REICHSTAG FIRE?

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Short of another Reichstag Fire, or a Wag-the-Dog "police action," I do not see how Donald Trump can make it to the winner's circle on Wednesday, November 4, 2020.

The possibilities for his decline are manifold. The question is not whether he is a criminal, but how many counts there will be in the draft indictment and/or bill of impeachment. Even assuming Mueller abides by Justice Department policy and fails to indict the president, you can be sure that the prosecution team is working on a draft accusatory instrument that, one way or another, is going to be public.

 I can visualize Mueller's team adding to that document each day and storing it in the cloud. That way, the best efforts of whichever Trumpstooge may then be heading up the Justice Department, will fail to suppress the special prosecutor's findings. They will be made public, either by leak, court order, or pursuant to Congressional subpoena, most probably the latter.

Given the information gathered by Mueller, the SDNY prosecutors, and the New York State Attorney General, one could reasonably expect the Mueller document to include charges of conspiracy to violate the election laws, bank fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice, tax fraud, and more.

And Donald Trump will not be the only name in the caption at the head of the instrument. It would be a surprise if we did not also find Donald Junior, Roger Stone, Jerome Corsi, perhaps Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, Hope Hicks, and one or more banking institutions. (I am betting that the sealed subpoena fight now making its way to the Supreme Court involves a foreign bank, maybe one owned by the government of The Caymans, Russia, Germany, Qatar, etc.)

The similarity to the Nixon demise is remarkable:

 Nixon railed against the press, complaining it was misleading the public by means of "outrageous, vicious, and distorted" reporting. He accused the Washington Post of being "an agent of the Democratic Party." Trump labeled the press, "An enemy of the people,"and banned a CNN reporter from White House press conferences.

Under the mounting pressure of the several investigations (the Special Counsel, the Senate hearings led by Sam Ervin, and the House Judiciary Committee) Nixon's approval rating fell to the low 30s. Two recent polls put Trump's national  approval rating at either 39% or 33%.

Nixon's John Dean is Trump's Michael Cohen. Both presidents used the same language. Nixon called his lawyer an "opportunistic rat," and Trump called Cohen "a rat, looking for a lower sentence,"  Both lying presidents said their lawyer-accusers were liars. Both "rats" went to prison, but each provided evidence that their bosses were criminals.

Nixon obstructed justice by forcing out his Attorney General. Trump did that too, and has attempted to replace him with a Trumpian stooge. Nixon also forced out his Deputy Attorney General, and Trump threatened to fire his Deputy A.G., and did fire his Director of the FBI.

Nixon went a step further than Trump has gone so far. Nixon not only forced out his Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, but also forced the firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox. (In the be-careful-what-you-wish-for department, Solicitor General Robert Bork, who was directed by the president to fire Cox, replaced him with Leon Jaworski, whose subpoena ultimately was upheld by the Supreme Court and forced Nixon to resign!)

Trump has threatened to emulate Nixon by firing Rod Rosenstein and Mueller, and actually gave orders to do so, but his White House counsel refused to obey. Thus Trump was denied his own parallel to Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre. (Perhaps one of the restraints on the Trump team going forward is the recognition that after firing Cox, Nixon's national approval rating sank from 31 to 19!)

As the screws tightened, a White House observer called Nixon "unhinged." Sound familiar?

Both Nixon and Trump had, for some time in their presidency, an extraordinarily loyal base.

I cite one example of the extremes of Nixonian loyalty: When the Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach Nixon, it had before it incontrovertible evidence that i) the Watergate burglars had been hired by the White House, ii) a check made out to the order of the Nixon reelection committee was transmitted directly to one of the burglars, and, iii) Nixonian-produced transcripts of tapes were crafted to mislead. In effect, a tape-recorded "Yes" was transcribed as a "No."  (Compare the Trump-Cohen tape where Trump tells Cohen to "pay Pecker in cash," and Giuliani insists Trump said, "don't pay in cash"!). And most persuasive, the Committee had listened to the tape in which John Dean tells the president he doubts they could continue to buy the silence of the Watergate burglars because it would cost up to $1 million in cash, to which Nixon responds, "I can get that."

Open and shut, huh? Not so fast: a majority of the Republican members of the Judiciary Committee voted "No" on that obstruction of justice impeachment count. One of them was quoted as saying he did not think the evidence against Nixon was as serious as an accusation of "spitting on the sidewalk."

But when the Supreme Court rejected the president's claim of executive privilege, and ordered full compliance with the Jaworski subpoena, Nixon was cooked. The so-called "smoking gun tape" revealed that Nixon had directed one of his aides to call the CIA and have them direct the FBI to drop the investigation. Doubtless, the likes of Giuliani and Dershowitz would make the absurd argument that is not obstruction of justice, but the publication of that tape breached the hull, water poured into the holds, and the Republicans in Congress abandoned the sinking ship. When the Republican leadership told Nixon they could no longer support him, he said, "I am not a quitter," and quit.

Does Mueller have the equivalent of a "smoking gun" piece of evidence? My bet is "yes." And even if he doesn't have a single torpedo that blows a giant hole in that already leaky Trumpian hull, Mueller surely has more than enough explosive material to pop the already softened golden rivets of the S.S. The Donald. When that happens, the theretofore loyalist red-tie passengers on that ship will scurry to the lifeboats.

So here is what my crystal ball shows:

1. The Mueller document will be made public, then

2.. The House will vote to impeach, then

3. A significant number of the Republican members of Congress who have staunchly supported this president will poll their constituents. The result will cause a wrecking-ball re-evaluation of their loyalty to the leader of their party, then

4. President Trump, that serious student of history, will then be faced with these options:

a) Make a deal and resign, a la Agnew, or

b) Resign without a deal, expecting his successor's pardon, a la Nixon, or

c) Set fire to the White House and blame Ecuadorian immigrants, a la you-know-who, or

d) Assert that a United States destroyer was attacked by a Chinese gunboat in the Gulf of Tonkin, a la Lyndon Johnson. This would justify a Trump declaration of a national emergency even more threatening to our survival than the "The Caravan," and would be the foundation for a presidential decision to call up all reservists who are not afflicted by heel spurs. 

e) Finally, in the event he is still president in the summer of 2020, Trump will order polling to be done in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Upon hearing Jared read the results to him, the president will tweet, "I am not a quitter, but for the good of the country, I hereby quit the campaign, and following the historic precedent of that great honorable statesman Lyndon Johnson, I will not be a candidate for reelection."

In any event, the Democrats will not be the only ones scrambling to find a candidate in the Fall of 2020.

You read it here first.

A bientot.
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