Trump Is Surrounded by Criminals

Not since Richard Nixon has an occupant of the White House proven to have surrounded himself with criminals than Donald Trump.  This, of course, should come as no surprise if one has followed Trump's mob boss like business conduct over the years in New York City and elsewhere where many believe Trump facilitated money laundering by the Russian mob and other undesirables. Criminals tend to surround themselves with other criminals.  With yesterday's conviction on all counts of long time Trump confident Roger Stone, we now have a half dozen convicted criminals who made up part of the Trump/Pence campaign and/or regime.  A piece in Politico looks at Stone's conviction (note the references to Trump lying to Mueller as well): 

A federal jury on Friday found the longtime Republican provocateur guilty on all charges for thwarting a House investigation into Russia’s 2016 election interference, opening up a political pandora’s box for a president already facing pressure from his conservative base to issue a pardon.

Stone’s fate was sealed after a trial that spanned just over a week, which concluded with unanimous guilty verdicts against Stone on five felony counts of lying to investigators, one count of obstructing a congressional probe and one count of witness tampering.

Friday’s guilty verdicts represent the biggest victory for prosecutors in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe since former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was convicted on eight felony charges at a trial in Northern Virginia over a year ago. In the courtroom for Stone’s trial, there were ample signs of the case’s origins.

Trump told Mueller’s investigators they spoke from “time to time during the campaign.” Prosecutors introduced evidence collected from phone records during Stone’s trial showing about 60 separate communications between the two men from February to November 2016.

A second piece in New York Magazine looks at Trump's larger circle of criminal associates.  Here are highlights:  

The legal ring surrounding him [Trump] is collectively producing a historic indictment of his endemic corruption and criminality.

Day two of the House impeachment hearings, featuring Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, may have appeared on the surface to focus on a sideshow. Yovanovitch was not directly involved in Trump’s efforts to extort Ukraine for political advantage, the main charge he faces. What her testimony instead accomplished was to put the lie to Trump’s ludicrous defense that he was pursuing an anti-corruption agenda in Ukraine — that his demands that Kiev investigate his rivals were simply about cleaning the country up.

Her testimony was devoted to proving the hypocrisy of Trump’s claim. She testified how she had worked in Ukraine to promote reform, how her efforts to do so alienated corrupt oligarchs there, and how those oligarchs then worked in tandem with Rudy Giuliani to foment a backlash against her. She explained that the fired Ukrainian prosecutor that Trump praised to Ukraine’s president in a July phone call was in fact totally corrupt.

Trump fired Yovanovitch because she stood in the way of the corruption he and his allies were promoting. To the extent corruption motivated Trump’s diplomatic posture in Ukraine, it was that he wanted to encourage more of it.

During Yovanovitch’s testimony, a federal court registered a guilty verdict on all seven counts for Trump’s adviser Roger Stone. Stone’s crimes involved lying and covering up Trump’s awareness of Democratic emails stolen by Russians. Rick Gates, Mr. Trump’s deputy campaign chairman, told investigators that he personally witnessed a July 31, 2016, phone call between Trump and Stone shortly after WikiLeaks published a tranche of stolen emails. After hanging up with Stone, Trump announced more information was on its way.

The two figures in his campaign who most directly colluded with Russia, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, both refused to cooperate with Mueller. Whatever they know about Trump’s full collusion with Russia’s campaign hacking will remain secret, probably forever.

And yet, even if he pardons Manafort and Stone, and all his other loyalists, the plain fact will remain that his inner circle is marked by endemic criminality. In addition to his close adviser Stone, his campaign manager (Manafort), his deputy campaign manager (Gates), his lawyer (Michael Cohen), and his national security adviser (Michael Flynn) have all been convicted of felonies. Trump may have persuaded his hard-core base that all these convictions represent a fraudulent witch hunt. But outside the Trump cult, which is not by itself large enough to win the election, being surrounded by criminals is not an admired quality.

In all probability, the parade of charges is probably not over. Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is reportedly being investigated for a number of alleged federal crimes, including bribing foreign officials, conspiracy, violating federal campaign-finance laws, and failing to register as a foreign agent. The Wall Street Journal reports today that federal prosecutors are investigating whether Giuliani personally stood to profit from a natural-gas shakedown run by his partners, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman.

Parnas and Fruman, two figures linked to the Russian mob who have been arrested, were helping Giuliani run his off-the-books diplomatic work in Ukraine. 

If Rudy himself was involved in the gas shakedown, as the Journal story suggests, it would be an even deeper form of corruption. Trump’s lawyer and personal representative would have sent gangsters to extort Ukraine for Trump’s political gain and his own profit. The false accusations Trump has hurled against Biden are pale versions of the very real crimes Trump’s cronies have tried to carry out.

[T]he full scale of his betrayal is staggering. Trump will probably not become the first president to be impeached and removed from office, but he will go down in history as the most criminal president in American history.

One can only hope that indictments against Giuliani come soon. 

Cracks Are Developing in Trump's Stonewalling

Lies and obstruction are the hallmarks of Trump's occupancy of the White House - I will never afford him the title "president" - with an overall goal of keeping the American public from learning all of the dirty business deals, money laundering, self-enrichment, and violations of U.S. Constitution provisions such as the emoluments clause that define the Trump regime.  Now, as a piece in The Atlantic notes, cracks may be developing in the wall of obstruction and obfuscation that Trump has spun for the last four years. One can only hope that Democrats in the House of Representatives and the courts will hold Trump to account and expose Trump's crime syndicate like business scheme.  Here are article highlights:

To date, the cover-up has worked about as well as President Donald Trump could have hoped.

Almost four years after Trump declared his campaign for the presidency, and more than 30 months since he won that office, he has successfully kept secret almost all the things he wished to keep secret. How much debt does he owe, and to whom? How much of his income derives from people who do business with the U.S. government? How much of his income derives from foreign sources? Who are his business partners, and do any of them present ethical or national-security concerns? These basics of post-Watergate official disclosure have all been suppressed.

If Trump has his way, the secrecy will continue for a lot longer. In the past few days, he’s filed suit to prevent his bankers from complying with a congressional subpoena. His secretary of the Treasury has defied a never-before-questioned law and refused to surrender the president’s tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee. His attorney general mischaracterized the Mueller report, as Mueller complained in writing, and now has operational control over the ongoing criminal prosecutions bequeathed to the Justice Department by Mueller. Trump’s trouble is that the dike is sprouting more leaks than he has fingers with which to plug the expanding trickles. Two federal judges, one in Maryland and one in the District of Columbia, have approved lawsuits based on the U.S. Constitution’s emoluments clause demanding information about Trump’s revenues from foreign-government entities. Those lawsuits—one filed by congressional Democrats, the other by attorneys general for the state of Maryland and the District of Columbia—now proceed to two different appellate courts, the Fourth Circuit and the D.C. Circuit. At this rate, an emoluments case could reach the Supreme Court before the 2020 election. The dispute over the president’s tax returns has not yet triggered a judicial process. . . . If the tax-return demand ends up in court, we’ll witness the unusual spectacle of a Republican administration inviting judges to reverse decades of conservative legal theory and to defy the clear letter of the law in favor of nebulous concepts of privacy. The law very much favors Congress in the subpoena of Trump’s bankers. Congressional subpoena power extends to any subject on which Congress can constitutionally legislate, among other realms, as the Supreme Court has affirmed again and again. It’s not necessary that Congress actually have any legislation in mind, so long as it potentially could. . . . To be a valid legislative inquiry there need be no predictable end result.”

Meanwhile, Attorney General William Barr has just advanced a likely doomed new legal theory that a president is entitled to shut down any investigation that he feels is unfair to him: “The president does not have to sit there constitutionally and allow [a special-counsel investigation] to run its course. . . . . It’s an argument for total impunity based purely on political power—and for that reason will gain no favor from either Congress or courts.

Perhaps the Trump administration hopes that it can run out the clock on the bank subpoenas and the other matters, too. But so many clocks are ticking over so many inquiries into so many areas of potential scandal. Can they all be postponed and postponed past 2020? For a president with many guilty secrets, everything turns on the ability to insert delay after delay before ultimate legal defeat. It’s not a great plan. It’s liable to go wrong, maybe catastrophically wrong. At this point, though, it’s all he’s got.

What Next for the Democrats?

It is becoming increasingly clear that Attorney General William Barr basically lied about much of what is contained in the Mueller report and as more details emerge, Trump is clearly a lawless and dangerous force in the White House.   That said, rushing to impeach him - like the usually suspects, including Elizabeth Warren are already doing - could prove counterproductive and politically damaging.  Before any such effort is made  (if made at all), House Democrats need to carefully undertake further investigations and make the case for (i) Trump's unfitness for office, and (ii) why impeachment rather than merely voting Trump out of office in 2020 is the responsible move.  The goal would be to convince non-politically voters, including soccer moms more worried about PTA events and children sporting events that the destruction of America's democracy, why impeachment would not be a raw political exercise and put pressure on Republicans to belatedly stand to protect the constitutional order.  A column in The Atlantic makes the case for this reasoned and judicious approach.  Here are highlights:

What next? The substance of the Mueller report is only now beginning to penetrate through the fog of lies and distortions coming from the Attorney General William Barr, backed by his loyal lieutenant Rod Rosenstein. Even the redacted version makes visible the despicable behavior that emanated from the Trump campaign and the Trump White House, not to mention Trump himself, and the shocking penetration of Russia into our elections—with no visible response then or now from Republicans in power. But most Americans will not read or even get the gist of the Mueller report, or know much of what is in it, as they lead their own lives largely unfocused on politics and government.

So what should Democrats do? There is ample evidence of behavior on the part of the president that fits any reasonable definition of high crimes and misdemeanors—and most likely there will be a lot more, when the Southern District of New York and other jurisdictions of the Justice Department finish their work—at least if Barr does not stymie them. There is a constitutional responsibility for the House to follow up.

But a formal impeachment inquiry in the House Judiciary Committee would be politically perilous—and while politics cannot override duty, Democrats cannot risk the kind of 2020 backlash that would come if a large share of the voting public came to see the House as Javert-like, abandoning its focus on health care, jobs and the other issues that dominate most Americans’ lives in a monomaniacal quest to get Trump. A quick move to impeachment would be used by Trump and his acolytes, from the Senate to Fox and talk radio, to incite and outrage the GOP base.

That said, a failure to act, to do anything meaningful to bring this president and his gang of corrupt miscreants to heel, would rightfully enrage most liberal voters. Remember that the rage Republican primary voters felt at their party establishment in 2016, over broken promises to bring Obama to his knees, led to the nomination of Trump. A parallel rage among Democrats could lead to a deeply divided party and a disastrous presidential nomination.

There is, I believe, a reasonable path forward that, besides being politically palatable, has the added advantage of being the right thing to do. It starts with a coordinated and in-depth examination of the Mueller report by the House.

What we need is for the Judiciary, Intelligence, and Homeland Security Committees to conduct a series of deep dives into the areas of communication and coordination between Trump and his campaign with Russians and their surrogates, like Wikileaks; the multiple categories and areas of obstruction of justice that Mueller outlined; the threats to our intelligence operations and our justice system from Trump and his operatives; and the moves by Russia to interfere in and influence our elections used by Trump and unchecked by Republicans. Other committees, such as Ways and Means and Banking, need to be ready to do the same thing as more information emerges from the SDNY and the New York Attorney General, among others, about Trump’s financial dealings, including with the Russians, and about Russian money-laundering.

Democrats need to stage and coordinate hearings across committees and subcommittees, to make sure they do not overload Americans’ ability to pay attention. Most important, they need to structure the public hearings in a dramatically different way than usual. Each committee needs to use experienced counsel—a good examples might be former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara—and limit if not abandon opening statements, except from the chairs. No five-minute rounds of questions going down the line of every committee member, . . .

Give the counsel an hour to set the frame and ask in-depth questions. Either follow that with another round for the counsel or have a small group of committee members take 15 or 30 minutes to ask questions in a sustained way with coordinated themes. This system might cause hard feelings among members who will not get their five minutes in the sun—and would reduce the public role for chairs—but it is better-suited to accomplish the larger goal. And that larger goal is to build a compelling record, through vivid testimony, of what Trump and his people, including his children, did and did not do, said and did not say truthfully, that are the core of Mueller’s report.

That kind of forum should be supplemented by another. Committees should do a series of roundtables, discussions with leading experts with deep experience in the Justice Department, including the FBI, in the White House, in the intelligence world, and elsewhere, to discuss in depth whether the behaviors they have seen in the Trump administration are typical or unusual, acceptable or unacceptable.

All of this is, in my view, a necessary predicate to the formal impeachment inquiry that could then follow. If done well—even as the House brought up measures to shore up the Affordable Care Act, to protect children from family separation, to improve the lives of working families, to begin to address infrastructure needs and clean energy, along with oversight of failures in disaster relief, border activities, college loan policy, and corruption in many departments—then impeachment would look powerfully more like a logical and necessary step, less like a vindictive, partisan move.

Democrats should not jump the gun on impeachment. But it would be a serious dereliction of duty if they did not move now to set the stage for what should happen when the time and setting are right.

18 Reasons Trump Could be a Russian Asset

When asked during a Fox News, a/k/a the Trump Propagandaministerium, whether he was working for Russia, Donald Trump gave a rambling, convoluted non-responsive answer but never said a simple "no."  With two bombshell reports out last week and over the weekend, many Americans - other than Trump's cultist followers and Fox News viewers - are perhaps beginning to fully comprehend the magnitude of the danger that the Trump/Pence regime poses to the nation.  Conservative columnist and former Republican Max Boot has a column in the Washington Post that looks at the reasons by his own behavior Trump has signaled that he may well be a Russian asset.  Here are highlights:

On Friday, the New York Times reported that “in the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests.” That investigation may well be continuing under the auspices of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. We don’t know what Mueller has learned. But we can look at the key, publicly available evidence that both supports and undercuts this explosive allegation.

Here is some of the evidence suggesting “Individual 1” could be a Russian “asset”:

— Trump has a long financial history with Russia. As summarized by Jonathan Chait in an invaluable New York magazine article: “From 2003 to 2017, people from the former USSR made 86 all-cash purchases — a red flag of potential money laundering — of Trump properties, totaling $109 million. In 2010, the private-wealth division of Deutsche Bank also loaned him hundreds of millions of dollars during the same period it was laundering billions in Russian money. ‘Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,’ said Donald Jr. in 2008. ‘We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia,’ boasted Eric Trump in 2014.”

These are the kind of financial entanglements that intelligence services such as the FSB typically use to ensnare foreigners, and they could leave Trump vulnerable to blackmail.

— The Russians interfered in the 2016 U.S. election to help elect Trump president.

— Trump encouraged the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails on July 27, 2016 (“Russia, if you’re listening”), on the very day that Russian intelligence hackers tried to attack Clinton’s personal and campaign servers.

— There were, according to the Moscow Project, “101 contacts between Trump’s team and Russia linked operatives,” and “the Trump team tried to cover up every single one of them.”

— The Trump campaign was full of individuals, such as Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and Michael Flynn, with suspiciously close links to Moscow.

— Manafort, who ran the Trump campaign for free and was heavily in debt to a Russian oligarch, now admits to offering his Russian business partner, who is suspected of links to Russian intelligence, polling data that could have been used to target the Russian social media campaign on behalf of Trump.

— Trump associate Roger Stone, who was in contact with Russian conduit WikiLeaks, reportedly knew in advance that the Russians had hacked Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails.

— Once in office, Trump fired Comey to stop the investigation of the “Russia thing” — and then bragged about having done so to the Russian ambassador and foreign minister while also sharing with them top-secret information. . . . . Trump has been effectively protecting the Russians by trying to impede the investigation of their attack on the United States.— Trump has refused to consistently acknowledge that Russia interfered in the U.S. election or mobilize a government-wide effort to stop future interference.

— Like no previous president, Trump attacks and undermines the Justice Department and the FBI (“a cancer in our country”) — two institutions that stand on the front lines of combatting Russian espionage and influence operations in the United States.

— Again, like no previous president, Trump attacks and undermines the European Union and NATO . . . . The E.U. and NATO are the two major obstacles to Russian designs in Europe.

— Trump supports populist, pro-Russian leaders in Europe, such as Viktor Orban in Hungary and Marine Le Pen in France, just as the Russians do.

— Trump has praised Putin (“a strong leader”) while trashing just about everyone else from grade-B Hollywood celebrities to leaders of allied nations.

— Trump was utterly supine in his meetings with Putin, principally in Hamburg and Helsinki. Even more suspicious, according to a Post article on Saturday, Trump “has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with . . . Putin, including on at least one occasion taking possession of the notes of his own interpreter and instructing the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials. . . .

— Trump defends the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and repeats other pro-Russian talking points.

— Trump is pulling U.S. troops out of Syria, handing that country to Russia and its ally Iran.

— Trump has effectively done nothing in response to the Russian attack on Ukrainian ships in international waters, thereby encouraging greater Russian aggression.

— Trump is sowing chaos in the government, most recently with a record-breaking partial government shutdown and “acting” appointees in key posts such as the Defense Department and Justice Department, thus furthering a Russian objective of undermining its chief adversary.

Now that we’ve listed 18 reasons Trump could be a Russian asset, let’s look at the exculpatory evidence. . . . I can’t think of anything that would exonerate Trump aside from the difficulty of grasping what once would have seemed unimaginable: that a president of the United States could actually have been compromised by a hostile foreign power.

Foreign Dark Money Is Threatening American Elections

I close a great number of real estate transactions every year and know first hand how easily such transactions done as "cash purchases" without bank confirmation of identities could be used to launder money.  Indeed, there have been numerous stories on Russians buying Trump properties as a likely method to launder dirty money from questionable sources.   In addition, since I set up numerous limited liability companies each year, I also know that in many states - Virginia being one of them - there is no public records that identify the actual owners of the company.   All that is shown is the name of the registered agent and a physical address - which may in fact be a UPS store "office."  A piece in Politico looks at the threat foreign money routed through such entities and/or PACs' to circumvent bans on foreign campaign contributions is to the security of our election system.  Indeed, the NRA has been documented to have  received foreign funds during the 2016 election.  With corrupt politicians like Der Trumpenführer,  it is crucial that more be done to stop foreign interference in our elections by this so-called dark money.  Here are article highlights:

Whatever Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation ends up revealing about Russia’s efforts to subvert our democracy, one thing is already clear from the media attention this topic has received: America’s democratic institutions are highly vulnerable to foreign influence.

Foreign powers use three basic tools to interfere in democratic politics: cyber operations, disinformation and dark money. Thanks in part to Mueller’s indictments of members of Russia’s military intelligence agency (GRU) and the St. Petersburg troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency, we have begun to address election-related cyber attacks and foreign disinformation. But when it comes to foreign dark money – money from unknown foreign sources – we remain woefully unprepared.

The lack of transparency in our campaign finance system combined with extensive foreign money laundering creates a significant vulnerability for our democracy. We don’t know how much illicit money enters the United States from abroad or how much dark money enters American political campaigns, but in 2015, the Treasury Department estimated that $300 billion is laundered through the U.S. every year. While foreign funding of campaigns is prohibited by federal statute, the body that enforces campaign finance laws – the Federal Election Commission (FEC) – lacks both teeth and resources. Sophisticated adversaries like Russia and China know how to bypass the ban on foreign funding by exploiting loopholes in the system and using layers of proxies to mask their activities, making it difficult for the FEC, the FBI, and the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network to follow the money. One of the key loopholes is the ability of so-called super PACs to accept money from U.S. subsidiaries of foreign corporations. And while super PACs are required to file financial disclosure reports, non-profit 501(c) organizations (for example, the National Rifle Association or the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) are not. So if a foreign entity transfers money to a 501(c), that organization can in turn contribute funds to a super PAC without disclosing the foreign origin of the money.

The last time Congress took on dark money was after 9/11, in the Patriot Act, when we made it illegal for banks to be “willfully blind” to money laundering and requiring them to verify their customers’ identities. But the lack of any requirement to disclose the beneficial (i.e. “true”) ownership of limited liability companies (LLCs) makes it easy for foreign entities to establish shell companies in the United States.

Fortunately, there are steps we can take to secure our system and shine a light on these murky transactions.

In August, two dozen state attorneys general asked Congress to pass legislation to disclose the beneficial owners of LLCs. A federal solution to this issue is necessary because individual states compete for incorporation revenue and therefore have little incentive to reform on their own. In Nevada, for example, the process of registering a company has been described as “easier than getting a library card.” A federal requirement to disclose the true owners and controlling interests of LLCs would allow law enforcement to scrutinize the “ghost corporations” that pop up overnight in states like Nevada or Delaware – and that could be used to funnel dark money into our politics.

Real estate deals are also susceptible to foreign money laundering because they are largely exempt from the “know your customer” rules that apply to the banking industry.

This allows foreign entities to use shell companies to park their wealth in the United States or to channel that money to U.S. political interests (for example, by purchasing real estate at above-market prices). Implementing more comprehensive disclosure requirements in high-end real estate and prohibiting all-cash sales above certain thresholds would help create transparency in this sector.

The fact that we don’t know exactly how much foreign dark money is being channeled into U.S. politics is precisely why we need to reduce our vulnerabilities. There is ample evidence of dark money penetrating other democracies, and no reason to believe we are immune from this risk.

[W]e can’t ignore the threat posed by foreign dark money. With a new Congress about to be sworn in, there’s an opportunity to finally end the permissive environment for foreign dark money in this country. Campaign finance reform is certainly a necessary part of the solution, but so too is disclosure of beneficial ownership and greater transparency in real estate transactions. As matters of national security, these are issues that should be of interest to both Democrats and Republicans who want to reduce our vulnerability to foreign corrupt influence.

Is It Now Too Late to Stop Mueller?

Since he fired James Comey, it has been obvious to anyone not drinking the Trump/Pence Kool-Aid that Trump is desperate to kill the investigation into possible collusion with Russia by the Trump campaign and anything else that might come to light as a result.  As I - and others - have often noted, if one has nothing to hide, one does not act the way Trump has acted and ranted even as the number of indictments and guilty pleas have multiplied.  Now, with the firing of Jeff Sessions, Trump may be poised to make his most aggressive move to scuttle the Russiagate investigation and avoid exposure of what is likely a cesspool of money laundering and perhaps far, far worse.  A piece in The Atlantic argues that it may hopefully be too late now for Trump to stop the investigation and escape the consequences of his trail of lies and likely misdeeds.  Here are article highlights:

At the end of last month, with the midterms looming, I gave a talk before a small private audience in California in which I argued for optimism because—among other things—the moment for firing Robert Mueller had passed.

Eighteen months ago, I said, President Donald Trump had an opportunity to disrupt the Russia investigation: He had fired the FBI director and had rocked the Justice Department back on its heels. But Trump had dithered. He had broadcast his intentions too many times. And in the meantime, Mueller had moved decisively, securing important indictments and convictions, and making whatever preparations were necessary for hostile fire. And now Democrats were poised to take the House of Representatives. The window of opportunity was gone.

I am still, if only tentatively, of the belief that the prospects for interference are dimmer than fear and panic and another Trump-busted norm have us imagining. Here are 10 reasons to think that Whitaker may have less capacity to foil Mueller than the current moment—and his formal powers—may suggest.
 First, Mueller has spread the wealth around. The normal critique of special-counsel investigations is that they hoard jurisdiction, endlessly expand, and become personal roving inquests into their political subjects’ lives. The opposite is the case with Mueller. He has not merely referred to other Justice Department components matters at the margins of his investigation, such as the Michael Cohen situation in New York. He has also let other components handle matters involving core questions of Russian interference in the U.S. elections, such as the Maria Butina and Elena Khusyaynova prosecutions. The result of this strategic step is not just that Mueller is relatively invulnerable to the charge of any kind of power grab or mission creep. It is also that firing him or reining him in only does so much. If Trump imagines these investigations as a cancer on his presidency, they are a cancer that has already metastasized.
 Second, the investigation has already progressed very far. It is one thing to squelch an investigation in its crib. It’s another thing to squelch an investigation that has already collected important evidence and brought key cases. The effort to do so cannot take place invisibly, as a great many prosecutors and FBI agents will be aware of what is happening. None of them has to leak anything for that awareness to find its way to Capitol Hill, because the Hill is already aware of the problem and looking for signs. Mueller is by many accounts writing a report, a step that signals a completed investigation or a completed portion of an investigation. The effort to suppress that report could be politically galvanizing and, in its own way, as damaging for the administration as the contents of that report when they eventually become public.
 Third, Mueller does not have to remain silent. . . . . The day that Mueller holds a press conference or stands before cameras and declares that his investigation is facing interference from the Justice Department will be a very big day, perhaps a game-changing day. If the department suppresses his report, he has the capacity to, as James Comey did after his firing, testify before Congress about what happened. Mueller has not hoarded power or jurisdiction, but he has hoarded moral authority. If Whitaker or his successor seeks to frustrate the probe, Mueller can spend down those huge reserves of credibility.
 Fourth, the midterms matter—and they mean investigations. . . . . The Democratic takeover of Congress means that key committees will be watching every move Whitaker and his successor make with respect to the investigation. It means subpoenas for any report they may try to suppress. It means an open and receptive forum for Mueller to testify should he have something to say. It means constant investigation. And it means that the threat of impeachment hangs over everything. This is a very big change, and Mueller is as aware of it as anyone. As a result of Democratic control of the House, he could, for example, write an unclassified summary of his report and conclusions with every expectation that major congressional committees would demand it and release it publicly. He could also, say, write an impeachment referral—if he thought he had evidence Congress needs to see—and dare Whitaker to prevent its transmission to Congress. If Whitaker were to do so, Mueller could resign and announce what happened and let Congress do the rest.
 Fifth, the confirmation process for the attorney general still matters. Whitaker is ultimately a placeholder. He can do damage while in office, but ultimately the president is going to have to name an attorney general, and the Senate is going to have to confirm that person. That means two big things: Trump has to name someone who can win confirmation, and the nominee has to personally face the Senate Judiciary Committee.
 Seventh, senior Justice Department officials, both career and political, can draw lines. This point is closely related to the previous one, but also distinct. One indication that the system has held so far is that we have not seen mass resignations or resignations in protest over matters of principle. That will change if Whitaker or his successor moves against the investigation in a fashion that officials regard as unacceptable
 Eighth, Whitaker will get briefed and assume responsibility for the department. It may sound naive to say that this will matter, but let’s at least consider the possibility that it will matter. . . . . Perhaps Whitaker will defy all of this, but it’s not an easy thing to do—and if Whitaker does it, he will do it knowing that he will go down in history as a John Mitchell figure. That should at least be food for thought on his part.

Ninth, the public actually cares. Thursday evening, tens of thousands of people around the country protested Trump’s move against Sessions. That’s before Whitaker actually does anything. . . . . Expect political pressures to grow proportionately to the increased threat to accountability. This public vigilance and anger is not just #resistance noise; it’s actively useful.

Finally, 10th, these points all work in tandem with one another. They are not discrete. They operate in an ineffable combination of bureaucratic maneuvering, congressional action, journalism, personality, and public pressure. And in this dangerous moment—and Whitaker’s installation does create a profoundly dangerous moment—the combined effects here will be a powerful defense against misdeeds.

For the sake of the nation, I hope the author is right.

One Day After Midterms Trump Reminds Us He's A Danger to the Rule of Law

One very next day after the 2018 midterm elections saw Democrats set to retake control of the House of Representatives, Donald Trump reminded us all that he is a clear and present danger to the rule of law, continues to be a strident racist and  will perhaps go to any and all lengths to kill the Mueller Russiagate investigation to protect family members and himself from criminal indictment and/or impeachment. By firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Trump seems to be openly endeavoring to obstruct justice and place himself above the law.  For those of us of a certain age, it brings back a sense of deja vu of the Watergate "Saturday Night Massacre."  The main difference between then and now is that today's Congressional Republicans put their party over democracy and the U.S. Constitution.   Trump's rant today that he can fire anyone he wants and trashing of news reports shows that he has a mind set akin to that of the dictators of the 1930's.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the looming constitutional crisis.  Here are excerpts:

Just in case the Democratic capture of the House of Representatives tempted you to relax for a moment about the state of our country, President Trump quickly moved to remind us that we still have no idea how low he’s going to sink — or how much damage he’ll do along the way.

This happened on multiple fronts. Here’s the most immediate one:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned on Wednesday at President Trump’s request, ending the tenure of a loyalist Trump had soured on shortly after Sessions took office in 2017 because the former senator from Alabama had recused himself from oversight of the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

At the center of this decision to force out Sessions is the ongoing investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Trump has long raged at Sessions for recusing himself from the probe, rather than constraining it on Trump’s behalf. We all knew this day would come as a result, because, as The Post notes, the two men were fundamentally at odds over whether it’s the proper role of the nation’s chief law enforcement officer to protect Trump’s personal and legal interests . . . . it has long been obvious that any attorney general who did not place Trump’s own interests over those of the country would have to go. Democrats immediately pounced on the news that Whitaker will replace him, pointing to highly questionable comments he’s made about the Mueller probe. Before becoming Sessions’s chief of staff, Whitaker suggested regulations allowed for Trump to put in an acting replacement for the attorney general — meaning one who would not have to be confirmed by the Senate — who could, if he wished, starve the Mueller probe of funds . . . . Now this person, conveniently enough, is Whitaker.
 Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein oversees the investigation, but the new acting attorney general, by not recusing himself, might be able to carry out such a scenario. According to legal expert Stephen Vladeck, Whitaker supplants Rosenstein as overseer of the investigation. This raises at least the possibility that some sort of effort to constrain the probe could be put in motion during the lame-duck period, that is, before Democrats take over the House. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer is calling on Whitaker to recuse himself over his previous comments. And Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the Intelligence Committee, just put out a statement pointing out that “replacing the Attorney General with a non-Senate-confirmed political staffer is highly irregular and unacceptable.” Blumenthal called for new legislation to protect the Mueller investigation, describing this as a “break the glass moment.” [N]ote that it comes after Trump gave a startlingly unhinged performance at a news conference Wednesday. He flatly declared he can “fire” everyone associated with the Mueller investigation if he wishes . . . . . then, after a reporter pressed Trump on whether his declaration that he is a “nationalist” amounted to an embrace of white nationalism . . . . [Trump] dress[ed] down a black reporter’s question (Trump was also very abusive toward another black female reporter, April Ryan) about his white nationalism as “racist.” Given that these groups are already emboldened by the ongoing mainstreaming of their views at the hands of Trump and others, this is just an extraordinary act of malicious and destructive intent. There is a tendency after big electoral victories such as the one last night to grow a bit complacent, to imagine that a semblance of normalcy has been restored. In multiple ways, Trump reminded us today that we can’t relax even for a second.

I remain convinced that, if allowed to do his job, Mueller will likely expose massive money laundering operations involving Trump and his organizations and Russians and perhaps even treason.  Crimes that would put Trump in prison for the rest of his life and see Ivanka and Donnie Jr. spend many years in prison along with him.  The Mueller investigation must be protected at all costs.

John Brennan: Trump’s Claims of No Collusion Are Hogwash

Yesterday in a peevish temper tantrum akin to something one would have expected from Adolph Hitler, Josef Stalin, or tin pot African dictator, Donald Trump revoked the security clearance for former CIA Director, John Brennan.  Why?  Simply because Brennan has been criticizing Der Trumpenführer and telling the truth, including the truth about Trump's betrayal of America.   Others are on Trump's target list for the same reason that they are challenging Trumps perpetual lies and placing country - and I would argue decency and morality - above party loyalty.  In a column in the New York Times Brennan assails Trump's action and calls on loyal, truly patriotic Americans to demand answers and support the Robert Mueller through to its logical conclusion, which, I believe, with document Trump/Pence criminal conspiracies with Russia/Vladimir Putin and, likely, treason.  Here are column excerpts:

When Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s internal security service, told me during an early August 2016 phone call that Russia wasn’t interfering in our presidential election, I knew he was lying. Over the previous several years I had grown weary of Mr. Bortnikov’s denials of Russia’s perfidy — about its mistreatment of American diplomats and citizens in Moscow, its repeated failure to adhere to cease-fire agreements in Syria and its paramilitary intervention in eastern Ukraine, to name just a few issues.

When I warned Mr. Bortnikov that Russian interference in our election was intolerable and would roil United States-Russia relations for many years, he denied Russian involvement in any election, in America or elsewhere, with a feigned sincerity that I had heard many times before. President Vladimir Putin of Russia reiterated those denials numerous times over the past two years, often to Donald Trump’s seeming approval.
Russian denials are, in a word, hogwash.

Before, during and after its now infamous meddling in our last presidential election, Russia practiced the art of shaping political events abroad through its well-honed active measures program, which employs an array of technical capabilities, information operations and old-fashioned human intelligence spycraft. Electoral politics in Western democracies presents an especially inviting target, as a variety of politicians, political parties, media outlets, think tanks and influencers are readily manipulated, wittingly and unwittingly, or even bought outright by Russian intelligence operatives. The very freedoms and liberties that liberal Western democracies cherish and that autocracies fear have been exploited by Russian intelligence services not only to collect sensitive information but also to distribute propaganda and disinformation, increasingly via the growing number of social media platforms.

Having worked closely with the F.B.I. over many years on counterintelligence investigations, I was well aware of Russia’s ability to work surreptitiously within the United States, cultivating relationships with individuals who wield actual or potential power. . . . . They troll political, business and cultural waters in search of gullible or unprincipled individuals who become pliant in the hands of their Russian puppet masters. Too often, those puppets are found.

We knew that Russian intelligence services would do all they could to achieve their objectives, which the United States intelligence community publicly assessed a few short months later were to undermine public faith in the American democratic process, harm the electability of the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, and show preference for Mr. Trump. We also publicly assessed that Mr. Putin’s intelligence services were following his orders.

The already challenging work of the American intelligence and law enforcement communities was made more difficult in late July 2016, however, when Mr. Trump, then a presidential candidate, publicly called upon Russia to find the missing emails of Mrs. Clinton. By issuing such a statement, Mr. Trump was not only encouraging a foreign nation to collect intelligence against a United States citizen, but also openly authorizing his followers to work with our primary global adversary against his political opponent.

While I had deep insight into Russian activities during the 2016 election, I now am aware — thanks to the reporting of an open and free press — of many more of the highly suspicious dalliances of some American citizens with people affiliated with the Russian intelligence services.

Mr. Trump’s claims of no collusion are, in a word, hogwash.

The only questions that remain are whether the collusion that took place constituted criminally liable conspiracy, whether obstruction of justice occurred to cover up any collusion or conspiracy, and how many members of “Trump Incorporated” attempted to defraud the government by laundering and concealing the movement of money into their pockets.

Mr. Trump clearly has become more desperate to protect himself and those close to him, which is why he made the politically motivated decision to revoke my security clearance in an attempt to scare into silence others who might dare to challenge him.

Now more than ever, it is critically important that the special counsel, Robert Mueller, and his team of investigators be allowed to complete their work without interference — from Mr. Trump or anyone else — so that all Americans can get the answers they so rightly deserve.

I remain amazed at how many Republican "friends" refuse to open their eyes to reality.  Are they so driven by racial animosity and/or fear of loss of white privilege that they will ignore treason and conspiring with a hostile foreign power?  The moral bankruptcy and willingness to support a man who operates like a Mafia crime boss is mind-numbing.

“Dirty Rubles”: Trump is an Existential Threat to America

One of the problems with keeping up with the Trump/Pence Russiagate scandal is the plethora of different threads to the story line.  Other than political junkies, many lack the time or the patience to try to stay on top of what is happening and the accumulating evidence that things are very rotten in America in 2018. Trump, of course adds to the confusion via his endless tweet storms aimed at distraction, especially whenever damaging news is leaking. I have noted how it now seems that America is lying a real life spy novel.  Now, a new book, "Dirty Rubles" pieces the multiple story lines together and paints a very damning portrait not only of Trump - and his lie repeater, Mike Pence - but the larger GOP that he believes is complicit in the Russiagate scandal.  A piece in Salon looks at the book with an interview of its author.  Here are some highlights:

Americans would do themselves a gigantic favor by reading the new nonfiction book from acclaimed novelist Greg Olear, “Dirty Rubles: An Introduction to Trump/Russia.”

Olear brings his sharp literary scalpel to what promises to emerge as one of America’s most enormous and consequential scandals, operating under the belief that it takes a novelist’s ability to understand and tell stories to truly capture the essence of the “stranger than fiction” Trump-Russia conspiracy. The result is a riveting, infuriating and, against all the odds, uplifting book. It's essential reading for all Americans, especially those in the apathetic majority who view Russian meddling in U.S. elections as insignificant.

I recently interviewed Olear about “Dirty Rubles.”

I think it’s hard for people to square the avuncular guy on TV who cracked jokes and fired people with the real Donald J. Trump. The truth is, the guy’s been mobbed up for decades, with ties to both La Cosa Nostra and Russian organized crime. Trump is a money launderer for the latter, and has been for quite some time. “Money laundering” sounds cute, like something Danny Ocean and his merry men do, but it’s a euphemism for something unspeakable. The Russian mob has become so vast and successful because it eagerly participates in the worst of the worst: human trafficking, child pornography, sex slavery, opioids, illegal arms deals, blood diamonds — all the grisly, awful stuff that Trump accuses MS-13 of doing. By taking those dirty rubles and making them legitimate, Trump is a party to all of that.

The media also likes to forget that Trump is a serial rapist and sexual predator. We can use the “allegedly” qualifier if you like, but he has bragged about this on many occasions. There are more than 20 accusers now, and I believe them.

The kompromat, by the way, does not involve tinkling Moscow prostitutes, but far more heinous activities. This is a person who sexually assaulted a reporter from People magazine at his house -- while his wife was home. You don’t think he’s capable of greater depravity halfway around the world, when he thinks no one is watching?

Treason is a vague term. Unlike rape or murder or even petty larceny, it’s not visceral. But it’s the worst crime there is, because Trump actively betrayed 330 million Americans. He conspired with the Russians to contaminate the election, he lied about it, he continues to lie about it, and we have yet to find out exactly what he has promised his Russian master. I’d like to think that Americans across the political spectrum would agree that the POTUS should not be a compromised asset of the Russian Federation.

Helsinki reaffirmed what I’ve known for two years, and what Hillary told us in the debate: Trump is Putin’s puppet. Has a powerful world leader ever presented as submissively, as weakly, as Trump did in Finland? He makes Neville Chamberlain look like Rambo.

Real estate is a good way to launder money, as Trump well knows. Another is campaign finance. So much dark money, so many ways to donate anonymously. It seems clear now, given the latest round of indictments, that Russian money was funneled into the Republican National Committe via the NRA and other avenues. Anyone who took that money is complicit. This is why the Paul Ryans and Dana Rohrabachers and Devin Nuneses of the world have gone to great lengths to throw water on the Mueller investigation, in my estimation. And why so many GOP members of Congress are retiring. They are not trying to save Trump; they are trying to save themselves.

Trump/Russia is a complicated story, with a bunch of different threads. It’s just like a novel — except that it more or less proves the old saw about truth being stranger than fiction.

My book doesn’t cover any new ground. It takes the stuff we already know and gives it narrative structure, to make it easier to absorb for readers lucky enough not to know the difference between Sergei Lavrov and Sergei Gorkov. That’s all I’m trying to do. I’m not David Corn, a seasoned Washington bureau chief with sources out the wazoo. I’m not James Comey, who has intimate first-hand knowledge of the events.

And I’m certainly not Michael Wolff, who basically crashed the Trump party and wrote about it in a lurid but lame way. I’m a long-form writer who has carefully followed Trump/Russia, who has written and tweeted about it for almost two years — who has done the research, as a historical novelist might say — and I’m telling the story the best way I know how to tell it. I’m perfectly, if not uniquely, qualified to do that.

As I wrote in the book, Donald Trump comprises the gravest existential threat to the republic since the Civil War. That is not hyperbole. But here’s the thing: if the American experiment is going to end, it won’t be because of that fucking guy. In that, I have the fullest confidence.

Another Big Shoe Drops in the Mueller Probe

One thing that supporters of Der Trumpenführer - including far too many Congressional Republicans - seemingly do not want to discuss is how their claims that the Mueller probe is a "witch hunt" simply do not match up with the number of individuals in the Trump orbit, including some involved in the 2016 campaign, who continue to cop guilty pleas.   Congressional Republicans and many in their brain dead base want renewed investigations of Hillary Clinton, yet don't bat an eye that Trump apparently surrounded himself with a bunch of criminals.  Given Trump's past in New York City and elsewhere, of course, his affinity for criminals should come as little or no surprise.  Trump's nouveau riche status was never the only reason old New York society finds Trump so distasteful.  Now, one of Trump consigliere Michael Cohen's business partners has likewise agreed to take a plea and cooperate with prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's office in the Southern District of New York.  This event doesn't bode well for Cohen or Der Trumpenführer.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post:  

When it comes to seminal moments in the Russia investigation that we will one day look back upon, Tuesday could be one.

The Post's Rosalind S. Helderman confirms that Michael Cohen's one-time business partner, Evgeny "Gene" Freidman (a.k.a. the "Taxi King"), has reached a plea deal with prosecutors and will cooperate with the government (the news was first reported by The New York Times):

Evgeny “Gene” Freidman, an immigrant from the former Soviet Union long known as the “taxi king” of New York, pleaded guilty to criminal tax fraud in Albany County Court. He is a former business partner of Cohen who managed taxis owned by the president’s lawyer for several years.

Both the timing and the circumstances are key. Freidman faced allegations that he failed to pay $5 million in taxes, including four counts of tax fraud and one of grand larceny. As part of the deal, he will serve no jail time. That suggests that he has been able to provide information of some value when it comes to Cohen, who is widely seen as a target for prosecutors to, in turn, flip against Trump.

“Do you understand the nature of the benefit your attorneys have accomplished on your behalf?” Judge Peter Lynch asked Freidman on Tuesday, according to the Times. That question that should frighten both Cohen and President Trump's legal team.

There is no official indication that Freidman has agreed to inform specifically on Cohen, but it's not difficult to connect the dots. . . . . If anybody knows about what Cohen has done wrong, Freidman may have been the most likely candidate — especially if Cohen did keep Trump in the dark about his Stormy Daniels payment and other matters.

Just as it has been clear that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was a target for flipping against Trump, Cohen's fate seems to revolve around whether he might be pressured into taking a deal, like Freidman was.

Cohen has said that won't happen, and Trump wagered last month that Cohen won't flip. But it looks increasingly like we're about to find out just how much pressure Cohen can withstand.

Money launderers and tax cheats - not to mention those with suspicious Russian ties - are the norm in Trump's orbit.  One can only imagine what Trump and/or his family members have done. 

Court Rejects Manafort’s Bid To Have Case Dismissed

In other bad news for Der Trumpenführer, who continues to bleat that special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation is a "witch hunt" and that there was "no collusion with Russia," a federal court refused to dismiss criminal charges against Trump's main Russia contact, Paul Manafort.  Indeed, the judge found the investigation of Manafort to be within the scope of Mueller's investigation and that Manafort was a natural person of interest given his lengthy and slimy relations with Kremlin backed figures.  The court's refusal to dismiss the case will increase the pressure on Manafort to strike a deal and go state's evidence against Trump and others in the campaign - let's hope Pence is included - who sought to coordinate with the Putin backed interference in the 2016 presidential election.  Here are highlights from CNN:

Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Tuesday rejected former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's attempt to invalidate the criminal case against him in Washington.

Manafort had claimed special counsel Robert Mueller's appointment order was too broad, and thus his investigation had overstepped its legal authority.

But Berman Jackson concluded for several reasons that Mueller's investigation and prosecution of Manafort is legal -- and that the special counsel still can maintain some independence while working within the Department of Justice.

"It bears emphasizing at this stage that Manafort is presumed to be innocent of these charges, and it will be the prosecution's burden to prove him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But the indictment will not be dismissed, and the matter will proceed to trial," Berman Jackson wrote in her opinion Tuesday.

She added that it was appropriate for federal investigators to look into Manafort's business connections in Russia and Ukraine while Mueller's office investigated possible coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

"Who had connections to the Russian government? Who attended meetings on behalf of the campaign?" Berman Jackson wrote. "Given the combination of his prominence within the campaign and his ties to Ukrainian officials supported by and operating out of Russia, as well as to Russian oligarchs, Manafort was an obvious person of interest."

"The Special Counsel would have been remiss to ignore such an obvious potential link between the Trump campaign and the Russian government," she wrote later in the opinion.

Manafort is scheduled for trial in DC in September. . . . Berman Jackson previously dismissed a civil lawsuit Manafort had attempted to use to undercut Mueller's authority.

Why Democrats Must Take Control of the House

While many progressive remain hopefully optimistic that a blue wave in the 2018 midterm elections will see control of the House of Representatives shift to Democrat control, a piece in Slate underscores why  this is so important in terms of halting Donald Trump's horrific agenda.  Better yet, it could lead to the Trump/Russia ties and/or money laundering efforts finally see the light of day.  While many often hear the refrain that this is the most important election cycle, this time, it is really true.  Hence why Democrats need to use care and an over the top ground game to get voters to the polls in November.  Here are article highlights:

If President Trump hates Bob Mueller so much, why doesn’t he have him fired?

For most Republicans, the concern over firing Mueller is that it would incite a backlash in the 2018 midterm elections, costing them unified control of Congress and imperiling their policy objectives.

But for [Trump] the president, the concerns are much more personal. A Democratic takeover would be catastrophic. Instantly, the House would be converted into a hive of investigatory bodies. In a Democratic House, the grand Washington battle will no longer be Trump versus Mueller. It will be Trump versus 21 subpoena-wielding House committee chairmen, played out in public on a 24-hour televised loop.

Unlike a legislative agenda, executive oversight can be prosecuted by just one chamber. Taking control of the House would empower Democratic committee chairmen to aggressively pursue every aspect of the president’s personal and political interests.

There are 21 House committees that endow their chairmen with subpoena power. Some require a committee vote and/or consultation with the ranking minority member, but none endow the minority with veto power. The expansive subpoena power of Congress is limited only by countervailing constitutional rights. For example, Congress cannot force a witness to waive her right not to incriminate herself. Otherwise, Congress can compel testimony, and the production of documents, from any government employee or private citizen in America.

A House committee can initiate inquiries into any area within its jurisdiction. This investigative authority, and the subpoena power through which it is advanced, has mostly lain dormant in the 115^th Congress. When Republicans have exercised their subpoena power, it has mostly been in the service of defending the president against Mueller’s investigation. But that could change in the blink of an eye, as Trump has surely been advised by some old Washington hand.

When it comes to opportunities for congressional oversight, the Trump administration provides what military strategists call a target-rich environment.

The Ways and Means Committee could sharpen the national discussion around tax fairness by subpoenaing President Trump’s tax returns. As the 2018 elections draw near, that committee could convene hearings to educate the public on how Trump’s sabotage of Obamacare will send consumers’ health insurance premiums soaring.

The Financial Services Committee, chaired by Rep. Maxine Waters, a favorite target of Trump’s invective, could exercise its authority to investigate the phenomenon of foreign oligarchs laundering ill-gotten gains through purchases of luxury condominiums in hot markets, including through Trump-owned buildings in New York and Miami.

Now imagine a pajama-clad President Trump gazing in horror at the trio of TV monitors in the presidential bedroom, one showing Jared Kushner being grilled on his never-ending security-clearance-application corrections and amendments, while the second displays Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin attempting to defend his addiction to first-class flights, and the third presents a tableau of heartland factory workers displaced by the Bush steel tariffs of 2002. Consider the president’s unbridled anger as he watches a cable-news version of This Is Your Life, a procession of Cabinet secretaries, disgraced former White House officials, unpaid construction contractors, disqualified eligible voters, terrified Dreamers, abandoned factory workers, and colorful NDA signatories, all led by Democratic House committee chairs, many of whom Trump has traduced in nasty personal terms.

With that image in mind, you can see why Trump stops short of firing Mueller. If a rash decision to dispatch the special counsel costs Republicans their House majority, the president will subject himself to a ceaseless barrage of charges, confessions, and revelations. For Trump, that’s the nightmare scenario.

Of course, Trump's nightmare scenario would be my dream come true.