The Atlantic

The White House Has No Plan for Confronting the Mueller Report

Nervous aides expect the president to lead the way, tweet up a storm—and, Rudy Giuliani promises, fight back.<span> </span>
Source: Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

Nobody knows how the White House plans to respond to the Mueller report—including the people who work at the White House.

The special counsel is reportedly nearing the end of his probe. Sentencing memos are dropping. Plea deals are being struck. The president’s legal team expects a response to his written interview “soon.”

When the report will hit is the question. That it will hit, and that it will contain at least some new problems for President Donald Trump and those close to him—especially as House Democrats take the majority—seem certain.

[Read: Mueller is laying siege to the Trump presidency].

But while most organizations, political or otherwise, might take the time to prepare for this kind of slow-moving train, the Trump White House is all but winging it. According to a half-dozen current and

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Atlantic

The Atlantic7 min readAmerican Government
Could South Carolina Change Everything?
For more than four decades, South Carolina has been the decisive contest in the Republican presidential primaries—the state most likely to anoint the GOP’s eventual nominee. On Saturday, South Carolina seems poised to play that role again. Since the
The Atlantic4 min read
Hayao Miyazaki’s Anti-war Fantasia
Once, in a windowless conference room, I got into an argument with a minor Japanese-government official about Hayao Miyazaki. This was in 2017, three years after the director had announced his latest retirement from filmmaking. His final project was
The Atlantic5 min readAmerican Government
What Nikki Haley Is Trying to Prove
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Nikki Haley faces terrible odds in her home state of

Related Books & Audiobooks