Robert Mueller threatens Donald Trump with the “s” word

| 11:55 pm EDT May 1, 2018
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Even as Special Counsel Robert Mueller has moved in more tightly on Donald Trump, the question has remained in the background: how is Mueller going to actually take Trump down? Mueller can’t simply wave a magic wand and remove Trump from office, just because he finds proof Trump is guilty. On the other hand, Mueller isn’t simply going to file a report with Congress and call it a day. Now we’re getting a strong hint about how Mueller plans to play this, and it involves the “s” word.

No, not that “s” word, the profane one that you’re tempted to yell while reading Donald Trump’s morning Twitter rant. Instead it’s a word that’s likely to have Trump wanting to curse: subpoena. During a recent meeting with Trump’s legal team, Robert Mueller raised the possibility of subpoenaing Trump to testify in the Trump-Russia scandal. In the past, courts have ruled that various sitting presidents had to comply with such subpoenas. But that’s just the beginning of what Mueller is doing here.

Let’s say that Mueller does subpoena Trump to testify, and the courts side with Mueller, which is likely. If Trump doesn’t want to testify, his only option would be to plead the Fifth. That would paint him as being guilty in the court of public opinion, and it would compel many of his remaining political allies to run away from him. It would be politically crippling, and Mueller and Trump both know it.

But Robert Mueller doesn’t have to actually subpoena Donald Trump. All he has to do is keep threatening to do it, in order to get Trump and his legal team to cave on just about anything else Mueller wants. The power is in the threat alone. Now we know that Mueller has begun using the “s” word to get his way.