Waiting for the Shoe to Drop
After a few days of driving – I’m back!!!!!
There is an old saying: “…waiting for the other shoe to drop.” If you’ve ever lived in a downstairs apartment, with another tenant above, you know what this means. As you lay in bed, trying to sleep, your upstairs neighbor comes home, sits on their bed, and takes off their shoes. First one drops, thump – and then you wait.
We, as a nation, are waiting for the other shoe to drop. Florida, Texas and Georgia aside; the mid-term election results, with at least thirty-six House seats flipping to the Democrats, was a statement against Trumpism. The President’s pouting reaction, first claiming a great victory, then firing his Attorney General and replacing him with a Trump “made man,” then acting like a churlish child in the rain in Paris, then stating over and over and over that there was “no collusion:” all were his reaction to rejection.
Donald Trump: he made the election about himself, and he lost. Donald Trump is a loser. That, to a man of his fragile ego and a life based on image rather than substance, is intolerable. The ongoing dribble of defeat, as the narrow election returns and recounts come in, has simply prolonged his agony. He can’t “flip the script,” the next return comes in and another House seats falls to the Democrats. And even when he tried to turn his failure into someone else’s fault, stating that Republican Congressman Mia Love lost because “…Mia gave me no love,” fell flat. Love is now leading the recount. It’s almost as if the process was designed to continually humiliate the President.
All of that was the first shoe, the jolt in the night that interrupts dreams and opens your eyes. You lay in bed, waiting…waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has carefully avoided breaking precedent. He took his investigation “underground” for the sixty days leading up to the election. There have been no press conferences, no leaks: he has told his story only through indictments. When last we left off, he indicted the “Russian side” of email theft, social media manipulation and election interference. In those indictments he implicated US citizens as part of the conspiracy (the legal term for the undefined “Collusion”.) The next step, the next shoe to drop, is the American side.
And yesterday we had a sliver of intrigue, perhaps an accidental glance behind Mueller’s curtain. In an August filing on an unrelated case, it appears that a “sealed indictment” has been issued against Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, the online organization that was used by the Russians to publish stolen emails. Whether this is part of the Mueller investigation, or some other Federal action, or whether it was just a “copy/paste” mistake by a junior Assistant US Attorney, it does lead to some great speculation.
Roger Stone, the old Nixon dirty trickster, is convinced he is going to be indicted by the Mueller team. Stone’s friend, Randy Credico, who has been thoroughly questioned by the team, was in contact with Assange prior to the release of the emails. Credico communicated with Stone, and Stone may well have communicated with the Trump campaign. There is even some evidence that Credico was attempting to negotiate a clemency deal for Assange with the Trumps.
Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign manager, is cooperating as hard as he can with Mueller; doing anything to avoid spending the rest of his life in jail. Manafort and Stone have a long history going all the way back to their youth in the Nixon campaign organization. If there was a path to Wikileaks, it could have gone from Trump, to Manafort, to Stone, to Credico, to Assange.
It’s absolute speculation. We do know this: the Mueller team has asked the Court to delay finalizing the plea deal with Manafort for another ten days. Why ten days, instead of the usual sixty or ninety? What will happen in the next ten days to change his situation?
Roger Stone; and perhaps Donald Trump Jr and Jared Kushner; must be laying awake at night. And laying alone in the Presidential bedroom of the White House, Donald Trump must be desperately plotting to find a way out of this threat to his family, his business, his Presidency, and his all-important image. Mueller is upstairs: the other shoe is about to drop.
