trump has often spoken of the attorney as a \u201ckiller\u201d in the positive sense.<\/p>\n \u201cMarc is one of the few people who can speak as if he was Trump himself,\u201d said Christopher Ruddy, chief executive of Newsmax Media, a conservative media organization, and a longtime Trump associate. \u201cHis reputation as a tough, no-nonsense New York litigator fits well with the president\u2019s view that the best defense is a strong offense.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s frequently impulsive and incendiary tweets may galvanize his base of supporters, but they create political headaches in Washington for him and his staff. Trump\u2019s advisers have conceded that his comments about Comey and the Russia investigations have sometimes been unhelpful to the president\u2019s cause and only expanded \u201cthe cloud\u201d over them, using one of Trump\u2019s phrases for the controversies that surround the White House.<\/p>\n \u201cIt shows the president understands the possible legal ramifications,\u201d said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign adviser. \u201cEverybody was waiting for the tweets, but there was nothing to gain. It\u2019s important that \u00adKasowitz, who is rough around the edges, was guiding him. Trump trusts he\u2019s not trying to settle, so he will listen.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n Veteran Washington lawyers described Trump\u2019s restraint as surprising based on his history of lashing out at critics, but fitting for how a president should behave during thorny legal \u00admoments.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a really good thing that the president\u2019s not tweeting, and it\u2019s a good thing that he\u2019s letting his lawyer talk,\u201d said Jack Quinn, a former White House counsel under President Bill Clinton. \u201cSo much of the difficulty that the White House now faces is the product of the president\u2019s own words, which have simply provided ammunition to those who want to rev up this investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n With an ongoing federal probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election \u2014 being led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, after Comey\u2019s May 9 firing \u2014 they said caution was the wisest course of action.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think he needs to be in front of the cameras. It\u2019s fine for his lawyer to make a statement,\u201d said C. Boyden Gray, who served as White House counsel for George H.W. Bush. \u201cIt was appropriate, as well as pretty routine.\u201d<\/p>\n [Balz: Comey testimony shifts focus to Trump<\/a>]<\/i><\/p>\n The discretion inside the West Wing did not extend to the Republican Party or to members of the Trump family.<\/p>\n At the Republican National Committee, dozens of staffers issued a barrage of tweets and barbed statements. One RNC email sent to reporters Thursday morning criticized Comey as being \u201cagainst leaks before he was for them\u201d and said he was \u201cforced to admit that he leaked his own\u00a0memo.\u201d<\/p>\n The RNC\u2019s Twitter account used the hashtag #BigLeagueTruth \u2014 a reference to Trump\u2019s frequent use of the phrase \u201cbig league\u201d \u2014 to mock the witness as \u201cJames \u2018I could be wrong\u2019 Comey.\u201d<\/p>\n Donald Trump Jr. and other high-profile Trump supporters also took to social media and television with rebukes. During the Comey hearing, the Drudge Report, a conservative website, made sure to link<\/a> to Donald Trump Jr.\u2019s Twitter account with the headline \u201cDONALD JR: LIVE.\u201d<\/p>\n Typing out live reactions to his more than 1.6 million followers, Donald Trump Jr. cast his father as vindicated by Comey\u2019s testimony and responded to Comey\u2019s uncertainty about whether he was pressured to back down.<\/p>\n \u201cKnowing my father for 39 years when he \u2018orders or tells\u2019 you to do something there is no ambiguity, you will know exactly what he means,\u201d Trump Jr. wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n When a conservative operative wrote that Donald Trump Jr. was the \u201cbest follow\u201d of the day, the presidential son replied<\/a>: \u201cThanks. That was fun.\u201d<\/p>\n On Capitol Hill, Republican allies were relieved by Trump\u2019s relative calm.<\/p>\n \u201cHe avoided any temptation to respond to what the Democrats were saying,\u201d Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) said. \u201cI think they convinced him there was no reason for him to say anything, to not get bogged down in the swamp. Be presidential, go out and do the job, and don\u2019t take the bait.\u201d<\/p>\n Abby Phillip contributed to this report.<\/p>\n