105
Oral History of John M. Dowd, Esq.
Sixth Interview
July 26, 2024
This interview is being conducted on behalf of the Oral History Project of The Historical
Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interviewer is David Tobin, and the
interviewee is John M. Dowd. The interview took place via Zoom on Friday, July 26, 2024.
This is the sixth interview.
MR. TOBIN: You had finished some of the military pro bono cases and you’re going to retire
from Akin Gump and move to Chatham to enjoy your retirement, at least for a
short bit.
MR. DOWD: I’m trying to remember, but I think I retired in 2015. December 2015 is my guess.
There was a lovely send off. I practiced with a guy named David Tobin.
MR. TOBIN: He must have been a lucky guy.
MR. DOWD: Generously, he let me have his address. I had and received after that a number of
pro bono cases, and I worked with Akin. They were very kind if I needed help
from the old team that we had. So, from that point until now, I had military cases
involving post-traumatic stress and suicide, which I think I talked about, and there
was only one that was really public. That was the Hackett case which people
could read about in T
he Washington Post. That was prompted by a referral from
General Amos the Commandant of the Marine Corps, who asked me to handle the
case. From then on, I received more of them, and I did them from home, including
the Mueller investigation of President Trump.
MR. TOBIN: John, were you still in Virginia when you did the Mueller investigation?
MR. DOWD: We lived in Virginia. The President had a New York lawyer who had represented
them for years and he had a partner named Michael Bowe. I had Jay Sekulow, a106
brilliant constitutional lawyer. Jay runs a public interest law firm that is a
conservative version of the ACLU. That was a great team. I had you help cover
my back on that.
The key to the Trump case was that Jay and I provided Mueller with
everything informally. We told him not to even send us a letter, just give us the list
of what you need. We had determined that there really was nothing there, and we
later discovered that Mueller was proceeding without a factual allegation of
misconduct by the President. But it was an incredible experience. We had 24-hour
access to the President. He was very cooperative. We provided 1,200,000
documents, including, most importantly, the copious notes that White House
counsel took whenever the President dealt with one of his lawyers. I think that’s
the key stuff that we produced. There were classified materials involved that we
dealt with.
I knew Bob Mueller as a retired Marine combat veteran, Silver Star. He
was a guy who had a lot of experience at the top of the department and the FBI. It
was the leakiest investigation I was ever a part of, and Jay and I refused to
participate. We made a deal with Bob and told him we’ll give you everything.
This was an enormous imposition on the President. We saw first-hand that the
amount of information that’s conveyed to the President in an hour or a day is like
a fire hose. We were intent on getting it over. We told Bob right from the
beginning.
The President loves to do the press, and the biggest challenge was keeping
that down and just getting the case done. By the end of August Ty Cobb joined the107
White House counsel’s office. He was part of the production of the documents.
His team did a good job. Every Friday I delivered a package to Mr. Quarles who
was the Deputy Special Counsel and then about every month we met with
Mueller. We were trying to hold his feet to the fire to get it done.
From time to time during that case, and due to national security
requirements, I conveyed information to Mueller on the specifics of the
investigation at the Special Counsel’s office, which was a SCIF. The probe was
interfering with the President’s ability to do his job, particularly in big meetings
where he’s trying to do trade deals and other things. We pressed Bob very hard.
By the end of October, I think we were well-satisfied that the Special
Counsel had everything. They didn’t have any new requests, and that’s when
Mueller asked to talk to the president, and we said, “No. We’ve answered all your
questions, given you everything.” They just were bent on doing this, so I said give
me a list of things you don’t have. Well, he really couldn’t identify anything. It
ended up in a very important meeting on March 5, 2018, with Bob where we just
said “no.” He threatened a grand jury subpoena. We welcomed it, said we couldn’t
wait to get before a US District Judge and let him explain to the Court there’s no
factual basis for this investigation and the President had fully cooperated. We
didn’t assert any privileges, even though we had three or four privileges we could
have asserted.
MR. TOBIN: John, does that include the executive privilege? I was trying to remember how
that was handled.108
MR. DOWD: There’s a communications privilege, there’s an attorney-client privilege, none of
which we asserted – deliberately. We told them from the beginning we weren’t
going to assert those privileges, and we kept our word. When the Special Counsel
lawyers gave us a list of items they wanted, we went down the list and we sent an
annotated response saying, “You got it.” We believed that an interview was an
obvious perjury trap, and the challenge was this is a President who likes to talk to
the press, does it all the time. That’s his style. I’d seen this type of perjury trap
before. I told Bob, and we didn’t pull any punches. But as I said, when he
threatened a grand jury subpoena, we invited him to issue it. He never did issue
such a subpoena. It was a bluff. It was nonsense, and so it went on and on.
While they were putting the pressure from other quarters on the President
to testify, Jay and I were satisfied that nothing good could come of it, and it
wasn’t whether the President would tell the truth. He had obviously told us the
truth because we had all the documents for the information, but given what he’s
challenged with every day, it’s sometimes hard to remember things.
The President was being pushed to testify. I didn’t feel like I could lead
him into a trap, and so I resigned. He didn’t want me to. He was very gracious, A
year later, he hadn’t testified. They agreed to allow him to give answers in
writing. It was the same material we’d already given them. A year after that,
Mueller shut down the probe. It was over. He had nothing, and that night, the
President returned from Mar-A-Lago, and we got a phone call here at the home.
He was very gracious, thanked me for my advice.109
That was it. It was an incredible experience, having 24-hour access to the
President of the United States. I could talk to him any time. You recall, Dave, we
were coming back from Philadelphia, and we talked to him on Air Force One.
MR. TOBIN: I do recall that. We were in my car, and we got a call from Air Force One. I’ll
never forget it.
MR. DOWD: It was just an incredible experience, except for my resignation, I look back today
and I’m glad I did. We did the right thing. I say to you I was always grateful you
had my back on this thing. I kept Dave copied on what we were doing it, and the
president knew that. That was that case, and then what else?
MR. TOBIN: That was that case, and then what else?
And then we moved to Chatham, and that’s when I was invited to serve on an
Executive committee for the Secretary of the Navy, Richard Spencer. I asked
Judge Patrick Murphy, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois,
retired, to join me. Patrick had been a rocket launcher and machine gunner for my
brother Tom in the Second Platoon, in Vietnam and was a tremendous, selfeducated man.
We joined the executive committee, and the object was to review both
legal communities in the Marine Corps and the Navy, which had been through
some very difficult times. The Seal cases out of the West Coast for the Navy and
the sniper case where the Navy and Marine Corps Court of Appeals found that the
Commandant or his counselor had interfered and obstructed proper disposition in
the case against the Marine snipers. We worked on that for some time. It consisted
of very senior officers in the Navy and the Marine Corps, and we had an
MR. DOWD:110
enormous staff, very competent lawyers and other people, like 20 to 30 staff, so
we didn’t have to do any research. The Admiral in charge, I wish I remembered
his name, a four-Star, he’d been the Commander of the submarine strike force
Atlantic, an incredible assignment. They keep track of the Russians and others.
And then a four-star Marine general. That was a tremendous experience. The
Secretary gave us ninety days.
The Secretary and I had served on the board of the Marine Corps Heritage
Foundation that takes care of the Marine Corps Museum. Dick Spencer was very
talented. We did a report. It was very well organized. Very talented staff drafted it
with no holds barred. There was nothing that we didn’t take on. We didn’t care
whose feelings were hurt. It was just let’s get to the bottom of it. There were some
remarkable presentations by very senior officers who stepped up to the plate and
testified. It was a very cleansing experience. The Judge Advocate for the Navy
was stunned. I think we educated him as to the state of affairs. We issued a report
to the Secretary, and then we were decorated. We received the highest civilian
award from the Secretary of Navy on 20 December 2019.
MR. TOBIN: What is that award that you received?
MR. DOWD: It’s called the Superior Civilian Service Award, and it is the highest award. It’s a
blue ribbon with a white stripe and a gold stripe. It was really powerful. We had
no idea that was coming. We had an incredible ceremony. Dan and Carole’s
nephew came. That was terrific. Later, the Admiral, it seems to me it was
Admiral Burke, he told me in a follow-up that he went out in the field at the
orders of the Secretary to see how our report was implemented, and by the way,
he wanted it111
implemented. Everything that we recommended was implemented by the field
and the fleet, and I’ve heard from military lawyers it’s the best thing that ever
happened. The Marine Corps and the Navy, they’re very grateful. They all had
direction, and they knew how to handle, and I think, at least my reading, it
worked out very well.
So that was a real treat and an honor. Our experience, and I must say
Judge Murphy’s experience as a federal trial judge, was very beneficial. He had
been a combat Marine in Vietnam. We didn’t miss a beat. The Navy and Marine
lawyers who participated were just outstanding. I must say, one of the best
briefings we received was from the Judge Advocate General for the Air Force and
his team, and we discovered that the Air Force was doing things very well and had
a terrific system. We learned a lot.
MR. TOBIN: Thank you, John. This has been a pleasure.
MR. DOWD: One last thing: I am incredibly grateful to the people who labored with me on all
of these matters over the years. I have tried to put together a list from memory. If I
missed anyone, I apologize. But these are some of the people without whom I
could not have enjoyed the successes I have:
Carole Dowd
Whitman:
Andy Lipps
Michael Kramer
Heron Burchette:
Dawn Frohlich
Terry Lynam
Joe Osborne
Tom Buchanan112
Akin:
Diane Smith
Claudia McDaniel
Terry Lynam,
Joe Osborne
David Tobin
Mark Dawson
Leslie Turner
Rebekah Jones
Elizabeth Peterson
Amy Overton
Carolyn Perez
Ben Klebanoff
Jonathan Vuckovich
Jim Sherry
Jeff King
Larry Tanenbaum
Paul Butler
Catherine Creeley
Lars-Erik Hjelm
Rob Hotz