On Wednesday night, Rachel Maddow had an exclusive interview with Lewis Lukens, the former Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in London, who confirmed details about an order Trump gave the US ambassador to secure the British Open golf tournament for Trump’s Turnberry Country Club in Scotland.
In the interview, Lukens explains that when the Ambassador to the Court of St. James–the formal title for ambassadors to Britain–Robert W. “Woody” Johnson IV returned from a trip to the White House, he told Lukens Trump had asked him to get the British Open to be played at Turnberry.
Trump and Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets NFL team, have been friends since the 1970s.
And here is Part 2 of Rachel Maddow's interview tonight with Amb. Lewis Lukens pic.twitter.com/oTFNO7rgdD
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) August 6, 2020
Lukens said that seeking such an action from the host country is inherently corrupt and against the mission of the embassy because it’s to “line the President’s pockets, to promote his personal business, and to support his personal financial interests.”
“The ambassador came back from a meeting at the White House. The very next morning, he came and talked to me,” Lukens explained. “He said ‘The President wants me to do this. Who should I talk to? How should I go about doing it?’
“I said, ‘You can’t. You shouldn’t. It’s unethical and probably illegal.’ A couple weeks later, he asked again. I gave him the same answer.”
While Lukens himself wasn’t in the meeting when Johnson met with the British Minister responsible for Scotland and asked about the golf tournament, an embassy official who did attend immediately reported the interchange to Lukens.
“The officer from the embassy who was in the meeting with the ambassador, they came back to the embassy after that meeting, and he came directly to my office and said, ‘You’re not going to believe what the ambassador just did,'” Lukens said. “‘He just asked about having the golf tournament moved to Turnberry, Scotland.'”
Lukens stated he alerted superiors in Washington about the request because it was so out of the norm, and he kept detailed personal notes about the incident.
Maddow noted that the Department of Justice Inspector General conducted an investigation into the incident. Lukens confirmed the OIG spent three or four weeks in London looking into this accusation, even though Trump denies he ever made such a request.
The report apparently has been written but it has not been released. Instead, it was labeled as classified in May. Lukens found that move unusual.
“First of all, it’s very unusual that a report like that would be classified or withheld for any reason,” Lukens explained. “[T]he general thrust of the report and the analysis of the post’s leadership and morale and how the Ambassador is doing is never classified in these investigative reports. That, in itself, is a red flag if the report was classified.”
Lukens, who is now a Senior Partner at Signum Global Advisors, said he didn’t expect any punishment to be meted out for the abuse of office because Johnson was an old friend of Trump’s and that the leadership of the State Department wouldn’t have an interest in making waves.