Leaks and Chaos Reign At White House

Yesterday I posted about the perils of serving on Der  Trumpenführer's legal team.  Later the same day John Dowd, Trump’s lead lawyer for the special counsel investigation, resigned his position in the face of Trump's signaling that he was prepared to ignore Dowd's advice and wanted a sit-down with investigators (and likely lie through his teeth).  Replacing Dowd is a yet another bombastic Fox News commentator who would be viewed as sleazy and disreputable by many reputable law firms - which means Trump will love him. 

Also out yesterday was National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster who announced his exit.  Whether a mere coincidence or not, McMaster like Rex Tillerson had made strong anti-Putin/Russia statements.  Frighteningly, McMasters replacement will be the delusional and hawkish John Bolton who, if given his way, would likely get America into a war with both Iran and North Korea.    Adding to the chaos, Trump announced $80 billion in tariffs against China causing the Dow to plunge 742 points. 

A column in the Washington Post suggests that what few sane people are left in the White House staff are now panicking.  Here are highlights:

As a former presidential staffer, I have little patience for leaks. . . . . Leaks are an abuse of power and position, generally by people who are unelected and self-serving.

But motivations matter, and the taxonomy of White House leakage is a worthy study. A surprising number of leaks are the result of simple vanity — the desire to appear in the know. Other leakers are trying to embarrass or sabotage a rival. Some leaks result from deviousness — the attempt to box the president in on a policy matter.

The exposure of a White House briefing document telling President Trump “DO NOT CONGRATULATE” Russia’s Vladimir Putin on his sham election victory — leaked after Trump congratulated Putin on his sham election victory — falls into a different category. It seems to have been motivated by desperation. Someone at the White House, presumably on the national security team, has taken a large personal risk to call attention to Trump’s mysteriously cozy relationship with a strategic rival. This is extraordinary — and extraordinarily frightening. In most administrations, the aides closest to the president have the greatest sense of loyalty. In this case, an aide close to the president is expressing panic. He or she cannot explain the hold that Putin has over Trump. This leak is a cry for help from within the White House itself. 

The problem is Trump’s strange inability to confront Putin personally — about his oppressive rule, the disruption of America’s electoral process, human rights violations and even attempted murder on the soil of a NATO ally. Trump’s initial instinct is to explain such abuses away.

It deepens the mystery that all of Trump’s political interests push in the opposite direction. A president pulled into an investigation of improper ties to Russia might be expected to distance himself from disturbing Russian behavior. Such public criticisms are an easy and cheap form of damage control. But at every stage, Trump has been dragged kicking and screaming into the pursuit of self-interest.

Trump has not provided an adequate explanation for his radical departure from the diplomatic norm. . . . . And it is rich for Trump to accuse other presidents of lacking “smarts” about U.S.-Russian relations in the course of a foreign policy explanation at the length and level of a fortune-cookie saying.

Into this vacuum of plausible explanation have flooded other theories. “I think he is afraid of the president of Russia,” former CIA director John Brennan recently speculated. “The Russians may have something on him personally that they could always roll out and make his life more difficult.” This might seem incredible, except for the fact that Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was forced out over blackmail fears, and one of his principal foreign policy advisers, Jared Kushner, has been denied top secret security clearance because he might be susceptible to undue influence.

In the absence of adequate explanation from Trump himself, it is up to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to provide clarity. 

 Be very, very afraid of where the country is lurching.  Trump now has, in my view, a show boating lunatic leading his legal team and second lunatic as National Security Advisor - a man who could well lead America into one or more disastrous war.   There is only one person smiling at all of this: Vladimir Putin.

The Legal Nightmare of Representing Trump

Ted Olsen who refused to join Trump's legal team

Earlier in the week news came out that Donald Trump had approached super lawyer Ted Olsen about joining Trump's legal team.  Olsen wisely declined the invitation apparently concerned about how history might view him and also likely aware of the dangers in representing a pathological liar.  It is one thing to provide a client with a vigorous legal defense and something quite different to participate in a deliberate effort to lie to a legal tribunal or governmental investigative authorities.  With Trump, it would seem the latter sooner or later would become unavoidable and thereby put members of his legal team at risk for disbarment or worse.  A piece in Vanity Fair looks at efforts of Trump's legal team to restrain Trump from engaging in out right lies to Robert Mueller and how such efforts may still fail to stop Trump's legal jeopardy.  Here are excerpts: 

Representing President Donald Trump is not exactly a lawyer’s dream job. True, there are high stakes and lots of media attention. The downsides, though, include a slippery client who barely listens to your advice and who might not pay your bill. That combination has forced Don McGahn, Ty Cobb, and John Dowd to make some unusual strategic choices in trying to fend off Robert Mueller. The most recent was sending the special counsel a written summary of the White House version of key events in the Russia saga. The gambit is intended to get Mueller to narrow the range of a possible Trump interview. And it’s almost certainly doomed.

“I think it’s the nuttiest thing I’ve ever heard,” says Solomon Wisenberg, the former federal prosecutor who elicited the damning “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” answer from President Bill Clinton during grand-jury testimony for the Monica Lewinsky investigation. “I’ve never heard of defense attorneys doing that. If you’re Mueller, it’s highly unlikely you accept what somebody’s lawyer said, when that somebody is a subject, at the least, of your investigation. . . . . when people are interviewed in a criminal investigation, they don’t get to narrow the topic.”

The chances are actually stronger that the maneuver will backfire, helping Mueller refine not just any questioning of the president but the investigation as a whole. “Mueller is learning a lot by letting this little passion play over Trump and the interview proceed,” says Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney for Alabama.

Negotiations will continue, and will likely grow more complicated with the addition of a new lawyer on the Trump side, Joe diGenova, who has suggested that the F.B.I. set out to frame Trump. Attorneys familiar with Mueller or his current team increasingly wager that this protracted dance over presidential testimony ends up in court—that Trump will eventually refuse to talk to the special counsel and that Mueller will subpoena him to appear. “I think Trump will chicken out, and his lawyers will dissuade him from talking because he’s not capable of doing the homework and staying on track,” . . . his side has all kinds of issues. They don’t know what Michael Flynn has told the government. They don’t know exactly what James Comey and Andrew McCabe have said, what Rick Gates has overheard. Normally you tell your client, ‘Just tell the truth.’ But the truth could be really bad for Trump.”

[I]f Mueller wants to question Trump, he has little incentive to cede ground on the scope. “There’s no reason to negotiate your ability to ask questions for the simple reason you can issue a subpoena and the defendant has to submit to any and all questions you want to ask,” . . . You want to ask the president in person what he knew, and eyeball his appearance of truthfulness when he responds. If an interview matters to Mueller, he gets his interview, whether voluntarily or under the compulsion of a subpoena.”

The courts would be likely to expedite hearings, with the case reaching the Supreme Court probably inside of two months after Mueller files to compel Trump’s cooperation. Two things could short-circuit that scenario, however: Trump fires Mueller, setting off a different, explosive legal and political battle. The second possibility? Mueller doesn’t even ask for Trump’s testimony, because he’s made the president a target of the probe, rather than just a subject, as was Bill Clinton in the Ken Starr investigation.

If the special counsel doesn’t subpoena Trump, that might be a signal right there that Mueller thinks he’s got sufficient evidence and that they view Trump as a target.” The months-long buildup toward a melodramatic face-to-face confrontation between Trump and Mueller would vanish. But the second act curtain would fall with a compelling twist.

Over my 40+ years as an attorney, other than non-payment of fees, every time I have fired a client it was because I caught them lying to me. Nothing is worth disbarment or, worse yet, facing criminal prosecution.  I cannot help but question the judgment of the members of Trump's legal team. Trump has a documented history of lying about just about everything.  He could well take them down with him.