Thomas C. Green Interview 9

235
ORAL HISTORY OF THOMAS C. GREEN
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 Judy Feigin and the interviewee is
Thomas C. Green. The interview is taking place at the office of Sidley Austin in Washington, D.
C. on April 10, 2025. This is the ninth interview.
MS. FEIGIN: Good morning.
MR. GREEN: Good morning.
MS. FEIGIN: So in the pantheon of your page one political crisis cases, one of the ones
that we have yet to cover is Richard Gates. I’m not sure he’s a household
name, so why don’t you explain who he was and then how he fit into the
panoply of important political cases.
MR. GREEN: Richard Gates, or Rick Gates, is another example of a client who I came to
really like. I’ve had affection for almost all of my clients. But it’s also
another example of a client whose political views and political affiliation
were contrary to mine.
That circumstance has never really impacted my representation of
Rick or anyone else. I was always open to accepting a case on the merits
without regard to what I thought were extraneous factors. If the case had
merit, I felt it was part of my obligation as a lawyer to take on the case.
I’m excluding the case where the issues or conduct were repulsive to me
or something like that. But in a normal criminal investigation, although it
may be newsworthy, and it may be something that people were generally
interested in, it was simply my representation of an individual client. If I
felt the client was deserving of representation, I would move forward.
236
I was sitting in my office one day, this must have been around
2017, when I got a call from Charlie Black, one of the most well-known
Republican lobbyists, operatives, whatever you want to say. A really fine
individual who had been a partner in the past with Paul Manafort. Charlie
explained to me that Gates was someone who was associated and had
worked with Paul Manafort. He said Gates had lawyers but both he and
Rick felt that Rick was not getting the kind of advice that he needed.
Charlie asked me if I would take over Rick’s representation.
When someone opens a conversation like that I am a bit tentative
because it’s not been my practice to replace other lawyers in a case; that
can often be problematic. It would take time for me to assess something
like that. So I told him that I would certainly talk to Rick Gates and we
would go from there; we’d see what eventuated.
So Rick Gates came to see me. I can’t pin the date, but it was, I
would say, in the late fall of 2017. He was a very engaging individual. He
explained to me that he was under investigation in connection with Bob
Mueller’s investigation into whether or not the election had been
influenced by the Russians. Had there been Russian interference in the
2016 election of Trump.
We spent a couple of hours together and he fleshed out for me
what the concern was. He explained that Manafort had been a long-time
lobbyist for the former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych and that
the investigation was into whether or not there had been inappropriate
237
lobbying on behalf of a political party without disclosure to the
Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, known
as FARA.
There were a host of issues surrounding all of that. So let me back
up and put some of this in context. Paul Manafort I did not know. I knew
of him. Paul Manafort was, in my estimation, kind of a big-time
Republican, a guy who was instrumental in the political operation of the
Republican Party. He had represented, I think, a number of Republican
candidates in high profile elections and he was appointed by Trump to be
manager of the Republican convention. He was appointed in March of
2016 and he was ultimately promoted and became chair of the campaign
in May of 2016. That didn’t last very long because he was bounced out of
the campaign. He resigned from the campaign in August of 2016, when he
was replaced by Steve Bannon.
Rick Gates served as Manafort’s deputy when he was chair of the
campaign. In the summer of 2016, press accounts started to appear and
Manafort came under fire over his past lobbying work for pro-Russian
Ukrainian oligarchs. There was a big article in August of 2016 in The New
York Times. It reported that Manafort had received millions of dollars
worth of cash payments from Yanukovych’s political party. The paper
alleged that Manafort had received upwards of $12 million or $13 million
in undisclosed cash payments from Yanukovych’s political party prior to
238
2012 and it was all off the books. This was a big, big revelation and this
was basically what forced his resignation from the Trump campaign.
Interestingly enough, Gates stayed on for a while and became the
campaign’s liaison to the RNC. And then Rick became deputy chairman of
the inaugural committee. I think he was working here in D.C. But if my
memory serves me right, he was ultimately forced out of that position too,
as more information about Manafort/Gates activities was publicized.
Bob Mueller was appointed in May of 2017 to look into Russian
interference in the presidential election. Bob Mueller at that time was a
good friend of mine. I knew him from basically the first day he came to
Washington to become director of the FBI.
He had a close friend who was also a close friend of mine and that
friend brought us together. The four of us, Bob and his wife Ann, and I
and my wife Pam, enjoyed a close social relationship from that point
forward. So I knew Bob really well. In all the visits that I made to the
Office of the Special Counsel down in southwest Washington, Bob was
very careful to kind of stay away from me; he didn’t want to appear to his
staff as if we were friends or anything. So when we saw each other, it was
just kind of a “Hi, Bob.” “Hi, Tom.” And see you later alligator.
[laughter] He left me to handling by Andrew Weissmann and Greg Andres
who handled the investigation into Manafort and Gates.
The investigation into both those guys got very hot over the
summer of 2017, and then in October of 2017 Manafort and Gates get
239
indicted, the first indictment. That’s filed in front of Judge Amy Berman
Jackson in federal district court in D.C. That indictment had conspiracy
counts and allegations that they failed to disclose signature authority over
foreign bank accounts, failure to file as foreign agents, and lying to the
DOJ.
Basically, the allegations were that Manafort was making tons of
money working for these interests in Ukraine and he was funneling all that
money offshore, mostly into undisclosed accounts that I think were in
Cyprus. Enormous sums of money were parked offshore and never
declared on his tax returns. And to a much less substantial extent, Gates
was alleged to have parked some money there too, and didn’t disclose it
on his tax returns. But his relative culpability, if you will, was a lot less
than Manafort’s. Manafort was really the principal target.
So you wonder what possessed Manafort to do this. He’s a guy of
some stature, very well respected as far as I can tell. But according to the
press reports he had an enormous appetite for money. And these funds that
were parked offshore were used to fund everything. He had clothing bills
that were in the thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars and
landscaping and everything. It would all be filtered out of Cyprus back
into the United States. None of it was ever declared. So it’s against that
background that Charlie Black calls me in late fall, while Gates is under
indictment with Manafort, and says will you talk to him.
240
We had a number of meetings. I’m trying to distill this to its
simplest. This was an overwhelming case. The government had both these
guys in the crosshairs. Much of it was based on documents. Once you get
the records out of Cyprus, once you get the payments coming to the
United States, once you look at the tax returns, and no foreign accounts
are disclosed, and the income isn’t on the tax returns, it was hard to figure
out a rejoinder to all this.
It wasn’t long before I began to talk to Rick about whether the best
outcome for him was to consider a negotiation with the government for a
plea deal, along with cooperation, which would best minimize his
exposure. My recollection is he was initially resistant to that.
MS. FEIGIN: That’s probably typical, I imagine.
MR. GREEN: Yes, in varying degrees. Often everyone starts out being resistant to that.
He had a number of reasons why he was resistant — reputational harm,
family harm, and everything else. There’s a process that that entails. I
wrote an article about this, or I was asked to write something which got
published, in which I described the process that I and the client go through
in trying to assess whether or not to enter into an arrangement like this and
what those considerations are.
I started out in this article by saying that because I’m the defense
lawyer and I have access to my client, if I can encourage my client to tell
me the truth, or if I can induce him to tell the truth by showing him the
government’s discovery and so forth, I should have a pretty good idea of
241
what happened because my client is the one who engaged in the conduct
and he should be able to tell me.
So through that process of encouraging my client to confide in me,
I slowly become equipped to make an assessment of where we are and
what is the likelihood of having a viable defense in a courtroom. And I’m
in a position, based on all the years I’ve been doing this, I think to really
tell a client whether we have the ability to survive the charges and what
the risks are for him. But that isn’t the end of the line because I can do that
forcefully, eloquently and still have a client who is resistant to sitting
down with the government. There’s a threshold there that they have to
cross where they become comfortable with the notion that they’re going to
admit to wrongdoing. That’s a big part of this. It’s psychological and it’s
emotional, and it’s everything else. So here’s a little bit of what I wrote
about this in this article:
Still, the overriding consideration in my calculus is whether I have
reached the conclusion that we are so unlikely to prevail at trial that the
only way for the client to improve his position is to consider pleading
guilty under a heavily negotiated agreement. Nevertheless, my assessment
never controls; the decision belongs to the client or to the client and his
family. As difficult as the process may have been to secure the truth from
the client, it often pales by comparison to the process of bringing the client
to stand before the court and admit his guilt. There are times at this
moment when everything breaks down, and whether Humpty Dumpty can
242
be put together again is often in doubt. Extraordinary hand holding by the
lawyer may be required, and long discussion about the client’s need to
focus on his own destiny (and that of his family) rather than misguided
notions of loyalty are part of the process to try to revive the plea process.
Throughout all of this, I am acutely aware that all I can do is to give
advice. More often than not, my advice is ultimately embraced by my
client.2
MS. FEIGIN: Do you get the family to help you with this?
MR. GREEN: I encourage the client to talk to his family. I have met with family. I’ve
met with the client and his family and laid out the facts. And yes, clients,
family, I would say almost every single time. The family is concerned
about the health and welfare of the family member and is supportive of the
outcome that will have the least serious or unfortunate consequences on
that family member.
So back to Rick. We had these conversations. I alerted his lawyers
that he had come to me. I called them and I alerted them. My recollection
is that they may have already been in some preliminary discussions with
Mueller’s office, and I told them to cease and desist.
There was a little tension between me and them, but eventually I
think Rick made it clear to them that he wanted to proceed with me rather
than them and they ultimately filed a motion to withdraw. There was some
2
https://www.justsecurity.org/88087/the-best-defense-how-attorneys-advise-clients-through-themental-process-of-a-plea-bargain/
243
friction surrounding that; it’s hard for me to pull all that together right
now. But they ultimately did withdraw and then I took over Rick’s
representation.
Word leaked out, I think in early 2018, that he had retained me. I
don’t know how the press picks this up. I think actually what it is is that
there was a ton of press posted outside Mueller’s office just waiting to see
who was going in and out. And I think they saw me going in and out a
couple of times and I don’t know how they figured out, but they published
a couple of articles that said I had been added to his team.
Basically, I went in to feel the government out on the outlines of an
arrangement that we could have. They said if he was willing to plead
guilty – I think the initial conversations were about one count of perhaps
conspiracy. Those documents are probably somewhere; they would be in
files that might still be at Sidley, but I don’t know.
MS. FEIGIN: They should be in Mueller’s files also.
MR. GREEN: They’d be in Mueller’s files, certainly. But of course the reciprocal
obligation was that Rick had to come in and subject himself to some
fulsome interviews. There were a lot of sessions with Andrew Weissman,
Greg Andres and FBI agents. They were long days and tedious interviews.
I think they were initially impressed with Rick’s cooperation. Rick was
forthright, but as is the case with a lot of men in his situation, even though
they’re sitting in a room under the circumstances that we’ve just
244
described, what happens to them is really dependent on their performance,
if you will, their truth-telling in these interviews.
There’s often, I think it’s just human nature, there’s often a bit of
resistance that’s still internalized about telling 110% and what is going on
inside an individual’s mind as to how he states something. Whether
consciously or subconsciously, he’s shaving just two degrees off; it is hard
to know and often hard to discern.
There came a point where Rick was asked a question about what
happened at a particular meeting, when Andrew Weissmann accused him
basically of lying or withholding some of the details. And this became a
stumbling block. Some of this is a bit hazy for me but I think that these
discussions were suspended for a bit. Whether the government was willing
to continue depended on their belief that Rick was willing to tell the whole
truth, in particular about this meeting. And I went through this process
again with him. Finally there was a concession that he had not quite
remembered correctly and he went back in and told them a slightly
different version of this particular meeting.
This happened around the 1st of February, and the government
said, well you kind of screwed yourself here because we’re going to add
another count to this information that you’re going to plead to if we go
forward with all this. So subsequent to this incident they filed a two-count
superseding information in front of Judge Amy Berman Jackson which
charged, I think, conspiracy and lying to the government. That was on
245
February 2nd, and it was right after that actually that Gates’s counsel filed
their motion to withdraw, which was granted.
And then on February 22nd of 2018, Manafort and Gates were
indicted again in Virginia in 32 counts. This was basically to put more
pressure on Gates.
MS. FEIGIN: Was this a state indictment?
MR. GREEN: No, this is a federal indictment, essentially embellishing the charges and
adding to the charges that were contained in the October 17 indictment of
2017 in D.C. before Judge Jackson. So it was part of the pressure because
basically what they were saying to Rick is that if you reject a deal, we’re
going to make your life more difficult because we are going to indict you
in Virginia with Manafort. But if you do the deal, we’ll dismiss the
Virginia indictment against you and Manafort will be left alone to stand
trial.
So that’s what happened. Basically like the next day, I think it was
February 23rd, Gates went before Judge Amy Berman Jackson and pled
guilty to one count of false statement and one count of conspiracy.
The government wanted his sentence deferred. They didn’t want
any date because they said he’s now cooperating, he’s going to be a
witness in ongoing trials, and we want to defer the sentencing. And Amy
Berman Jackson said fine, I’ll defer the sentencing. And that sentencing
got deferred for some period of time. I’ll get to that in a minute.
246
So they dismissed the Virginia case against Gates as part of the
plea deal. Manafort is now facing two indictments. The case that went to
trial first is the second indictment filed in Virginia, rather than the earlier
indictment filed in the fall of ‘17, which was the initial charge. Manafort
goes to trial in July of 2018. I think his trial starts on July 31. Gates is
going to be the star witness. Everybody knows that and everybody’s
waiting for him to testify. He didn’t testify immediately, but not that long
after. Gates came, I think, to the trial on August 6th. So maybe at the end
of the first week of the trial we show up. He was prepared. I think Andres
interrogated him.
I went over to watch him testify. He told the jury that he himself
had siphoned off some of the money that was in these Cyprus accounts
without Manafort’s knowledge, by filing false expense reports with
Manafort’s entity. He also admitted to concealing millions of dollars in
foreign bank accounts on Manafort’s behalf and to falsifying loan
applications and other documents to help Manafort get even more bank
loans which Manafort used I think basically to buy real estate in
Manhattan and Virginia. Gates had to admit that the two of them did not
report income or the foreign bank accounts and that he knew they were
engaging in misconduct.
Just to give you more of a feel for it, he read off the names of more
than a dozen shell companies that they had set up in Cyprus and in St.
Vincent and the Grenadines, et cetera, to stash the proceeds of Manafort’s
247
consulting work and so forth. He said that he was very sorry for what he
had done. That was a tough experience for him, it really was. It was an
ordeal but it would be an ordeal for anyone in that situation, having to get
up on the witness stand in a public forum and admit to that amount of
misconduct. The jury found Manafort guilty of 8 of the 18 charges in the
case later in August of 2018.
MS. FEIGIN: Actually some of the money Gates siphoned off was from Manafort’s
money, right?
MR. GREEN: It was Manafort’s money.
MS. FEIGIN: Not just the money he put aside for himself.
MR. GREEN: Not just the money he put aside for himself, correct. So Rick is, in a sense,
done for a while, having been the principal witness in that trial. But
Manafort is facing another trial. He’s facing trial on the earlier 2017
indictment in front of Amy Berman Jackson. And although I don’t want to
dwell on Manafort, in order to escape a second trial, he pleads guilty in
front of Amy Berman Jackson.
In September of 2018, he pleads guilty to two felony counts along
with a promise to fully cooperate. Then in the course of his cooperation, a
couple of months later, the government contends that he’s lied in his
interviews.
The following year, we’re now in 2019, in March, Manafort gets
sentenced by Judge Ellis in Virginia to 47 months, which everyone
thought was a break for him. The government had asked for a pretty
248
severe sentence so they thought Ellis really gave him a pass on some of
this misconduct.
Now we come a week later, in March of 2019. Manafort, having
pled guilty in front of Amy Berman Jackson, is going to get sentenced and
she adds another 3 1/2 years to his sentence on his plea. So that’s
Manafort. I think his lying to the government during his cooperation
played some part in the sentence that she imposed but I can’t remember
just how it did. I think it may have been factored into the government’s
recommended sentence.
But Gates is called upon to testify again. In November of 2019, he
testifies in Roger Stone’s trial.
MS. FEIGIN: We should say what Roger Stone was charged with.
MR. GREEN: Stone was charged with obstructing Congressional investigations by
testifying falsely and failing to turn over records. He was also charged in
five counts of making false statements and one count of witness
tampering.
Rick described Stone’s interest in the release of the so-called stolen
emails from Hillary Clinton prior to the 2016 election. There were a bunch
of brainstorming sessions on what to do with that information. He was not
the principal witness in Stone’s trial but they used him in that trial.
Then on December 17th, Gates comes up for sentencing on his
own plea. This is December 17th of 2019. By that time the government,
notwithstanding his little hiccup when he was being interrogated, was
249
appreciative of his cooperation. They felt that he walked the walk and was
deserving of a great deal of consideration. They wrote a sentencing
recommendation where they asked the court to sentence Gates to
probation.
MS. FEIGIN: Wow!
MR. GREEN: Yeah. Which was quite a concession on their part. I thought Judge Berman
Jackson would do that because she was aware of his cooperation. We
made her aware and I think she believed it to have been significant and to
credit the government’s description of what Rick accomplished for them
and so forth. So I anticipated that she would sentence him to probation.
And of course I endorsed that in my statement to the court.
To my surprise, she said right off the bat I don’t think I’m going to
be inclined to sentence Mr. Gates in the way you anticipate, which sent a
little tremor through me. I didn’t know what she was going to do. In the
end, she sentenced him to 45 days of incarceration along with 300 hours of
community service and a modest fine. She allowed the 45 days to be spent
on intermittent weekends, and there was a three-year period of probation.
I then embarked on an effort to find a reasonably hospitable place
for Rick to serve his weekend time. The probation officer was willing to
work with us and there was some facility in Virginia not too far from his
home. It could even have been a state facility.
But we were now in COVID time. As a result, I went back to
Judge Jackson and asked for relief to suspend Rick’s sentence. I think he
250
had served about 15 days of the 45 days but because COVID was rampant
everywhere, to suspend the sentence on account of the danger to him in
the jail.
She suspended the sentence and that ended it. He never went back.
He never served another day. It was kind of unclear whether it was a
temporary suspension or a final suspension, but it was treated by the
probation officer as a final suspension.
MS. FEIGIN: I think I recall that his wife was undergoing medical treatment and that
was part of the reason they were concerned about his possible exposure
there. She was immunosuppressed and therefore more vulnerable to
complications.
MR. GREEN: That could well be the case. She did have medical issues. I don’t have
access to what I wrote at the time but that was the story. He and I have
stayed friends. I see him from time to time and I have great affection for
him. I’m sure he’s probably very active in this administration somewhere
doing something.
MS. FEIGIN: You began this session by saying – and this is another example of it — that
you generally find yourself having a lot of affection for your clients even
if you’re politically in disagreement. But what happens when you don’t
like your client? Is it a problem?
MR. GREEN: No. I’m going to tell you something pretty remarkable. It would be hard
for me to remember a situation where I didn’t like my client because in the
initial interviews, a certain degree of chemistry has to emerge, and if I’m
251
looking at someone and I just think, golly, this is not someone I want to
spend time with, I will make up some reason and I won’t take them on. I
wouldn’t need five fingers to count the times that happened.
MS. FEIGIN: So it’s like a first date? [laughter]
MR. GREEN: Like a first date. Yeah, it’s like one of those things where you do it now
online [laughter]. You’ve got to like each other. I don’t know, maybe it’s
part of my personality. It takes a lot for me not to like someone, or to put it
the other way, it takes a lot for me to dislike someone.
What is interesting is that in many of these major cases that I
handled, my clients were Republicans. I’ve always been a Democrat, but
I’m a moderate. I’m a centrist. I’m not a way-out Democrat. And most of
the guys I represented who were Republicans were not way-out
Republicans either. They were all just individuals who had a serious
problem to me.
MS. FEIGIN: This case put you in contact with a lot of people whose names were then,
and actually to this day are still, in the news. Do you have any sense of
Manafort as a person? And of course, we should say he was ultimately
pardoned.
MR. GREEN: Yes, ultimately pardoned by the president of the United States of America.
Manafort was pardoned on December 23, 2020. So lucky Manafort, yeah.
Trump’s got his finger on the pardon button. He’s pardoned a lot of
people.
252
The only observations I can make about Manafort stem from the
objective facts. I never sat down to have a conversation with him, but what
he did, the enormity and the circumference of his financial crimes, was
huge. And that says something about your personality. It says something
about your outlook on life to do that, while at the same time, you then take
those enormous funds that you’ve secreted so to speak, and then spend
them lavishly on entertainment and clothes and home. In my value system,
that doesn’t speak well of someone.
I don’t know what his family thought. When this investigation
arose, there were press reports that he had obtained one of these loans for
a piece of real estate in New York, in I think lower Manhattan, that was
basically an investment property. In order to get the loan, I think he had to
tell the bank that his children lived in the facility. In other words, it was a
residence. And he told them that if anyone ever inquired, they had to say
that. I don’t know what his family thought of what was going on. But he
had his issues.
MS. FEIGIN: You mentioned that when Manafort left the campaign, Rick Gates worked
under Steve Bannon. Do you have a sense of Bannon?
MR. GREEN: He may have worked for Bannon for a bit, but then I think he moved
because the election came soon thereafter. Manafort left in August of 2016
and the election was in November so I think he worked there for just a bit.
I probably knew something about his relationship with Bannon at the time.
253
But then I think he went to Washington to work, and he may even have
gone right before the election to Washington to work on the inaugural.
MS. FEIGIN: Did he also work with Kellyanne Conway?
MR. GREEN: I’m sure he knew her. I’m sure he knew all these people. But I’ve never
had occasion to really drill down on any of that.
MS. FEIGIN: As this is a history for the D.C. Court Society, can you tell us a little bit
about Judge Amy Berman Jackson?
MR. GREEN: I admire Amy Jackson. I think she’s a tough, courageous, fair-minded
judge. And I have admiration for her. I think she got reversed here
recently on something to do with the Office of Special Counsel, who had
been fired. She brought him back on, I think under a temporary injunction,
pending the outcome of the case. She wrote I thought a really compelling
opinion as to why it makes no sense to fire a special counsel who’s there
to assess the merits of certain controversies. But I think she was reversed
which I thought was kind of silly. I haven’t had a lot of cases in front of
her. She’s had some interesting cases which I’ve read about. I think she’s
a really good judge.
MS. FEIGIN: We could probably go on for weeks and weeks about all your cases, but
those being the highlights, before we conclude this oral history, maybe we
can just wrap up a couple of things that we touched on earlier.
We talked about your work as treasurer for the National Symphony
[Session 6]. Since that discussion things at the Kennedy Center have
changed. President Trump has taken over leadership of the Kennedy
254
Center. I wonder if there’s been any impact on the National Symphony or
you have any comments about that.
MR. GREEN: The Kennedy Center is a national memorial, like the Lincoln Monument
or the Washington Monument. It is a memorial to President John
Kennedy. The federal government, as it is obligated with every other
monument or memorial, particularly to a president, pays for the upkeep
and maintenance of the building. That’s the limit of the government’s
contribution to the Kennedy Center.
The Kennedy Center is a national forum for the arts or the
performing arts. It survives on two sources of income. One, income from
the productions that appear on stage there, and two, charitable
contributions. That’s it. The Kennedy Center has always been operating
with a difficult budget. It’s always in search of funds to cover the costs of
putting on these productions, so to speak.
The symphony and the opera each have their own boards and their
own sources of income which again are revenue from the performances
and charitable contributions. Both the opera and the symphony have
historically operated with a deficit and that deficit has been covered by the
Kennedy Center budget.
Deborah Rutter, the long-time president of the Kennedy Center,
announced that she was going to leave in the fall of this year. I admire
Deborah Rutter very much. I think she’s been great for the Kennedy
Center. Not to say that we didn’t have some discussions about the
255
operations of the symphony and the amount of any subsidy from the
Kennedy Center itself. But I have great respect for her and was sorry to
hear that she was going to retire after I think about 10 or 11 years at the
Kennedy Center, and then even more sorry to hear that Trump had
terminated her.
What inspired Mr. Trump to focus on the Kennedy Center I will
not know. I do not know. But with one sweep of his arm, he cleaned out
the entire Kennedy Center board except for a few people that were already
on that board that were related or within his camp, so to speak. Threw
David Rubenstein off the board and terminated his tenure as chairman, one
of the most remarkable guys living today. And filled it up with some of his
favorites.
It’s interesting because obviously Trump may know a lot of
people. I’m guessing now, he may know a lot of people. But I don’t know
that he has real friends or connections or whatever. He watches a lot of
TV. He watches Fox, so Fox becomes the source of everything, Cabinet
officers, Kennedy Center board members and so forth. It’s really kind of
unbelievable.
He has placed in charge at the Kennedy Center Ambassador
Richard Grenell. I think he was the former ambassador to Germany. I’ve
never met him, but I would anticipate that in time he may be terminating
the employment of a lot of individuals who have given a great deal of
service to the Kennedy Center.
256
There have been some performances and performers that have
canceled at the Kennedy Center. If I were talking to them, I think that’s
short-sighted. I understand why you’re doing it, but you’re depriving the
Kennedy Center of operating funds, of revenue, and putting jobs in
jeopardy, and a lot of people have bought tickets and want to see you and
it’s just an unnecessary impact and disappointment to them.
Hamilton canceled, which is the biggest. I think it’s the biggest
revenue producing production at the Kennedy Center in the past and
probably in the future. That’s not helping the Kennedy Center. A lot of
people wanted to go see it and so forth. So I don’t know what they’re
going to do about the programming. The programming may change a
little bit because there may be shows that don’t want to appear at the
Kennedy Center, but so far the operations of the orchestra have not been
really impacted.
MS. FEIGIN: Good.
MR. GREEN: We’ll see. Time will tell; the jury is still out. Ambassador Grenell and
those who work with him have been very open with us and have assured
us of their interest in promoting and maintaining the orchestra as one of
the jewels of the Kennedy Center. So I’m hopeful and optimistic that we
will be able to continue and produce wonderful music for the Washington,
D.C. community.
MS. FEIGIN: I hope so. These are tumultuous times and people reading this later on
may not be able to appreciate quite how tumultuous, but if there’s
257
anything you want to comment about the current situation, I’d welcome
your views.
MR. GREEN: We could sit here for a long time and talk about what is going on here.
Trump and those around him like to talk in terms of having received a
mandate from the American people in the last election. It is true that he
won the popular vote by I think less than a percentage point; he did not
obtain 50% of the total vote. His vote total was below 50%. I think the two
candidates were maybe 1% apart. Hardly a mandate.
He’s surrounded himself, particularly with members of his
Cabinet, not every single one, but most of them are, I think, marginally
qualified, if at all. And the Supreme Court did him an enormous favor and
in my opinion created an enormous injury to our democracy and to the
way our country runs when they held that the president has a certain
degree of immunity even for criminal conduct while in office.
A number of people have expressed the view that Trump ran for
president in order to escape his indictments and to work retribution on all
of his enemies, perceived enemies. His list of perceived enemies is
enormous and I think he adds to it every day. So it’s a deplorable situation.
Without burdening these pages with too much elaboration, I think
eventually his administration is going to implode. I think it’s going to
implode even prior to the midterms.
In recent days, with these tariffs, he became subject to enormous
pressure from a variety of sources. Most of the time he’s impervious to it;
258
he believes that he alone knows what’s best. But as in other cases, prior
instances, he succumbed to that pressure and announced a 90-day pause in
the tariffs. It would be great if the Congress were to take the tariff
prerogative back from the president and return it to the Congress, where it
belongs under the Constitution.
I think he saw some of that handwriting on the wall. I don’t know
what’s going to happen because if he was indeed that sensible for 30
seconds, he may change his mind 22 times between now and the
expiration of this 90-day period. We shall see.
Layer that on top of what he’s trying to do to certain law firms.
The reaction of certain law firms to succumb to that pressure is sad on
both accounts, sad that he’s trying to seek retribution against law firms.
The fact that he’s ordered the attorney general to pursue any law firm that
files any action which he deems to be without merit and vexatious and so
forth is absurd. But some law firms then come and kowtow to him and
enter into these arrangements; it’s awful.
Do I understand it? On one level, sure. The only motivating force
that drives these law firms to make these deals has to do with money. It’s
only money. But then you say, what’s the average partner make at some of
these firms that we’ve heard about? Maybe I don’t know anymore because
I’ve been away from it, but it could be $5 million. It could be more, really
it could be more. So if they stood up to Trump and they lost a few clients,
maybe the average partner would have to only make $4 million or $3
259
million. It’s not as if they’re not going to be able to buy eggs, which are
expensive, I admit. But there’s a resistance. The resistance is forming.
And Trump will hear from the resistance sooner or later.
MS. FEIGIN: Before we wrap it up entirely, are there any loose ends that you would like
to reference?
MR. GREEN: I note with some sadness that my friend General Secord passed away not
too long ago. It was very sad. He’s going to be buried at Arlington
National Cemetery at some point in the future and I plan to attend that
ceremony. I have great admiration for him. He was a gutsy guy in so many
respects. As you know, I’ve written a little thing I’d like to append to the
end of my interviews.
MS. FEIGIN: Good. We’ll do it.
MR. GREEN: And then the powers that be can decide whether it’s inappropriate or not,
but I also want to thank you, as I will in that little appendix, if I may, for
all the time that you’ve devoted to this. I’ve gotten to know you, and that’s
been a great pleasure and joy.
MS. FEIGIN: It’s been my privilege to do this.
MR. GREEN: So there’s where we are. I apologize to anyone who reads this for the fact
that time has dimmed my memory about some of the details on some of
these cases. But it’s been a hell of a journey for me and quite rewarding.
MS. FEIGIN: Thank you so much. It’s going to be a wonderful addition to the Historical
Society’s inventory of interviews.