He’ll do whatever Steve Doocy tells him to do that morning.
Personally, I’m not inclined to make any guesses, ESPECIALLY if it’s based off of trying to read Trump’s mood.
Question: since he can’t fire Mueller directly, how long would it take for him to get fired, assuming the very next person with the actual authority is willing and able? Immediately? And to answer speculation I’m sure Trump’s had, if Mueller is fired, can the person who fires him, or Trump, make any demands as far as his current evidence goes, having it all turned over to him or destroying it or whatever?
It’s actually not clear that Trump can’t fire Mueller directly. Theoretically, DOJ regulations say that the Attorney General appoints a Special Counsel and the AG can fire him for cause. Because Sessions recused himself, Rosenstein has that power as Acting AG in the context of the Russia investigation.
But the President is the boss of the executive branch. Aside from statutory limitations (like interfering with the civil service system or certain regulatory agencies) he has pretty much unchecked power to fire whatever appointees he wants. According to DOJ regulations, he would have to order Rosenstein to do it, but there’s really nothing stopping him from doing it himself. Whether that would constitute a “valid” firing is unsettled, but it’s unlikely (IMHO) that the courts would interfere with the president’s well-understood ability to terminate political appointees.
Many people in Congress would not take kindly to it, I imagine. Even a lot of Republicans (ya rly.)
ETA: For what it’s worth, Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre took just a few hours from beginning to end. Most of that time was spent locating and summoning Richardson, Ruckelshaus and Bork to the White House to boss them around. Bork then spent some time writing Cox’s termination letter.
But all of that could have been done over the phone and been just as kosher.
I spent some time on Saturday flipping between MSNBC and Fox News. Obama was right: Fox News viewers are in a world of their own.
Both were covering the McCabe firing, but in the TrumpWorld/Fox News universe, firing McCabe was the first step in the long-overdue purging of the incompetent and biased elements in the FBI who were conspiring to support Hillary and sabotage Trump.
They’re getting very close to Reverse Vampire Theories.
(One of the panelists on Fox was identified as “Contributor to NRA TV”. If you saw John Oliver’s piece last week on NRA TV, no more needs to be said.)
Of course they won’t do anything.
and
Every time Trump goes off on Twitter about Russia—the total “hoax” that nonetheless happened and is all President Obama’s fault—he’s reminding us that Obama did in fact try to do something and that McConnell blocked him from doing that something—making a public statement that would be a “show of solidarity and bipartisan unity” in publicly condemning Russia for interference.
As The Washington Post reported it, McConnell refused to do it and said “he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.”
We know McConnell knew the severity of the problem because Harry Reid—the Democratic leader who was getting all the same intelligence briefings as McConnell about the Russian election hacking—was trying to get then-FBI Director James Comey to inform the public that Russia intended to “falsify election results.” He wrote Comey both in August of 2016 and again in October of 2016.
Actually, I think it is pretty clear that the president can’t fire Mueller directly. According to this analysis at Bloomberg, the only person who can fire the special counsel is the person who appointed him, or, in the case of a recusal or dismissal the next person down the chain.
This is merely a technical obstacle, Trump could obviously fire his way down to a toady who would execute his order, but Mueller would have every
legal right to ignore a dismissal that came directly from Trump.
If something like that comes to pass, it would be an interesting constitutional crisis.
Or just as treif.
On a Saturday? :dubious:
Cambridge Analytica, who the Trump campaign spent a lot of money to employ, was secretly recorded discussing bribing and blackmailing politicians around the world.
Britain is working to raid their offices. No word yet on the size of Trump’s lack of response to this.
His silence is bigly.
And as golden as his penthouse.
I’m not even sure that he has to fire Mueller himself; he could simply discredit him to sow enough confusion in the minds of Americans that there’s doubt about the merits of any case Mueller brings forward. Unfortunately, I think this strategy could somehow work just as much as firing - perhaps even more effectively. If the Republicans band together and rain down criticism on Mueller’s team and Mueller’s witnesses, then Mueller’s recommendations may have little value.
But remember, too, that the people doing much of Mueller’s real leg work are the FBI agents and investigators themselves: seeing what they saw this past weekend has to be an ominous sign. Already the two top people in the Bureau who have been responsible for carrying the investigation into effect - Comey and McCabe - have been fired. Not only fired but getting the equivalent of a dishonorable discharge, with McCabe losing his lifetime benefits. This is hard ball. And consider the fact that the IG’s office and the ethics office in the Bureau are behaving in ways that can only be described as highly unusual, if not unprecedented – which itself suggests that the upper echelons of the Justice Department and the Bureau are beginning to wilt under the pressure.
So if you’re an agent and you’re working with Mueller, this is what’s on your mind. You’re wondering, will they go after me? Will they go after my retirement? My good name? These are people who, out of necessity, are used to living in relative obscurity. Their names would get dragged through the political sewer. Their families too. Their careers. In short, Trump and Sessions are actively - and it seems successfully - transforming a generally impartial justice system based on the rule of law…and turning it into a system based on the rule of men.
This is really happening.
Right now.
Assuming you means the ones in power in Congress, they haven’t been doing it so far, as far as I can tell; the opposite, in fact. (Although obviously past experience has told us that they have no problems being hypocritical.) Makes me wonder again if future Republican presidents will continue the Trump like political purges simply because he’s already poisoned the IC well for Republicans with all the accusations of lying. There’s a lot to muse over there, but I also keep coming back to wondering if there’s anyone on the Mueller team that Congressional Republicans are actually hesitant to smear. That may be important.
A lot of far leftist minorities would say that ship not only sailed a long time ago, but is still circumnavigating the globe as we speak; Trump is “only” making the corruption more personal.
Also, I think we need to wait a while before we judge whether it’s successful or not. Even then, if it’s because Congress fails to act, how do we apportion blame…?
Joseph McCarthy must be spinning in his grave about now.
I’m not sure why. That was COMMUNIST Russians. The current Russians are fascist Russians. Either way, the McCarthy era was mostly about Joe McCarthy pushing Joe McCarthy’s star upward, not any particular ideology. Communists were just the boogeyman du jour.
I have a slightly rosier outlook. At some point this is going to wind up in a real court of law – not TwitterCourt, not FoxNews’ Panel of Legal Experts. Somebody will be on trial for money laundering, racketeering, obstruction of justice … and his defense attorney will rise and move that the evidence be thrown out because of bias on the part of the FBI. The judge will ask to see the evidence of said bias, which will consist of “uh…one of the hundreds of FBI agents texted something mean about Trump! And somebody’s wife ran for office as a Democrat!” And the judge will have a hearty laugh, the motion will be denied, and the trial will proceed to a just and fair conclusion.
Sure, some of the smaller fish will end up wearing an orange jumpsuit. But the people who matter? I wouldn’t necessarily count on it. Mueller can’t indict Trump. He can recommend charges, but he cannot indict. The DoJ can indict…the person who sits at the helm of all Executive power (I suppose). Meanwhile, the Congress will continue to support him, even as he exerts pressure on the career officials who are being asked to investigate him.
Look at what has happened to date – not what you imagine what might happen in the future, but what actually has happened. He has fired the FBI director. He has fired the FBI acting director. He has fired 2 former prominent prosecutors in the DoJ (Bharara and Yates). He has threatened to fire his Attorney General, and there’s no indication that he couldn’t actually go through with it. He is turning the norms of political office upside down – we are way, way, way beyond what Richard Nixon ever did. And there’s no evidence that the Congress is going to stop him. And that’s because…a foreign power controls the president, and increasingly, it is obvious that a foreign power and plutocratic powers in the US own the congressional majority. The threats we’re dealing with right now in 2018 are something that the Founders feared in 1788. Now the fears of our revolutionary dead have come to life over 2 centuries later.
So the goalposts move once again. From “no evidence” to “we was framed!”.
Trump’s latest attorney alleges that there “was a secret “brazen plot” by the FBI to illegally exonerate Hillary Clinton and, if she didn’t win the election, to then frame Donald Trump with a falsely created crime because they didn’t think he should be President”.
You can’t make this stuff up. It makes me think maybe they got something good on ol’ Twitler.
If the FBI wanted Trump to lose that bigly, they might have tried not announcing that they were reopening The Case of the Buttery Males”.
Like you, I am more sanguine.
Mueller’s “favorable and credibility” ratings have remained far above Trump’s throughout this debacle, despite the fact that Mueller has barely answered the false claims to date. He has allowed only the few facts of his investigation to stand as his answers: The plea arrangements and the indictments. Many people are in a wait-and-see posture – even some Trump supporters.
Once actual evidence starts to come to light in earnest, Trump’s feeble attempts at obfuscation, misdirection and smear will wilt like so much wet tissue paper for all but the most myopic Trump supporters.
I doubt Mueller will indict Trump, but it’s not a settled question. I do think he will indict a lot of others, and the testimony in those cases will be so damaging, it will become painfully obvious who is lying.
Example: Trump may have managed to slightly discredit Andrew McCabe’s testimony about incidents leading up to James Comey’s firing by getting McCabe fired last Friday, but that won’t be enough to overcome Comey’s testimony, Comey’s contemporaneous notes, McCabe’s testimony, McCabe’s contemporaneous notes, the two other FBI agents (Rybicki, Baker) who were also told about Trump’s comments to Comey prior to Comey’s firing – and likely the contemporaneous notes of those two agents, too. Additionally, we have Trump’s own unforced conversation with Lester Holt on television where he made it clear for all to see exactly what his motivation was for firing Comey. Which side has more credibility?
Such evidence may not come out in a trial against Trump. But it might come out in a trial against Mike Pence, because Pence was present at the meeting where Trump, Pence, McGahn and Stephen Miller plotted and crafted the letter blaming Rosenstein for Comey’s firing. And what if Mike Flynn can testify that Pence was told by Trump in his (Flynn’s) presence that Trump intended to fire Comey to get the Russia thing off his back? Pence is not immune from indictment.
Mueller’s team doesn’t need Mueller. I am sure he has structured it that way, knowing his own vulnerability to being fired. Firing Mueller doesn’t stop the FBI’s ongoing investigations into crimes, no matter what Trump does. And there is nothing stopping another agency/committee from picking up Mueller to act in an advisory capacity. Say, a new House Intelligence Committee circa 2019. That will conduct public hearings. Many, many public hearings.
I’m not a Chris Matthews fan, but he had a good analogy today of Mueller and Trump. Mueller is the starfish, and Trump is the clam. A starfish conquers a clam by wrapping itself around the clam’s tight shell and relentlessly testing the weaknesses until it finds the way in to the tender food source within. Once the weak area has been exploited, the entire shell can be breached and the starfish consumes the clam at its leisure.
I believe this clam has many weaknesses and the starfish is just taking its time to make sure the meal can be completely sucked away. <BERP>
I’m just sorry Mueller must eat such a bad clam.