And the avalanche begins
Last night, Palmer Report pointed out that we were all more or less just waiting for the fireworks to begin. Robert Mueller appears to have all his ducks lined up in a row, Donald Trump is making increasingly jarring last minute panic moves, court filings point to arrests within days, and here we all are, trying to figure out how to precisely time our popcorn. But today we’ve seen what can fairly be described as the start of Mueller’s avalanche.
This evening the New York Times published a stunning – yet perhaps not surprising – bombshell: back in April, Donald Trump ordered phony criminal charges against Hillary Clinton and James Comey, only to be talked out of it by then-White House Counsel Don McGahn. Here’s the thing. This is a seven month old story. You have to ask why it’s just surfacing now, and the answer leads right back to Mueller.
Based on the inside information involved, and the fact that Don McGahn conveniently comes off like the voice of reason in this narrative, it’s difficult to imagine that anyone other than McGahn could have been the source for it. Yet earlier this year it became public knowledge that McGahn had been actively selling Trump out to Mueller all year long, because McGahn was trying to save himself from going down for Trump’s crimes. This tells us two things.
First, Robert Mueller has already known about the Hillary-Comey thing since April, because Don McGahn would have promptly told him about it. Second, if today’s story came from McGahn, who has long been under Mueller’s thumb, then McGahn only put it out there because Mueller wants it out there. This is Mueller’s way of exposing one of Trump’s major crimes just before he makes his big move against Trump, as a way of softening up the ground and preparing the public for the idea that Trump must be toppled. Look for more such bombshells in the next hours and days, as Mueller prepares to drop the hammer.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report