President Donald Trump’s aides and allies are hoping he’ll lie low during his holiday break in South Florida, savoring his big tax reform win and spending little time stewing about special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

Trump being Trump, that’s unlikely.


The president will have his regular golf outings to distract him from the Washington whirlwind he left behind. But there will also be plenty of reminders of what’s waiting when he returns to the White House in January as he catches up with longtime friends, family and dues-paying Mar-a-Lago members who have so far shown little hesitation in offering up their opinions about how he’s fared in Year No. 1.

Republicans in Washington have been vacillating between crowing about their tax reform achievement and stewing about perceived bias on Mueller’s team of FBI officials and prosecutors. People who know the president say they’ll be watching to see how he reacts in his time away, the exact type of situation when Trump often seems to generate his biggest self-inflicted crises.

"He’ll be watching the news and he’ll probably react according to that," said Iowa GOP Rep. Steve King, a longtime Trump supporter and prominent Mueller critic. "You never really know what’s going to trigger the president."

Trump held a gleeful celebration at the White House on Wednesday after Congress voted to pass his tax legislation, and his advisers touted his success in television appearances. But there were signs the Russia probe is still wearing on his team. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders referred to the Mueller investigation as a “hoax,” borrowing language from Trump himself, on Fox News.

During his Thanksgiving visit to Mar-a-Lago, Trump told friends and members he was expecting Mueller to issue an exoneration by year’s end. That timeline, which his own lawyers had previously stated publicly, seemed wildly off the mark. Now, some of his former aides say they’re worried Trump is about to get a big let-down over the holidays.

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Mueller, after all, appears to be nowhere close to finished. Two former senior Trump campaign aides — Paul Manafort and Rick Gates — have been indicted, and their criminal trial is possible next spring. Two other Trump officials, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn, have pleaded guilty and are cooperating with Mueller’s investigation.

Lawyers working with clients mired in the Russia probe have told POLITICO they’ve been bracing all month for Mueller to file more criminal charges. They routinely ask one another who they think is next.

It’s with that reality that Trump heads to Mar-a-Lago for his longest visit since last December’s presidential transition. During that trip, a Trump senior aide accompanying the then-president-elect took a phone call from Flynn about a U.N. resolution vote condemning Israeli settlements. Flynn would later lie to the FBI about the situation, one of the factors leading to his guilty plea.

Trump’s time spent out of Washington has also sparked some of his presidency’s biggest controversies.

During an early May weekend at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, Trump and a handful of senior aides strategized about how to publicly explain the firing of FBI Director James Comey — a move that would prompt Mueller’s subsequent appointment.

And while Trump has posted multiple tweets signaling an obsession with being seen as working, he’s also sent some of his most provocative messages when away from the White House. There have been attacks on NFL players and even fellow Republicans, including Sens. John McCain, Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham. Early on a Saturday morning in March, Trump sent a series of posts suggesting President Barack Obama had tapped his phones during the 2016 campaign. He was at Mar-a-Lago at the time.

“It wasn’t incidental,” Roger Stone, a former Trump campaign strategist, said of all the presidential tweets that have been sent when Trump wasn’t spending the night at the White House.

Stone, a friend of Trump’s dating back to the 1980s, said the president relishes his chance to reconnect with friends and family at Mar-a-Lago, many of whom are eager to share their frank advice. “I think he gets, pardon me, the stone-cold truth from people,” Stone said.

While White House chief of staff John Kelly has reportedly been looking for ways to keep Trump away from his club’s members and their guests, Stone said he doubted that would happen. “Nobody keeps Donald Trump out of where he wants to go,” Stone said. “He loves Mar-a-Lago. He loves to mingle. He really is a hotelier at heart.”

Mar-a-Lago is expected to be teeming with visitors during the presidential visit, including Donald Trump Jr., who earlier this week, in nearby West Palm Beach, suggested during a speech to young conservatives that Mueller’s probe was biased and that “people at the highest levels of government” had been conspiring against his father’s presidency. The club’s annual New Year’s Eve party with the president — with ticket prices up from last year, selling for $600 for members and $750 for guests — is expected to be a sell-out. Reservations for weekday meals are also a hot commodity.

“Everyone likes to go to Mar-a-Lago, especially now that it’s been called the ‘Winter White House’,” said Jeff Greene, a club member and South Florida real estate developer who expects his out-of-town guests will make a request for a visit while Trump is in town.

Trump’s lawyers, who have been urging the president to leave Mueller alone, say they’re not concerned about the holiday break fomenting any new presidential ire. Ty Cobb, the lead White House attorney handling Russia matters, also rejected concerns raised by Democrats and other liberal advocates that president will seek to fire Mueller during the holidays.

“The White House has no criticisms concerning the special counsel,” Cobb said on Thursday.

“If the media is going to continue to ask for responses to every absurd and baseless rumor, attention-seeking partisans will continue to spread them,” he added. “For five months or more, the White House has persistently and emphatically stated there is no consideration of firing the special counsel and the White House willingly affirms yet again, as it has every day this week, there is no consideration being given to the termination of the special counsel.”

Whatever advice Trump hears about the Russia probe over the holiday break, some of his former aides say they’re not concerned he’ll act on it.

“I imagine there will be people in his orbit who believe he should [fire Mueller] and may yap about it over dinner,” said Mark Corallo, a former Trump legal team spokesman. “But at the end of the day he’ll listen to Ty Cobb.”

Chris Ruddy, a Mar-a-Lago member and Trump friend, insisted the president won’t hear anything while he’s back in Palm Beach that he hasn’t heard before. “I don’t think he has to go down to Mar-a-Lago to hear new ideas or thoughts,” said Ruddy, the CEO of the right-leaning website Newsmax.

Former Trump campaign adviser Sam Nunberg said one key for the president maintaining calm over the holidays was to stay away from the likes of Fox News, especially “if he’s watching segment after segment, three hours straight saying, ‘This is a coup.’”

“I think he’s going to try to put that stuff aside,” Nunberg added. “I think he’s there to relax and not think about it.”

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn told POLITICO he wasn’t concerned about Trump being preoccupied with the Russia probe over the winter break. “I just hope he relishes this pretty good year we’ve had in 2017,” he said. “With a lot of regulatory rollbacks, federal judges confirmed and now this tax bill, it’s been a pretty good year.”

Trump’s lengthy holiday does, however, have the left nearing DEFCON 1. MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell during his Wednesday program posited Trump could launch a “Christmas massacre” to oust Mueller, akin to the “Saturday Night Massacre” when President Richard Nixon in 1973 forced out his attorney general and deputy attorney general because they wouldn’t follow his order to fire the Watergate independent special prosecutor.

Rep. Steve Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat, said during a Facebook live session on Thursday that the president was “feeling very high on his horse right now” with the passage of the tax bill and warned that Mueller could be fired before Congress returns after the new year.

“It’s a time when we’re out of town and people are into eggnog and mistletoe and those things,” Cohen told the liberal network act.tv. “So it’d be a perfect time for him to act, and that’s what I think he’ll do.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, warned Trump that he’d trigger a major congressional backlash if he did fire Mueller.

“That’s all that would have to happen to really prompt a major crisis,” she said in an interview, adding: “I hope good will and peace toward men and women and the world will evolve over this holiday.”

Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.