The potential for a stand-off exists that will
confound any effort to untangle these things, and I can see how that might lead
to an extraordinary crisis in which Mr. Trump has to declare some form of
emergency or perhaps martial law to clean out this suppurating abscess of
illegality and sedition. That can only be the last and worst resort, but what
if the US judicial system just can’t manage to clean up the mess it has made?
Watergate
had tragic Shakespearean overtones, with Nixon as King Lear, but Russia-Gate —
perhaps the last gate America goes through on its giant slalom run to collapse
— is but a Chinese Fire Drill writ large. The reason? In 1973, we were still a
serious people. Today, the most lavishly credentialed elite in history believe
the most preposterous “stories,” or, surely even worse, pretend to believe them for
political advantage.
Now,
an epic battle of wills is setting up as Robert Mueller’s investigation concludes
its business and its primary target, the Golden Golem of Greatness, girds his
loins to push back. Behind the flimsy scrim of Russia collusion accusations
stands a bewildering maze of criminal mischief by a matrix of federal agencies
that lost control of their own dark operation to meddle in the 2016 election.
The US intel community (CIA, NSA, FBI, etc), with the Department of Justice,
all colluded with the Hillary Clinton campaign and the intel agencies of the UK
and Australia, to derail Mr. Trump as a stooge of Russia and, when he shocked
them by getting elected, mounted a desperate campaign to cover their asses
knowing he had become their boss. The Obama White House was involved in all
this, attempting to cloak itself in plausible deniability, which may be
unwinding now, too. How might all this play out from here?
One
big mystery is how long will Mr. Trump wait to declassify any number of secret
files, memoranda, and communications that he’s been sitting on for months. My
guess is that this stuff amounts to a potent weapon against his adversaries and
he will wait until Mr. Mueller releases a final report before declassifying it.
Then, we’ll have a fine constitutional crisis as the two sides vie for some
sort of adjudication. Who, for instance, will adjudicate the monkey business
that is already on-the-record involving misdeeds in the Department of Justice
itself? Will the DOJ split into two contesting camps, each charging the other?
How might that work? Does the Acting Attorney General Mr. Whitaker seek
indictments against figures such as Bruce Ohr, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, et
al. Will he also rope in intel cowboys John Brennan and James Clapper? Might
Hillary find herself in jeopardy — all the while on the other side Mr. Mueller
pursues his targets, characters like Mr. Manafort, Michael Cohen, and the
hapless Carter Page?
Or
might Mr. Mueller, and others, possibly find themselves in trouble, as
spearheads of a bad-faith campaign to weaponize government agencies against a
sitting president? That might sound outlandish, but the evidence is adding up.
In fact the evidence of a Deep State gone rogue is far more compelling than any
charges Mr. Mueller has so far produced on Trump-Russia “collusion.” An example
of bad faith is former FBI Director James Comey’s current campaign to avoid
testifying in closed session before the House Judiciary and Oversight
committees — he filed a motion just before Thanksgiving. Mr. Comey is
pretending that an open session would be “transparent.” His claim is
mendacious. If he were questioned about classified matters in an open session,
he would do exactly what he did before in open session: decline to answer about
“sensitive” matters on the basis of national security. He could make no such
claims in a closed session. The truth is, his attorneys are trying to run out
the clock on the current composition of the house committees, which will come
under a Democrat majority in January, so that Mr. Comey can avoid testifying
altogether.
There
are other dicey matters awaiting some kind of adjudication elsewhere. For
instance, who is going to review the chain of decisions among the FISA judges
who approved of warrants made in bad faith to spy on US citizens? Perhaps the
shrinking violet, Mr. Huber, out in the Utah Prosecutor’s Office of the DOJ, is
looking into all that. He’s been at something for most of the year (nobody
knows what). He has to answer to Mr. Whitaker now, or the permanent AG who
replaces him. And why is Mr. Trump dragging his heels on nominating a permanent
AG? I suppose the FISA court matter will fall to the Supreme Court, but how
does that process work, and how long might it take?
The
potential for a stand-off exists that will confound any effort to untangle
these things, and I can see how that might lead to an extraordinary crisis in
which Mr. Trump has to declare some form of emergency or perhaps martial law to
clean out this suppurating abscess of illegality and sedition. That can only be
the last and worst resort, but what if the US judicial system just can’t manage
to clean up the mess it has made?