Hammer Time
“President” Donald J. Trump is not very good at being a criminal. As Palmer Report has noted, he is stupid. Special Counsel Robert Mueller continues to hammer away at Trump and Paul Manafort and others who were involved in a secret plot to thwart the investigation, which didn’t stay secret for long.
Now, even former independent counsel Ken Starr is making it clear that Manafort is in trouble, and given Trump’s involvement, Trump is likely to face additional legal issues with his continued obstruction and collusion and conspiracy.
Starr stated: “You at this stage belong to the prosecutors. You’re now inside the tent, you’re part of the team. So, to be leaking information to the lawyers outside the team, that’s going to be viewed very seriously and obviously is. That’s the one thing that prosecutors are going to tell a cooperating witness: ‘we can only deal with the truth, whatever it is. If it exculpates that’s fine. What we can’t deal with are lies. That means the hammer is really coming to Paul Manafort. If you’re cooperating with the government, you should not be sharing information. The government is going to come down really hard on you. If he’s been sharing very helpful information, just call it a bad move.”
One of the lessons we have learned from Watergate, and from the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and every other instance of presidents finding themselves in serious trouble, is that the coverup and behaviors toward the investigation are often what impacts the president most negatively. Here, we have a ton of serious questions about the matter- why was Pompeo meeting with Ecuador hours before the Manafort story emerged, what other cooperators might be secretly conspiring with Trump, and what information might they have given him? Where is Matthew Whitaker in all of this? January will be here soon enough, and it is looking more and more like Mueller Time is Hammer Time. Somewhere, Nixon is being told, “You can’t touch this.”
Daniel is a lawyer writing and teaching about SCOTUS, and is the author of the book “The Chief Justices” about the SCOTUS as seen through the center seat.