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I keep using the word
"scary" in describing the Trump administration, but it continues to
fit. And then some.
There appears now to be two
main thrusts to the Mueller inquiry:
1. It well established the Russians interfered in
the 2016 election, and twelve Russian individuals have been indicted so far. Mueller is now working on the question of what,
if anything, did Trump campaign team members know or do in that regard. This
has become known as the "Collusion" inquiry.
2. The second major thrust of Mueller's team is
to determine what, if anything, Trump or his minions have done to interfere with,
or "obstruct" Mueller's criminal investigation.
This week, new
"defenses" on both questions were offered up by the public utterances
of the now-pathetic Rudy Giuliani, who appears to have crossed into1984-land
where fiction is truth and facts are irrelevant. But that seems to be playing well
to the Trump "base." While that base is substantially less than 50%
of the U.S. population, it wields leverage over the Republican congresspersons
who depend on it for their jobs. But pressure
cracks are beginning to show.
Recent developments have now
pushed the Trump team to new extremes on both Mueller issues:
I. Collusion:
When Trump's former lawyer
Michael Cohen (whose integrity Rudy Giuliani lavishly praised two months ago) recently
revealed that he had informed Trump the Russians were trying to set up that June,
2016 meeting in Trump Tower to talk about their work in trashing Hillary
Clinton, Cohen's admission surprised no serious observers. Trump nevertheless
consistently denied any knowledge of the meeting. That was a key element to his
"No Collusion" defense.
The Cohen revelation was
harmful to Trump on two levels: i) it makes Trump out to be a liar, (the number
of his lies is in the thousands) but ii) more importantly, the Cohen statement
cuts the heart out of the Trump collusion defense. Alarm bells in the White
House signaled a need to ramp up defense levels.
A brief history:
Defense Level 1. A firm
denial that any Trump campaign team member ever met with Russians.
Defense Level 2. This was the
"oops" stage. When it became clear that, in fact, many members of the Trump campaign team did meet with the Russians (Sessions, Donald Jr., Flynn, Page, Gates, Papadopoulos,
Manafort, etc.), Sessions recused himself and Trump & Co. moved to, "Okay,
they met, but there was "No Collusion."
Rx: repeat every four hours
till the patient is better, or Twitter account is cancelled.
Defense Level 3. The "No
Collusion" construct suffered a major fracture when the failing New York
Times revealed that Donald Jr., Jared Kushner, and Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort
had secretly met with the Russians in
Trump Tower. Prescription: Lie about what happened at the meeting. Have the president draft a
statement saying the meeting was not about helping Trump win the election,
it was about adoptions.
Defense Level 4. A member of the Trump team
suggested it was a bad idea to lie about the substance of the meeting because
the email history would expose the lie. Prescription: Trump's Director of Communications team
suggested the emails can be suppressed. That plan was dropped when the pesky
NYTimes said it had the emails and was going to publish them, and Donald Jr.
said "Okay, I will publish them before your paper comes out tonight."
Defense Level 5. No serious
person believed Trump did not know in advance about the Russia meeting. Steve Bannon, who knows
the players, said there was "ZERO CHANCE" that Jr. didn't tell his
father. He even thought that Junior likely brought the Russians up to meet his
father. Nevertheless, the prescription remained: Deny, deny, deny that Trump
knew of the meeting attended by his team.
Defense Level 6. Enter
Michael Cohen, former lawyer to Donald Trump. Cohen was involved in hiding Trump's
adulterous affairs and failed to cooperate with government document requests.
That resulted in a search warrant and government seizure of lots of stuff,
including his non-privileged conversations directly with Trump. The materials made public by Cohen
reveal that Trump lied about his knowledge of pay-offs to paramours (boring
stuff by now, except maybe to Melania). But then Cohen revealed that PRIOR TO THE RUSSIANS COMING TO TRUMP
TOWER TO TALK ABOUT HELPING TRUMP'S CAMPAIGN, COHEN DISCUSSED THE PROPOSED
MEETING WITH TRUMP! Alarm bells in the
White House: now we are getting deeper
into the collusion issue. The prescription, elevate to Defense Level 7.
Defense Level 7. Re-enter from stage right the
demented clown Rudy Giuliani. In May, he called Cohen an honest person. In
July, he says Cohen is a dishonest person. Oh, boy, a credibility contest
between Cohen and the man whose lie total since inauguration is well in excess
of 3,000!
Defense Level 8. But attacking Cohen's
credibility may not be good enough. This may not be just a "He said, he
said" contest, because Cohen also revealed
that others were in the room when he
told Trump of the Russian offer to help. The others include Trump's son,
and his son-in-law, and more. Now there
is a substantial risk that a team member, who was either at that meeting with
Trump, or was told about it, (including
Manafort, who will be extremely incentivized to flip if convicted in one or
both of his criminal trials) decides not to risk being indicted for perjury or
violating U.S Penal Code Section 1001 (false statement to public official) and
will confirm that Cohen is telling the truth. That would prick Trump's
"hoax" balloon, and the collusion case becomes a burning issue for
Trump. Rx: move to Defense Level 9.
Defense Level 9. Clown Rudy calls
the failing New York Times and says,
"Collusion? Who cares? COLLUSION IS NOT A CRIME!" This bizarre statement is immediately
supported by several Republican members of the House of Representatives!
We need to unpack that
remarkable contention. Giuliani & Co. are now selling to the public the
proposition that if the candidate for President, or members of his campaign
staff, cooperated in Russian interference of our election process, if the
campaign knowingly received things of value from a foreign person or government,
and not only didn't report it, but hid it
and lied about it, that might be collusion (or depending on your choice of
words, conspiracy, or misprision of felony, or felony accessory-after-the-fact,)
but when the Trump team did it, it wasn't
a crime. So the new defense is, "Well,
it may be collusion, but is that wrong?"
That assertion is preposterous, and also avoids the
question of a treasonous injury to our Democracy.
2. Obstruction of Justice:
Defense Level 1. Charges of
obstruction were first aired because of the Comey firing. First, Trump denied
he asked Comey to go easy on Flynn, and denied he knew Flynn was under
investigation for lying to the FBI. That was shown to be a lie.
Defense Level 2. Trump fired
Comey and said it was because of his poor work on the Clinton email
investigation. That too was a lie. As he
soon thereafter told the Russian Ambassador, he fired Comey because of
"The Russia thing."
Defense Level 3. When it became
clear from Trump's own statements, and those of his lawyer, that firing Comey was indeed related to "The Russia thing,"
Trump brought out Dershowitz to say on TV that the President cannot obstruct
justice. That is to say, he can obstruct justice, but when he does it, it is
not a crime. When pressed, The Dersh would mutter, "except if he did it
corruptly," hoping the microphone did not pick it up. After a while, the
networks, the Trump team, and Dersh's neighbors in Martha's Vineyard tired
of Dersh, and he hasn't been heard from in a while.
Defense Level 4. Trump, under
pressure of the Mueller inquiry, i) publicly humiliated Sessions for his
recusal from the Russia inquiry, (though Sessions' recusal was required by DOJ
guidelines); ii)issued an order to White House counsel McGahn to fire Mueller,
but McGahn refused to obey the command, doubtless because he did not want to
see his name in the caption of an obstruction indictment; iii) repeatedly made
public statements that Republican Mueller was biased against him; and of
course, iv) publicly called the Mueller inquiry a "a hoax," a witch
hunt," "rigged," etc., etc.
Defense Level 5. The Trump
team refused to agree to an interview with Mueller, thereby risking a subpoena.
Giuliani tried to negotiate an interview if
Mueller promised not to inquire about Obstruction of Justice. (How remarkable
is that for what that says about the Trump team's concerns about that subject?)
But of course Mueller said "Are you fucking kidding me? No deal." (My
words, not his!)
Defense Level 6. Yesterday Trump
added to the obstruction count against him by going on a tweet rampage, saying
Sessions "should fire Rosenstein and Mueller!"
Defense Level 7. Giuliani
takes to the airwaves, calls the NY Times, and goes public with a sales pitch
that this is not obstruction. Giuliani says that while Trump has the undoubted
power to fire Sessions, telling Sessions he should fire Mueller was not obstruction
because Trump was just exercising his
First Amendment Right to express an opinion! Ya know, free speech, like when a person goes
into a bank, points a gun at the teller, and says, "You should give me all
the money in your drawer!" No
crime, no foul, just free speech.
Defense Level 8. The
"free speech" defense was parroted by Huckabee Sanders. "Just an
opinion," she says. But in case you
are skeptical, Giuliani proceeded to the next stage.
Defense Level 9. Rudy tells
the TV audience that Trump is not guilty of obstruction of justice because his allegedly
obstructive statements and conduct were
public. To be guilty of criminal obstruction, says Rudy, you need to do the deed secretly! That may be the
single most ridiculous thing Rudy has ever said in his life. Even in his addled
state, he must know that is false. He knows it is false because no lawyer and
few other sentient adults could fail to grasp the illogical nature of the
claim. He is saying that if two people conspired to burn down the White House,
but they did on an open Facebook account, or Twitter, or YouTube, it would not
be criminal because the conspiracy was open to public view. Or if a terrorist
publicly threatened to kill a physician if she performed a legal abortion,
that is not a crime because it is "pasteurized" by the lack of
secrecy.
And oh yeah, the settled law
makes clear that Rudy is full of shit, because other defendants have made that
claim and the courts, including the Second Circuit, have said the claim lacks
merit.
........................
So much for Defense Level 9
on both the collusion and obstruction fronts. I can only guess what Level 10
will be. For sure, it will further demean our democratic ideals and mock the
principles of our Constitution.