The approach was a contrast to the initial, more cooperative phase of the president’s defense begun in June 2017 when Mr. Dowd first met Mr. Trump in the Oval Office. Mr. Dowd, who had come out of retirement to help one of the president’s longtime personal lawyers, Marc E. Kasowitz, offered a quick solution to the president’s legal problems.
Mr. Dowd explained that he had a special bond with Mr. Mueller because they had both served in the Marine Corps, and that he thought he could get him to end the investigation in a matter of weeks. Mr. Dowd said that he thought that he might even get the Justice Department to declare that Mr. Trump was not under investigation.
All the president had to do, Mr. Dowd said, was cooperate with Mr. Mueller. Mr. Trump, often enticed by promises of speedy and simple fixes to complex problems, embraced Mr. Dowd’s thinking.
In the months after Mr. Dowd’s arrival, Mr. Kasowitz, who had never intended to serve as the president’s chief lawyer, saw his influence at the White House wane. Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and daughter Ivanka Trump grew wary of him, particularly as Mr. Kushner became a focal point of news articles about where Mr. Mueller’s inquiry might lead.
A tipping point for the makeshift team came that July, when The New York Times broke the news of the meeting that Mr. Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and other Trump aides, including Mr. Kushner, held during the 2016 campaign with Russians offering dirt on Mrs. Clinton.
The haphazard and misleading response to the news — including a statement dictated by Mr. Trump himself — led to finger-pointing in the Trump camp and to Mr. Kasowitz’s departure. And with Mr. Dowd in control, he brought in another longtime Washington lawyer, Ty Cobb, who helped move ahead with the strategy of cooperation with Mr. Mueller by turning over tens of thousands of White House documents.
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