July 14, 2020--Seven to Two

The first wave of phone calls, texts, and emails I received right after the Supreme Court late last week ruled that even the president is not above the law, that he must respond to subpoenas, and can be held accountable for any felonious activities in which he may have been involved, all the people I heard from were ecstatic, many claiming this would finally assure Trump's downfall.

A few hours later, after everyone had their fill of watching events unfold on CNN and MSNBC (Fox News devoted little programming time to cover this historic ruling) the tone of those who stayed in touch with me changed. 

Where earlier there had been euphoria I sensed the beginning of frustration.

"What's going on with you?" I asked a friend who just hours before had been the most enthusiastic, "I thought you were on happy pills. Now you sound as if you're headed for deep despair?"

In a flat voice she said, "Since we spoke I've been listening to cable news and everyone, their legal experts especially, say none of Trump's tax documents will be available to the public before Election Day. He and his henchmen will be able to run out the clock. The political effect will be nonexistent. I'm turning off the TV or will look for an episode of Friends to lose myself in."

"Before you pack it in," I said, "Be sure you're keeping your eye on the prize."

"What's that?" she said.

"The big picture," I said, "The historic nature of the Court's ruling. People will read about this 100 years from now. Just as we think about and read about Supreme Court decisions during the Watergate era. Like the Supreme Court ruling that Nixon was not above the law and thus needed to turn over to prosecutors the tapes he made while in the Oval Office."

I continued, now feeling euphoric myself, "Remember how through the seemingly endless years of the Trump administration we said that the most important checks-and-balances guard rail would turn out to be our justice system? That ultimately all the big questions would be resolved by the federal courts? Particularly as with Nixon and Clinton, who while still president was required by the Supreme Court to testify under oath, we speculated that soon equivalent matters would find their way to the highest court for resolution. Well, that's where we are now--the most important issues are being dealt with by the Supremes and, based on their rulings thus far, there are reasons to believe that Trump will eventually be bought before the bar of justice. Since, though he is president, he is still, according to the Constitution, just a citizen."

"I see your point," my friend said, "It is all about the precedents. The reassertion that even with an authoritarian like Trump the law will eventually find him and hold him accountable."

"That's the hope," I said. "Though I'll acknowledge there's still a ways to go. But we're finally heading in a good direction. And, by the way, the fact that the vote was 7 to 2, with Trump's two judges voting with the majority, suggests there may be a lot to feel good about."

February 4, 2020--Impeachment Post Mortem

As our president once so eloquently put it, "Who gives a shit about Ukraine?"

Other countries were on his shit list, but it turned out that Ukraine would wind up in the headlines and at the center of his impeachment, which will be resolved tomorrow when the Senate votes to find him not guilty of having committed high crimes and misdemeanors. 

He will have the boys over for a beer and then jump onboard Air Force One and head south and west on his exoneration tour.

It is likely to be nauseating so I recommend pulling the plug on your TV to block out MSNBC and CNN for at least a month. It will take more than that to recover.

While tuning out I suggest we force ourselves to do an impeachment forensic to ask how we got into this mess, especially how the Dems, sorry, screwed up and helped to bring it about. How we got snookered by Trump into impeaching him so he could take advantage of the foregone conclusion, knowing, as we should have, that the disposition would be that Trump would walk. 

Trump knew that, Mitch McConnell especially knew that, and even we knew that. 

It didn't take a neurosurgeon to add up how many votes the Democrats had (51) and that the Constitution stipulates two-thirds plus one senator (67) need to vote guilty to remove a president.

So what were we up to while seeking to find grounds to impeach and try Trump?

The usual--doing all we could to show how smart we are and how stupid the Republicans are. So by any rational measure we turned out to be clever and lost while the Republicans, not interested in rational measures, proved to be stupid and won. 

Great.

We knew that at most we'd get perhaps two Republicans to break ranks and that Mitch would get all but two from his caucus. (Though I suspect Susan Collins will vote with her colleagues to acquit Trump. Mitch in return will pay her off with a couple of more Zumwalt-class destroyers to be built at the Iron Works in Bath, Maine.)

Here's how Trump did it--

He knew Dems in the House had their eyes wide open, looking for something to grab onto, anything to launch the impeachment process. Trump knew that whatever they came up with for their Articles wouldn't matter. With Mitch fulminating and twisting arms, he'd easily defeat them in the Senate and remain in office. He was gambling that getting impeached, especially for something exotic like hanky-panky in Ukraine, would sound like a witch hunt to his fervent base and assure he would be exonerated and his favorability poll numbers, like Clinton's, would rise.

Nancy Pelosi knew Trump was setting a trap and for months resisted allowing her committee chairmen and women to begin an inquiry.

Her strategy was working until Trump dangled Ukraine in front of them.

Here's how that worked--

Trump learned that there was a whistle-blower report that outlined how Trump and his senior staff were attempting to blackmail the new president of Ukraine, holding up the delivery of already approved military equipment until President Zelensky announced that he was going to begin an investigation into Hunter and Joe Biden's allegedly corrupt dealings in Ukraine.

To ensnare the Democrats, who were eager to initiate their own investigation--this one into Trump--he declassified notes of a phone call with Zelensky in which he asked the Ukrainian president to do "us a favor, though" by looking into what the Bidens were up to.

In other words he got the impeachment process going by revealing the smoking gun at the outset. That was brilliant. He turned Watergate on its head by in effect confessing up front. This released him from needing to concentrate on every aspect of the prosecution's case and thus he was free to lash out unfettered.

The Democrats took that bait and Nancy Pelosi had no recourse but to allow the inquiry. 

The Democratic House managers were well prepared and presented an open-and-shut case. The only problem was that more than half the "jurors," all the Republicans in the House, had their minds already made up and his attacks on the process were unrelenting. (For the sake of fairness, virtually all the Democrats also had their minds made up before the inquiry began.)

So it became a reality show. Something about which Trump knows more than a little.

Again, none is this is arcane or difficult to figure out. The difference is that the Dems got lost in the details of the narrative and the evidence that they unearthed and wove into their Articles of Impeachment. The Republicans ignored the evidence and didn't challenge Trump's lawyers' lies. The GOP kept their eyes on the prize--again, winning. Feeling good about our virtue, many progressives assumed our familiar role as losers in these kinds of ugly confrontations.

As disturbing as it is, it is essential to do the forensics because if we are to rescue our country from Trump and his crowd, we need to know how this happened and how we became our own worst enemies. An all too familiar phenomenon.

April 23, 2019--Impeachment

And now the I-word.

It is clear from his report that Robert Mueller did not feel comfortable indicting Trump for obstruction of justice though the case for it in the report is much stronger than the uncertainty about its appropriateness or legality.

There is that Justice Department policy that states that sitting presidents cannot be indicted. It is a policy, not a law passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Count, a "policy," never challenged in any court. And not an ancient one at that. 

It does not go back to the Founders but rather was written in just 2000 at the end of the Clinton administration. After Watergate and the impeachment of Bill Clinton. After decades of special prosecutors.

In his peport Mueller presents an overwhelming case for obstruction of justice but punts what should be done about the evidence to Congress. In the initial instance to the House of Representatives which has the constitutional authority to initiate impeachments.

It should thus be clear, again from Mueller's mountain of evidence, that the House Judiciary Committee should get right to it.

But then there is politics.

It is evident that Nancy Pelosi is not enthusiastic about the prospect of Democrats taking responsibility for the process. 

She has laid out a number of thresholds that need to be crossed before she would allow that to happen. The one that is an easy deal-breaker is that impeachment hearings should not commence until the prospect for articles of impeachment are bipartisan. This means the Democrats should not move ahead until there is Republican support.

The likelihood of that, as my Aunt Madeline would say, is "zero, less than zero."

Unspoken but evident is the historical evidence that the Republicans, who controlled both the House and Senate in 1998 and moved aggressively to impeach Bill Clinton, lost seats in both and also the speakership when Newt Gingrich, who was held responsible for the debacle, was unceremoniously dumped. 

It is agreed that by taking a partisan approach to impeaching Clinton, Republicans paid a huge price. Pelosi wants to avoid a similar circumstance.

During the impeachment debate and subsequent trial in the Senate Clinton's popularity soared 10 percentage points. He was already quite popular but still his favorability numbers rose to about 70 percent. 

So Speaker Pelosi and the House senior leadership, including Congressman Jerry Nadler, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, are nervous about moving toward impeachment, fearing that Trump will see a similar bump up in popularity. His people and others will see this as an effort to overthrow the results of the 2016 presidential election and thus Democratic overreach.

To me, though, this is not a sufficient reason to avoid the issue of impeachment.

First, Trump is no Clinton. A majority of voters liked Clinton but fewer than 30 percent feel the same way about Trump. A poll from Monday morning showed Trump's approval numbers falling six points, down to 37 percent after the release of the Mueller report.

Then, though the economy is currently doing well for the top 10 percent, a large majority are not feeling as positively about their well being as they did in Clinton's day where not only were many millions of jobs created but the federal budget deficit was wiped out. In fact, there were annual surpluses.

Yet the concern about losing congressional seats is at the heart of the Democrats' political fears.

Then there are the profiles-in-courage constitutional reasons why it may be important to move to impeach Trump.

Our constitutional system is one where checks and balances define what is unique about our democracy. They are designed to check and balance any attempt by any of the three separate branches of our government to overwhelm and dominate the others.

Our system is designed to limit the power of Congress, the courts, and most potentially concerning the administration, the presidency.

We fought the Revolution to overthrow tyranny and wrote a constitution to marshal forces against that ever happening in the United States of America.

To impeach Trump would be a reminder about what ur Founders intended and what makes us special and kept us strong.

The Mueller report exposes Trump's disregard for constitutional government. It calls for the preeminent branch, Congress, to confront this. It reminds us that ours is a "constitutional system of checks and balances and the principal that no person is about the law." Including, especially, not the president.

I therefore say impeachment must be on the table.

February 21, 2019--Putin

The Mueller investigation is reaching a crescendo. 

The New York Times story that yesterday was widely read and circulated revealed how Trump for more than two years has attempted to cover up and undermine that investigation. In fact it shows how Trump attempted to have Mueller fired, as if that would pull the plug on it. He forgot to recall how when Nixon fired almost everyone during the Saturday Night Massacre it didn't end the Watergate crisis but instead was like adding an accelerant such as gasoline to an already smoldering fire.

For some time I have been arguing here that though Mueller and the Attorney General might be fired, minimally, what Mueller has unearthed will come to light. I feel certain that he or members of his team have copied emerging iterations of their report on a jump drive and, if all else fails, will make sure the public learns what they have uncovered.

All they need to do is make a copy on a thumb drive that would fit easily in a pocket, walk out the door, and call 1 800 New York Times. A version of the same thing Daniel Ellsberg did to circulate the formerly secret and devastating Pentagon Papers.

I also have speculated that as his work begins to wrap up, as an additional strategy to make sure the public and Congress is informed, he will begin to allow the leaking of key findings. To that end, I suspect someone high up in Mueller's operation is the key source for the Times story.

So expect more leaks and ultimately copies of the full report. Bootleg if necessary. 

It is possible that the new Attorney General, Robert Barr, will act honorably, not seeing himself as former acting AG, Matt Whitaker, perceived to be his role--Trump's protector. As he was quoted in the Times, Whitaker was the person designated to "jump on a grenade" for Trump. Which incidentally he did not do when asked to by his president.

And while Mueller is at it, in addition to the 25 Russians and three Russian companies he has already charged with crimes, why not, as Rona wryly suggested yesterday morning, indict Vladimir Putin? Though he would not be extradited to face trial in the United States, it would make quite a statement about how we view the rule of law and, though our president is, we aren't Putin's puppets.

September 6, 2018--Duh

So with the imminent publication of Watergate hero, Bob Woodward's long-awaited book about the first year-and-a-half of the Trump presidency, Fear: Trump In the White House, what are we eager to learn that is new, that we didn't already get from Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, or Omarosa's Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House?

From what has been leaked--and a lot has been--it appears not that much. 

Thus far the juiciest tidbits tell of things like Chief Economic Advisor, Gary Cohen, snatching from Trump's Oval Office desk documents he was about to sign out of fear that if he were to do so the global economic consequences would be catastrophic. 

But most of what we learn from Woodward are a spate of new insults either directed toward Trump by senior staff and advisors as well as others that Trump came up with, especially those directed at poor Jeff Sessions.

Trump is an "idiot," a "liar," "dumb," a "little baby," while Session and others are "little rats," "mentally retarded," or a "dumb Southerner."

The president is also revealed to mock Session's Alabama accent--even imitating it--claiming he can't understand the Attorney General because he talks like he has "marbles in his mouth." 

Good luck to Trump with securing the solid-South's electoral votes if he runs for reelection.

From Nixon to Obama we turned to Woodward's six-foot shelf of inside-the-White-House books. Now, before he could get his latest to Amazon and then they to us, most of the good stuff is already on the record.

Oh, there is one thing--

In Wolff's book Trump staffers are quoted as saying he's like a "six-year-old." In Woodward's he's compared to a "fifth or sixth grader."

In "Crazytown," (Woodward's phrase for Trump World) I suppose this represents progress. 

So duh? Is this business as usual? Nothing much new? In many ways yes. But then again, with his well-deserved stature, because Woodward pretty much plows the same field as the others he legitimatizes their gossiper books. 

And thus the picture of Trump and his White House is becoming complete. What remains, to quote Woodward again, are the Final Days.

April 12, 2018--Watergate History Lesson

Who knows. 

Before I finish drafting this we may be at war with Syria and Russia; Paul Ryan will have a $5.0-million-a-year job with Goldman Sachs; Devin Nunes will be in line to become the new Speaker of the House; Ron Rosenstein, Jeff Sessions, and Robert Mueller will have been fired; the tariffs we and China have been spatting about will have been rolled back or ramped up; Ron Pruitt will be the new Attorney General; and North Korea will have cancelled the anticipated meeting with Donald Trump. 

And, I almost forgot, Michael Cohen will have "flipped" and will become Mueller's latest star witness. No more "taking a bullet" for Trump for Cohen. However, there will be nothing new to report about Stormy Daniels. 

But the day is still young.

In case we still have a country left when I get up from typing, allow me to again remind those younger than I (which is about everyone) how Richard Nixon's Watergate troubles ended.

As the noose was tightening on him the tapes of White House conversations were subpoenaed by special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Nixon resisted releasing them. He ordered Attorney General Eliot Richardson to fire Cox. He refused and was fired. 

Nixon next ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, second in command at the Department of Justice, to fire Cox. He too refused and, on the evening of October 20, 1973, was fired.

The Saturday Night Massacre was under way.

Third in line was Solicitor General Robert Bork. Nixon ordered him to fire Cox and, after giving it some thought, ever-ambitious Bork agreed to do so. Cox was fired and quickly cleared out his office. But he did speak to the press and in an impassioned statement asked, "Whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people to decide."

Nixon next, with Bork's backing, attempted to thwart the appointment of a new special prosecutor, but the courts ruled that the special prosecutor had the power to prosecute the president and also ruled that Cox had been illegally fired. He thus ordered the president to appoint someone to take Cox's place. 

Reluctantly, Nixon then appointed Leon Jaworski, who continued the investigation in a fair and impartial way and ultimately cooperated with the House of Representative's Judiciary Committee which moved to impeach Nixon.

But before the committee could complete its work Nixon, urged to do so by senior Republican members of Congress, on August 9, 1974, resigned the presidency.

Lesson--

Above all be patient. It took 26 months from the time of the Watergate break in to Nixon's resignation. It took 15 months from the time Cox was appointed and Nixon resigned.

Mueller and his team have been at their investigation for only 11 months. I know most of us would like this work to be completed and Trump back in Trump Tower (assuming the fire is out) or the Metropolitan Correctional Center. But none of this will happen quickly.

I have been saying for some time here that it will all come down to November's midterm election. If the Democrats take control of the House, Trump will be publicly investigated (regardless of Mueller's fate) and soon after that impeached. However, he is unlikely to be found guilty by two-thrids of the 100 senators, but his impeachment alone should lead either to a Nixon-like resignation or, if he seeks reelection, defeat at the polls in November 2020.

Which means, beginning now, that we all have to redouble our efforts to elect Democrats this fall.

Archibald Cox

January 25, 2018--Mueller's "Whitewash"

I have a Facebook friend who has been consistently pessimistic about everything involving Donald Trump and the fate of the world. Among other things he expects to see nuclear war with North Korea breaking out this year.

He is very angry and may be right on all counts as he is smart, successful, and well informed.

Here's a recent, slightly edited example from his postings--

I'm now worried that Mueller is going to do a whitewash. I cannot understand why he hasn't brought in Trump's lying son or Kushner and his wife. At first I thought it was because he knew if he did Trump would fire him. But now I don't know. They all need to go to jail if not for lying than for money laundering and tax evasion. They must be deterred from ever seeking public office. I'm worried.

Thinking about this and the list of witnesses Mueller has interviewed and is planning to seek testimony from, it is curious that the Kusners and Trump's sons are not on the list. Trump himself, though, clearly appears to be.

Traditionally with investigations and prosecutions of this kind, where there may be collusion, obstruction of justice, and conspiratorial behavior, prosecutors work their way up the witness food chain. From, in this case, the likes of George (Coffee Boy) Papadopoulos to Paul Manafort to Michael Flynn to Jeff Sessions to Steve Bannon and then on to members of Trump's inner-inner circle, including ultimately the president and his potentially implicatable family members.

So what is Mueller's logic of seemingly not seeking testimony from Trump's sons, daughter, and beloved son-in-law?

I've been struggling to make sense of these curious omissions and have finally come to what I now see to be very clever. This should have been apparent to me sooner as Mueller is nothing if not clever.

The special counsel is intentionally not planning to include the children in his investigation and thus will not charge them in his ultimate findings.

Keeping his eye on the big picture--Donald Trump and what he did that is potentially indictable or impeachable in order to cleanse the system, Mueller does not want to incite Trump even more than he is fulminating at present.

Mueller suspects that if he moves against any of the children, Trump will go off the rails and immediately pardon them, disband Mueller's team, and fire Attorney General Sessions and Mueller himself, precipitating a constitutional crises that will make Watergate look no more troubling than a parking ticket.

As a backup to a version of likely mass firings reminiscent of the Watergate Saturday Night Massacre, in addition, the main thing from a Mueller perspective, is to get enough work completed, enough evidence double and triple checked, enough of the mosaic of evidence pulled together into a coherent and convincing narrative, and to insure enough channels are in place to leak all of this to the public and Congress if it hits the fan before he completes his work. 

Mueller wants to make it certain that Americans get the full report of his findings. To, if necessary, leak them so no matter what Trump does to him and his staff, the truth will out.

The bottom line for the investigation and for us is what Trump knew and then did. If our democracy is to survive we need to know the peril in which we have been so that we can recover what has already been lost. Everything Mueller does should be viewed in this critical light.

December 4, 2017--Déjà Vu All Over Again

This Yogism rings true as the Mueller investigation closes in on the upper reaches of the Trump White House. 

To anyone old enough to remember the unraveling of the Watergate scandal more than 40 years ago, the recent defections from members of the Trump team will feel familiar---déjà vu all over again.

What eventually brought down the Nixon administration and led to the indictment or jailing of 40 of his associates was the squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, drip, drip, drip strategy. Just what we're seeing now.

In the case of Watergate, a smalltime player, former CIA agent James McCord, was caught with other burglars when breaking into the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex.

He was the first of the buglers to be convicted--on eight counts--and was facing many years of hard time in a federal prison. Just as he was to be sentenced, he informed the presiding judge that he and a story to tell. 

So a deal was stuck--McCord received a modest sentence in return for agreeing to blow the whistle on those above him in the Nixon administration hierarchy. Among them, White House counsel John Dean, who in turn made a deal to implicate those above him in the organization chart, also in return for a reduced sentence.

The special prosecutor continued to work his way up the food chain and many senior aides were successfully prosecuted. Nixon himself was listed as "an unindicted co-conspirator" and was forced to reign the presidency. And the rest was history.

Squeeze, squeeze, drip, drip.

Now we have exactly the same thing unfolding within the Trump administration.

First to be successfully squeezed was George Papadopoulos, a relatively minor player in the Trump campaign and transition. But someone the year before Trump listed as one of two of his "foreign policy advisors." Later, we know, disavowing him, Trump said Papadopoulos was so insignificant that he mainly remembers him as the intern who brought coffee to the principals. 

The other foreign policy "expert" Trump listed was the now-indicted, soon to be squeezed, Paul Manafort.

And a few days after that, Michael Flynn, a key advisor to Trump and his National Security Advisor for 24 days, stepped forward with the story he has to tell. That story, it is already being leaked, includes his assertion that, in regard to working with the Russians to defeat Hillary Clinton, he reported to and worked with son-in-law Jared Kushner. 

(Don't be surprised if it turns out that Lieutenant General Flynn tape recorded his calls with Kushner and who knows who else. He comes from a military intelligence background.)

If true, this would be incendiary because we already know who Jared reports to.

Then there is beloved daughter, Ivanka, who like her husband Jared, has also in recent months been relatively invisible. She and her family were not even in Florida with Trump and Melania during Thanksgiving.

With Flynn pleading guilty in large part to protect his chief of staff son from prosecution, with Jared and Ivanka and probably a Trump son or two in peril, it is getting to be Shakespearean. 

I'm thinking Lear. 

Trump already seems to be wandering around in a storm of his own devising. That appears to include stealth bombers right now moving closer to North Korea.

Even Trump was reported to say, "This is very, very, very bad."

I'd say, "It's very, very, very, very bad."

Michael Flynn & Michael Flynn Jr.

June 15, 2017--Jeff Sessions Takes the 5th

Well, not exactly. He didn't take the literal 5th Amendment against self-incrimination, but, for all intents and purposes, during his testimony in the Senate on Tuesday, he did a version of that.

When pressed by Democratic members of the Intelligence Committee to respond to questions about any conversations he may have had with President Trump about Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election, he said that to respond to private conversations with the president would for him, as Attorney General, be "inappropriate."

In effect, he assigned "executive privilege" to himself without calling it that.

This in itself was inappropriate as it is only the president who can claim executive privilege. And, as in the past, if a president does that--Trump thus far hasn't--the Supreme Court has ruled that it is not mentioned in the Constitution and is not an absolute power of the presidency. It does come close to that when national security is at stake. But it cannot be casually invoked when there is a criminal investigation underway. This was a key ruling during Watergate when Nixon resisted turning over his taped conversations to the special prosecutor.

With presumptuousness, the Attorney General, acknowledging that only presidents can invoke executive privilege, also said that he is "protecting the right of the president to assert it if he chooses." He's protecting the president's presidential right! That's not just presumptuousness, that's also chutzpah.

A criminal investigation may not be underway (yet) involving the Attorney General or the president; but if Sessions was not going to answer questions about conversations with the president, it is still not for him on his own initiative to assert a form of executive privilege.

Having said that, why am I suggesting that what Sessions did is analogous to taking the 5th?

Because it ended that line of inquiry as invoking the 5th Amendment does when someone who may or may not be the target of a criminal investigation refuses to answer questions that he or she claims might be incriminating.

Moving on from the technical, why then did Sessions refuse to answer questions of this kind?

If he did not have any conversations with the president about Russian involvement in our election, there would be no need to wall off any testimony about conversations that did not take place. One only builds a wall when there is something to contain and protect.

So, when asked if he had any such conversations, rather that saying it is inappropriate for him to talk about them, since they never happened (so he claimed), all he needed to do was say--

"We never had any conversations of this kind."

His not doing so makes one wonder about at least a couple of things--

He may be lying in an effort to protect himself and the president.

If he is attempting to do this he would not be the first Attorney General to do so. Nixon's first AG, John Mitchell, wound up in jail for his various roles in Watergate, from the initiation to the coverup.

Then, Sessions' conversations with President Trump about Russian involvement, if these in fact occurred, likely happened with more than the two of them alone in the Oval Office.

If so, this means, as special counsel Robert Mueller (who Trump already appears to be itching to fire) interrogates Trump campaign aides and current senior White House staff who were active in the campaign and had various levels of involvement with Russia, if one of more of them fears they are going to be prosecuted and if convicted spend years in jail, some, again as with Watergate, would surely look to make a deal with Mueller by throwing those above them in the chain of command under the bus. This would bring prosecutorial scrutiny up the hierarchy, all the way to the president.

As scrutiny works its way upward, just before getting to Trump, it would sweep in Sessions. Thus, Sessions does not want lying to Congress while under oath to be on the list of serious charges he may be facing six or ten months from now. For him, things are already bad enough.

Do I hear drip, drip, drip?

May 12, 2017--RussiaGate

Here's where this is headed.

But first a little history--

On June 17, 1972, James McCord was one of five burglars who were caught in the Watergate complex while breaking into and bugging the offices of the Democratic National Committee. Nearly a year later, on March 19, 1973, after being convicted of eight counts of conspiracy, burglary, and wiretapping, the trial judge, "Maximum John" Sirica, who was famous for the severity of his sentences, was prepared to throw the book at McCord, potentially sentencing him to 35 years in federal prison.

Facing decades of incarceration, McCord wrote a letter to the judge in which he confessed that his testimony was perjured and that he would like to correct the record. In effect, he was offering to tell the truth, implicating the other defendants and White House staff who authorized and paid for the break in and then led the attempts to cover up the crime. Including the president, Richard Nixon.

The judge read the letter in open court and, after McCord's recanted testimony, set his sentence at one-to-five years and over the next two years a parade of high level officials, including John Mitchell, the former Attorney General and the two most senior presidential staff, H.R. Halderman and John Ehrlichman were convicted and sent to prison.

The world collapsed around Nixon and he resigned the presidency on August 9, 1974.

James McCord's Letter to Judge Sirica

Now we have RussiaGate, and I suspect we will see the denouement unfold in a similar way. 

A Michael Flynn or a Paul Manafort or even more likely, the lower-level Carter Page, will wind up being indicted, regardless of who becomes the director of the FBI (the investigations will proceed no matter what Donald Trump does to impede them), and one or more of them will be convicted and thus face a Sirica-like sentence.

The threat of a decades' long sentence, as with Watergate, will focus the attention of the new felons and we can subsequently expect to see plea-bargaining--the promise of a reduced sentence for testimony about the higher-ups. Perhaps including the president.

This prospect is why President Trump made what seems to be an impulsive decision to fire FBI director James Comey.

Trump may not know much about history, to quote Sam Cooke's song, but he knows how to survive. We'll see how he does the time and how wonderful the world actually is.

May 10, 2017--Firing James Comey

Many are saying that Donald Trump's firing of FBI director James Comey smacks of Watergate. We had the Saturday Night Massacre then and the Tuesday Night Massacre last night.

This comparison doesn't sound like a stretch to me. 

In fact, back on March 21st I posted a blog about where they would lead if one were to connect all the dots about how Trump's men were directly involved in the Russian hacking of the presidential election and how this subversion of our election is much, much worse than Watergate.

Anyone wondering why Trump fired Comey, claiming that he did so because of how Comey failed to indict Hillary Clinton, is capable of believing most anything. The truth is much simpler than that. And chilling. 

So below is my posting from March.

Here's what happened and it's pretty obvious.

Admittedly this is speculation but since it explains most of Donald Trump's behavior regarding Russia's tampering in our election, let me air it out--

Last spring when it was obvious Donald Trump would win the nomination and then that summer, after securing it, one or more members of Trump's entourage with on-going Russian connections (fierce supporter General Michael Flynn and/or campaign chairman Paul Manafort) told candidate Trump that their Russian connections, or handlers, indicated that they had the capacity to hack into Hillary Clinton's campaign and in that way dig up enough dirt to help the underdog, Donald Trump, win the election.

As someone who loves winning above all else, Trump with a nod and a wink gave them the go-ahead.

The rest of the election is history.

All the while, the FBI or NSA, as part of their routine work, were tapping into the Russian ambassador's and other Russian officials' electronic communications.

In the process, they stumbled on Flynn's and Manafort's machinations and began a deeper investigation into their work with Russia, including their involvement in the Clinton sabotage effort.

So here's the big problem--

If a version of this is true, the connected dots lead directly back to Donald J.Trump.

Trump of course knows the full extent of this, especially his own direct involvement, and thus the frantic attempt to divert attention from this festering situation and out of desperation turn the heat on his predecessor, Barack Obama, accusing him of "wiretapping" Trump Tower.

Here's how this will unfold--

Flynn or Manafort, eventually facing 20 years in prison, will make a James McCord, Watergate-like deal with the prosecutors and throw President Trump under the bus.

That is unless Trump has already been pardoned by his successor, President Mike Pence.

Left to Right--Manafort, Trump, Flynn

March 22, 2017--Wag the Dog

If I am right that the Russian-connection dots lead back to Donald Trump, and if we learn that in one way or another he authorized some of his people to collude with their Russian paymasters, this situation is much more serious than any other presidential scandal from Teapot Dome to Watergate to Monic Lewinsky.

If true, expect the master of distraction, out of fear and desperation, to trot out the wag-the-dog defense. Wag the Dog, recall, is the title of a Clinton-era 1997 black comedy in which a political spin doctor (Robert De Nero), days before the presidential election, to distract the public from a sex scandal, hires a film producer (Dustin Hoffman), to stage a fake war with Albania.

It worked. The president is reelected.

What distraction might we expect from our current president?

Minimally, a war with North Korea.

Not that North Korea doesn't deserve serious attention and, who knows, at some point military action to "take out" their nuclear arsenal and missile delivery systems since they are working on developing the capability to reach our west coast cities.

But under unrelenting political pressure and media scrutiny, Trump may ignore the diplomatic approach and reach for the "football" and nuclear codes.

My bet, though, is that he has something more Trump-like in mind. Something more reality-show.

He will fulfill one of his most outrageous campaign pledges--he will get the Attorney General to arrange for Hillary Clinton to be indicted.

That would push everything else off the front pages. There will be no talk about healthcare; no back and forth about defunding Meals On Wheels or Planned Parenthood; no coverage of Judge Neil Gorsuch's Supreme Court nomination hearings; no gossip about Ivanka Trump's new West Wing office; and, most important to Trump, talk will be suspended about his possible involvement with the Russians to undermine the presidential election.

It would be his equivalent of Wag the Dog's fake war with Albania.

"Lock Her Up"

March 21, 2016--The Russian Connection

Here's what happened and it's pretty obvious.

Admittedly this is speculation but since it explains most of Donald Trump's behavior regarding Russia's tampering in our election, let me air it out--

Last spring when it was obvious Donald Trump would win the nomination and then that summer, after securing it, one or more members of Trump's entourage with on-going Russian connections (fierce supporter General Michael Flynn and/or campaign chairman Paul Manafort) told candidate Trump that their Russian connections, or handlers, indicated that they had the capacity to hack into Hillary Clinton's campaign and in that way dig up enough dirt to help the underdog, Donald Trump, win the election.

As someone who loves winning above all else, Trump with a nod and a wink gave them the go-ahead.

The rest of the election is history.

All the while, the FBI or NSA, as part of their routine work, were tapping into the Russian ambassador's and other Russian officials' electronic communications.

In the process, they stumbled on Flynn's and Manafort's machinations and began a deeper investigation into their work with Russia, including their involvement in the Clinton sabotage effort.

So here's the big problem--

If a version of this is true, the connected dots lead directly back to Donald J.Trump.

Trump of course knows the full extent of this, especially his own direct involvement, and thus the frantic attempt to divert attention from this festering situation and out of desperation turn the heat on his predecessor, Barack Obama, accusing him of "wiretapping" Trump Tower.

Here's how this will unfold--

Paul Manafort, eventually facing 20 years in prison, will make a James McCord, Watergate-like deal with the prosecutors and throw President Trump under the bus.

That is unless Trump has already been pardoned by his successor, President Mike Pence.

Left to Right--Manafort, Trump, Flynn

October 4, 2016--Donald: Alone In Trump Tower

Richard Nixon to me is the most fascinating of presidents.

Not best, not "near great" as historians rank chief executives and, as president, but if one can set Watergate aside, in many ways--with Russia and especially China--he was quite effective.

But, yes, it turned out he was a "crook," and during the last two years of his presidency, as his life crashed down upon him, like Lear, he raged at even the elements.

Thus, my favorite book about Nixon is Richard Reeves, Nixon: Alone In the White House, in which those final years are starkly and even poetically rendered.

We find Nixon more-and-more alone and isolated, ensconced in his Executive Office Building hideaway office, not sleeping, with the fireplace roaring even in August, brooding while drinking excessively, filling page-after-free-associative-page in his ever-present yellow legal pads. It is not difficult to imagine the thoughts that were tormenting him. All brought upon himself.

It is equally easy to imagine the thoughts now tormenting Donald Trump as his personal universe is imploding. Used to winning he is now losing with the cataclysm again mostly self-inflicted.

Not only did he lose the first debate to Hillary Clinton but as part of the bait she held out so subtly to entrap him, "to get under his skin," was her barb about his undue interest in beauty pageants and how he responded by making unmotivated, disparaging remarks about Alicia Machado, a former Miss Universe, while lacerating Hillary and commenting without foundation, libelously about Machado's "disgusting" weight gain and sex life.

Clinton's was an artful thrust calculated to distance him further from the few women voters who for some reason continue to say that they plan to vote for him.

Trump, rather then letting that taunt go unresponded too--he could have righteously taken the high road, noting how it was beneath him to respond as it should have been beneath Clinton to raise while the country and world roil.

Instead, Trump, lacking impulse control, knowing no high road, took the bait and doubled-down late Friday night-very early Saturday morning, firing out tweets to his 12 million followers--

At 5:14 a.m. he wrote, "Wow, Crooked Hillary was duped and used by my worst Miss U. Hillary floated her as an 'angel' without checking her past, which is terrible!"

Five minus later, Trump posted, "Using Alicia M in the debate as a paragon of virtue just shows that Crooked Hillary suffers from BAD JUDGMENT! Hillary was set up by a con."

At 5:30 he mercifully concluded--"Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?"

This says nothing about either Clinton or Machado but it is a window into Trump insomniac mind.

Or should I say soul?

May 26, 2016--Hillary Clinton: Drip, Drip, Drip

World War III will have to wait to Friday because there is breaking news--

I wrote and posted what follows on July 27, 2015. About a year ago.

It feels appropriate to republish it in the light of the scathing report revealed yesterday by the State Department regarding Hillary Clinton's use, while Secretary of State, of a personal email server.

This report we should note is not from a partisan Republican source or candidate but from a Democratic State Department. Among other things the department's inspector general concluded that this was not authorized or permitted by State Department rules.

The next drip will be from the FBI, with whom Clinton will soon be testifying. In the light of this new report, an indictment would not be a surprise.

Thus far, Hillary's defenders are saying, "Colin Powell did it. So why isn't he in trouble?" The inspector general gave that answer--at the time Powell was secretary, the rules were different.

One can only imagine what the Republicans and Donald Trump will do with this.

Here, from last July--

I recently read Tim Weiner's new biography of Richard Nixon, One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon, which focuses on the various criminal activities of Nixon and his associates. Especially the climate that existed in the White House and in Nixon's mind that led to the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex and the subsequent coverup and resignation.

Nixon's involvement in the break-in was not direct but the result of his obsession with secrecy and feelings that there were conspiratorial forces at work that would deny his reelection in 1972. His men, thus, carried out his implied agenda.

Nixon got in deep and direct trouble when he tried to have the FBI's investigation of the break-in squelched and then led the cover-up, all the while lying by claiming he knew nothing in advance of the break-in (likely true) and knew nothing about a cover-up (patently and feloniously false).

As a result, he was brought down, named an "unindicted co-conspirator," and forced to resign the presidency.

This brings me to Hillary Clinton and the many problems with her emails while she was Secretary of State.

For whatever reasons, rather than use secure State Department channels of communication, she used her own, personal email account to carry out official business. There is no disputing that.

But under pressure, when news about this began to leak out earlier this year, she denied any wrongdoing, claiming what she did was neither against federal rules nor, much more significant, was not in any way illegal.

Under further pressure, she turned over to the State Department 30,000 official emails from her private server, deleting other thousands of a personal nature--for example, those about plans for her daughter Chelsea's wedding.

All along the way she alleged this was a non-issue, driven more by presidential politics then anything else. She held herself above the fray, claiming she had more important things to focus on--how to build an agenda, for example, to strengthen the economy, one that especially helps the middle class.

But the issue just wouldn't go away.

Daily, it is becoming clear that there are legitimate and substantial issues that were not just the result of Republican saber-rattling. As more and more was leaked and reported about what was in the actual emails, it became clearer and clearer that there is a there there.

Just at the end of last week, the New York Times, which broke the original email story in March, reported that some of Clinton's emails included classified information, which, if true, is potentially illegal.

The State Department inspector general joined by the intelligence community's independent inspector general issued a joint statement which revealed that their review of a random sample of just 40 of the former Secretary's emails revealed that four did in fact contain classified material, "Government secrets."

Clinton's response was again that this is a distraction and that nothing untoward occurred on her watch.

The two inspectors general would disagree. In fact, they recommended that an investigation be launched. A criminal investigation. Clinton didn't quite say, "I am not a crook." But . . .

It is significant to note again that the intelligence community's inspector general is a non-partisan and that though the State Department is Obama's State Department, and thus controlled by Democrats, its inspector general did not hold back.

This is feeling like the same kind of drip, drip, drip that didn't work to defend Nixon. He pretended that he was ignoring the Watergate investigation, claiming he was too busy defending the world and defeating Communism. The tapes of his White House offices and telephones put the lie to that. He was obsessed by Watergate and the judicial and congressional investigations and was active daily counseling and coaching his confederates about what to say and which lies to tell.

I suspect Hillary Clinton in dong much the same thing. I mean obsessing. She knows the truth and we are learning more about it every week. I suspect there will be an outcome similar to Nixon's--her emails are not unlike his tapes. There are likely numerous smoking guns in them and I would be surprised if Clinton is able to stay in the race for the presidential nomination. Polls are already showing she trails Jeb Bush and Scott Walker in key battleground states. This will only get worse as we learn more.

It's time for Democrats to be thinking about serious alternatives. It wouldn't surprise me to see Joe Biden join the race and perhaps John Kerry. Elizabeth Warren may also be rethinking her decision not to run.

Who knows, by fall a Democrat clown car might be revving up.

I am not a crook.

July 27, 2015--HillaryGate: Drip, Drip, Drip

I recently read Tim Weiner's new biography of Richard Nixon, One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon, which focuses on the various criminal activities of Nixon and his associates. Especially the climate that existed in the White House and in Nixon's mind that led to the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex and the subsequent coverup and resignation.

Nixon's involvement in the break-in was not direct but the result of his obsession with secrecy and feelings that there were conspiratorial forces at work that would deny his reelection in 1972. His men, thus, carried out his implied agenda.

Nixon got in deep and direct trouble when he tried to have the FBI's investigation of the break-in squelched and then led the cover-up, all the while lying by claiming he knew nothing in advance of the break-in (likely true) and knew nothing about a cover-up (patently and feloniously false).

As a result, he was brought down, named an "unindicted co-conspirator," and forced to resign the presidency.

This brings me to Hillary Clinton and the many problems with her emails while she was Secretary of State.

For whatever reasons, rather than use secure State Department channels of communication, she used her own, personal email account to carry out official business. There is no disputing that.

But under pressure, when news about this began to leak out earlier this year, she denied any wrongdoing, claiming what she did was neither against federal rules nor, much more significant, was not in any way illegal.

Under further pressure, she turned over to the State Department 30,000 official emails from her private server, deleting other thousands of a personal nature--for example, those about plans for her daughter Chelsea's wedding.

All along the way she alleged this was a non-issue, driven more by presidential politics then anything else. She held herself above the fray, claiming she had more important things to focus on--how to build an agenda, for example, to strengthen the economy, one that especially helps the middle class.

But the issue just wouldn't go away.

Daily, it is becoming clear that there are legitimate and substantial issues that were not just the result of Republican saber-rattling. As more and more was leaked and reported about what was in the actual emails, it became clearer and clearer that there is a there there.

Just at the end of last week, the New York Times, which broke the original email story in March, reported that some of Clinton's emails included classified information, which, if true, is potentially illegal.

The State Department inspector general joined by the intelligence community's independent inspector general issued a joint statement which revealed that their review of a random sample of just 40 of the former Secretary's emails revealed that four did in fact contain classified material, "Government secrets."

Clinton's response was again that this is a distraction and that nothing untoward occurred on her watch.

The two inspectors general would disagree. In fact, they recommended that an investigation be launched. A criminal investigation. Clinton didn't quite say, "I am not a crook." But . . .

It is significant to note again that the intelligence community's inspector general is a non-partisan and that though the State Department is Obama's State Department, and thus controlled by Democrats, its inspector general did not hold back.

This is feeling like the same kind of drip, drip, drip that didn't work to defend Nixon. He pretended that he was ignoring the Watergate investigation, claiming he was too busy defending the world and defeating Communism. The tapes of his White House offices and telephones put the lie to that. He was obsessed by Watergate and the judicial and congressional investigations and was active daily counseling and coaching his confederates about what to say and which lies to tell.

I suspect Hillary Clinton in dong much the same thing. I mean obsessing. She knows the truth and we are learning more about it every week. I suspect there will be an outcome similar to Nixon's--her emails are not unlike his tapes. There are likely numerous smoking guns in them and I would be surprised if Clinton is able to stay in the race for the presidential nomination. Polls are already showing she trails Jeb Bush and Scott Walker in key battleground states. This will only get worse as we learn more.

It's time for Democrats to be thinking about serious alternatives. It wouldn't surprise me to see Joe Biden join the race and perhaps John Kerry. Elizabeth Warren may also be rethinking her decision not to run.

Who knows, by fall a Democrat clown car might be revving up.

I am not a crook.

May 10, 2013--Hillary's Chappaquiddck?

Along with others on the political left, at the time, I thought the McCain-Graham-Romney attack on the Obama's administration's handling of the killings in Benghazi, Libya were (1) timed to derail Barak Obama's reelection campaign; (2) undercut Susan Rice's attempt to convince members of the Senate that she could replace the retiring Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State; and (3), more than anything else, it was an attempt to undercut Hillary's 2016 presidential camapign before it could even get started.

The level of rhetoric, I and many others thought, was so excessive that it was easy to doubt the seriousness of the criticism. To rant that the alleged "coverup" of what happened there that fateful day--September 11, 2012--was "ten-times worse than Watergate" was so preposterous as to make it easy to dismiss the McCain-led attack as pure political posturing.

Watergate had the president of the United States approving the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters; bugging phones there; and then, after his burglars were caught, Nixon orchestated the conspiracy to cover up the crime, including the payment of hush money. He was subsequently impeached and cited by the federal prosecuter as an "unindicted co-conspirator."

I thought the worst that could reasonably be said about what happened in Libya, and then in Washington, was that the administration didn't get the story straight before talking about it in public and sent Ambassador Rice around to all the Sunday talk shows with incomplete and perhaps inaccurate talking points.

McCain and company got one scalp--Rice's but didn't lay a glove on either Obama or Clinton.

That is until earlier this week.

Now both Clinton and Obama look as if they had better have a good story about what happened or the Obama administration's record will be forever blemished; and Hillary Clinton in four years will be a less-likely nominee, much less president.

As with Teddy Kennedy, every time he made moves toward the presidency, one event, one word made that hopeless--Chappaqquiddck. And now it may turn out that Benghazi will be the one event, one word that represents the tragedy that occurred on her watch that will haunt and make impossible Clinton's candidacy.

Earlier this week, three senior, credible career State Department officers may have blown the whole situation wide open, so wide open that even liberal Democrats, even Hillary enthusiasts--me included--will be forced to take a second and third look at what Obama and Clinton did and said in the aftermath of the murder in Benghazi of our ambassador and three of his colleagues.

Forget that they were foolish to expose themselves to mob violence and a terrorist attack on 9/11. No one working for the U.S government in the Middle East should be out and about on that day. Ever. No matter how well guarded.

But when word was transmitted to Washington that our consulate was under attack and the ambassador had been killed, surely, with two Americans still alive for a number of hours, there should have been some response by special-forces troops or, minimally, a series of fly-overs by F-16 fighter jets. I feel certain if four of them made passes at full throttle at 200 feet, the crowd attacking the consulate would have been so terrified that most would have run for their lives.

Even if it didn't work, it would have been worth trying and Obama and Clinton, and their scapegoat, Susan Rice, would have had a convincing story to tell and Americans, feeling distraught about what had happened, at the minimum, would at least have felt proud of our response.

Yet more minimally, Obama and Clitnon should have waitied to gather facts--forbidding leaks--and then told whatever the truth was. Even that there had been mess-ups for which they were responsible. There then would have been no need to tap dance and dissemble and the story would have been over in at most a week.

One lesson from the history of the American presidency during this media-suffused age is that it's always the explanation or, if you will, the cover up--not the deed--that bites. Nixon could have survived if he burned the tapes and told a version of the truth; Bill Clinton wouldn't have been impeached if he had said, "I did have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky"; and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton wouldn't be getting skewered.

Americans are a forgiving people--we believe in, even love redemption stories--but we won't put up with being lied to. Nor should we.