Stressing the Foundations
The editorials scream out: “Republicans are making the case for Trump, Democrats remain silent!!” The “internet soothsayers” claim that by the time the Mueller investigation releases its report, the Trump “machine” will have made it irrelevant. And the “beat goes on;” the very real and strategic plan to build an alternative story to the Mueller investigation, where spies were sent into the Trump campaign, and the “deepstate” sought to stop his candidacy.
There is a well known political strategy: define your opponent before they have the opportunity to define you. Those who live in Ohio are familiar with it. In the Senate election of 2016, Republican Rob Portman spent millions in the summer, defining his Democratic opponent Ted Strickland as the Governor who, “left eighty-nine cents in the state’s rainy day fund.” It worked, and Strickland never made a serious challenge. Currently, Sherrod Brown is trying to do the same to opponent Jim Ranacci, defining him as a full-time lobbyist even while serving as a Congressman.
So the Trump strategy is to define the investigation against him as illegitimate. He is doing so without denigrating Robert Mueller himself (an impossible task, Mueller is truly beyond bulletproof.) They are trying to invalidate the sources of the investigation. They state the investigation is based on the Steele Dossier, and since Democrats paid for the Dossier it is a political but not legal basis for investigation.
They also claim that the FBI placed “paid informants” in the campaign, with the overtone that they served as “agent provocateurs” who encouraged illegal actions. That makes the any subsequent charges illegally gained, the “fruit of a poisonous tree,” and therefore banned. And they have reduced the Trump campaign members who may have violated laws as “volunteers” (Carter Page) and “coffee boys” (George Papadoupolos.) Even Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort wasn’t very important, “… and was only around for a little while.”
They claim that a “cabal” of FBI agents on the National Security team were trying to stop the Trump candidacy. They present as evidence the text messages between lead FBI investigator Peter Strzok and Department of Justice attorney Lisa Page. Strzok sent a series of messages that were anti-Trump (and anti-Clinton and anti-Bernie) that were released by the Department of Justice to the House Oversight Committee. The Republicans on the committee seized on this as evidence of the “deepstate conspiracy.”
They make a “fairness” argument; that the Democrats were doing things just as bad, starting with the Clinton email scandal. This is a continuation of the Trump campaign theme, highlighting the emails, the Comey announcements, and the hacked messages released by the Russians. And, they don’t miss an opportunity to make the FBI or the other US intelligence agencies look bad. If they are “bad” and “incompetent” then clearly the results of their investigations will be just as bad and incompetent.
They have found “Democrats” to come out in support of the President and in opposition to the Mueller investigation. Two of the most recent, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, and former Clinton pollster Mark Penn, have called for the investigation to end.
And finally, they are using the interesting argument that whatever the President did before the election, either personally (the Stormy Daniels scandal) or in business, the election was the final adjudication, and those issues are no longer on the table. If and when the Mueller investigation raises questions about the Trump businesses or personal actions, they can cry “foul.”
Mueller, on the other hand, is running a legal investigation, not a political one. The only information coming from the Mueller team is what is released in court documents: he has not allowed any counter to the Trump strategy. Mueller remains focused on the legal process, protecting the validity of his investigation by keeping it completely in control. This is in marked contrast to the FBI investigation of the Clinton email server, where it became a public process with dramatic pronouncements from Director James Comey.
The Mueller plan: follow the investigation where it leads, and present the evidence found to the grand jury and courts. Following legal precedent, Mueller knows he cannot indict the sitting President, so he will produce a report which will serve as an “indictment” to the House Judiciary Committee for impeachment purposes. He will let the evidence speak for itself.
It’s exactly what we would expect him to do. The question: will the damage done by the Trump strategy make the impeachment process (a political one) a non-starter? Or will the facts developed by Mueller overwhelm all of the stories and strategies.
We are facing a Constitutional crisis, where the foundations of our government will be tested. Our system of three co-equal branches will be drawn into conflict, with the executive pitted against the legislative and judicial. We will have to choose between the political messaging and the legal evidence. We have been there before, and our Constitutional foundations have held strong. So has the common sense of the American people. In the next several months that common sense and those foundations will be stressed again.
