Trump and the Mueller investigation

Reuters photo

By

Tom Arms

The signs are that President Trump is running out of wriggle room as far as the Mueller investigation is concerned. He is also showing signs of squirming as his options become fewer and fewer.

Following the raid on the offices of Trump’s long-time personal lawyer Michael Cohen, the president this week let loose another Twitter tirade full of threats to sack Robert Mueller, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Some Washington analysts are speculating that the president is holding onto the loyal – but allegedly corrupt – head of the Environment Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, because he wants to move him over to the Justice Department after dismissing Sessions, Rosenstein and Mueller.

Such a move would, of course, create a constitutional crisis. It would be akin to a suspected felon firing the police department in the middle of an investigation into his alleged crime and replacing it with his loyal friends. It would be a farce and would land Trump in the congressional dock faster than he could say Stormy Daniels or Russian collusion.

So the fact that Trump is publicly tweeting such threats is a sure sign that he is a worried man. And he has every right to be so.

Michael Cohen has been the president’s personal lawyer for more than 10 years – with the emphasis on personal. He is the man who paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet weeks before the 2016 election. He is the man who handled the other claims for sexual assault against Donald Trump. He is the man who handled the tax returns which the president has never revealed. He is the man who knows the president’s secrets.

But there is another reason that Trump should be squirming. In this instance it is not Mueller or the Justice Department that is investigating. It is the state of New York.

In the course of his investigations into possible collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign, Robert Mueller stumbled across potentially damning evidence involving another possibly illegal act outside his investigatory remit. Like a good citizen, he went to Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein who said “Leave it to me,” and referred the case to the prosecutor for the Justice Department’s Southern District of New York.

The acting prosecutor (Trump fired the former prosecutor a year ago and has not replaced him), took the evidence to a New York judge who agreed that there was a prima facie case and approved the FBI raid that led to the Trumptonian tweets.

All this means that even if Trump did fire Mueller, Sessions and Rosenstein, he would not stop this new investigation because it is being handled by a completely different department over which he has no control.

Tom Arms

I am a journalist, entrepreneur and historian with extensive experience in print, web and broadcast journalism. I started as a diplomatic correspondent, wrote several books (The Falklands Crisis, World Elections On File and the Encyclopedia of the Cold War), and then in 1987 started my own business (Future Events News Service, www.fensinformation.com) which over 25 years established itself as the world and UK media’s diary. Our strapline was: “We set the world’s news agenda.” I sold FENS in December 2012 but retained the exclusive broadcast rights to all of FENS data. To exploit these rights I set up LookAhead TV which produces unique programmes which “Broadcasts Tomorrow Today” so that viewers can “Plan to Participate.” LookAhead has appeared regularly on Vox Africa, Radio Tatras International, The Conversation and Voice of Africa Radio.

In addition to being a syndicated broadcaster and columnist on global affairs, Tom is also available for speaking engagements and can be contacted on Twitter, Linkedin and email: [email protected].