It’s much clearer now why Donald Trump has been furious with Attorney General Jeff Sessions ever since he recused himself from the Russia investigation in March 2017. That recusal set in motion events that eventually resulted in deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein’s appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate Russian election meddling and “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”
Once the straight-arrow Mueller started sniffing around Trump’s campaign, he discovered lots of criminal behavior that had nothing to do with Russian influence operations. This week yielded the most dramatic fruits yet: The conviction of Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, for bank and tax fraud, and a guilty plea by Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, for fraud and campaign violations, including some that directly implicate the president.
Manafort and Cohen would likely be free today had the Russia investigation stayed within traditional Justice Department channels using traditional Justice Department resources. But once Rosenstein appointed Mueller, the grinding logic of a single-minded, heavily-resourced, subpoena-wielding independent prosecutor pursuing every avenue toward a determined end took over.
That logic led the independent counsel in the 1990s from Bill and Hillary Clinton’s Arkansas land investments, to the downfall of associate attorney general Webster Hubbell for law firm fraud, to President Clinton’s impeachment for lying about sexual relations with an intern. It has now led Mueller from a Russian counterintelligence probe, to Manafort’s lavish wardrobe, to Cohen’s payoff for Trump to Stormy Daniels. And Mueller’s just getting started.
There is no candy-coating this for the president. Four members of his presidential campaign are now felons, as is his hatchet man, Cohen, who accused the president in court of directing him to commit a federal crime. One can only imagine what these men will now tell Mueller about the possible past criminal behavior of Trump and his family, and possibly about their involvement in Russian meddling.
Even before then, the Cohen accusation alone, combined with the president’s lies and obstructions related to Russia, suffice to justify impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives. Impeachment, and not criminal prosecution, is the immediate danger for the president, since long-standing Justice Department rulings preclude criminal trials for sitting presidents. Impeachment is as much a political as a legal process, which is why the midterm elections and control of the House loom so large.
In this context, and as Mueller proceeds apace, President Trump will be likely to deploy some combination of two tactics to try to save himself.
First, he will continue to draw a red line at his “no collusion” claim and insist that anything else Mueller finds is the harvest of an illegitimate Democratic “witch hunt” that seeks to overturn the election results through criminal process. This approach depends on Mueller finding no serious dirt on Trump related to Russian meddling. Even if that assumption holds, the mounting stench of criminality enclosing the Trump presidency may render the red line politically irrelevant.
Which is why the president is also likely to deploy offensive weapons. Three powers that a president can wield unilaterally with practically limitless discretion and with little constraining process are pardons, dismissals of executive officials, and security clearance revocations.
Trump could bark orders today to pardon everyone Mueller is investigating (except possibly himself); to fire Mueller and his team, as well as everyone in the Justice Department who didn’t carry out this order; and to yank the security clearances of anyone he didn’t fire, which would seriously slow any federal investigation that remained.
If you think the wounded, cornered Trump won’t choose some version of this nuclear option, you haven’t been paying attention. Trump believes in his bones that razing the institutions around him brings him advantage. And even if that belief proves false in this context, he will enjoy trying to burn them down even as he is consumed.
Our nation faces scary days ahead as the president tests how much pain his administration and party will tolerate. But Trump cannot “get away with it.” The American people will issue their judgment in 2018 and 2020. And no matter how much Trump in the interim abuses presidential power, no matter how many criminals he self-servingly sets free, no matter how much he slows the Russia investigation, he cannot destroy the institutions of justice that he so despises.
Mueller’s victories this week are evidence that those institutions have worked well despite Trump’s unprecedented efforts to derail them. The remarkable independence displayed by the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation throughout this ordeal is an outgrowth of the last great episode of gross presidential abuse of justice, Watergate.
No governmental system powerful enough to function well can prevent gross abuse. But our constitutional system has always been characterized by what Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called “the vital mechanism of self-correction.” We will get through this test. And as with Watergate, our system of justice will have proved itself strong, and will emerge all the stronger as a result.
