Donald Trump’s attorney left scrambling after Trump screws up and takes Robert Mueller’s arrest bait
Special Counsel Robert Mueller is arresting one or more of Donald Trump’s associates on Monday, both because he believes they need to be prosecuted for their alleged crimes, and because he’s trying to motivate them to flip on Trump himself in the Trump-Russia scandal. Mueller also appears to have another strategy in play: baiting Trump into saying or doing something incriminating ahead of the arrests. Trump has indeed taken the bait, as evidenced by his attorney’s sudden scrambling.
Trump embarrassed himself on Sunday morning by tweeting “DO SOMETHING!” in all caps at his Republican allies, revealing just how desperate, fearful, and helpless he’s become. But even as mainstream Americans across social media raced to rightly make fun of him for it, the real story is that Trump was publicly asking his allies in Congress to illegally interfere with the investigation on his behalf. That’s a confession to obstruction of justice, right there in plain sight.
Donald Trump’s attorney Ty Cobb seemed to immediately recognize the severity of the mistake that his client had made. Cobb promptly told MSNBC that “today’s tweets have nothing to do with Mueller indictment.” But Trump’s multi-part tweet on the matter makes clear that he was referring to the Trump-Russia investigation, when he asked his congressional allies to “do something” about it. The attorney’s explanation isn’t going to undo the serious unforced error that Trump just committed.
Although Robert Mueller is targeting Donald Trump for a variety of serious criminal charges, obstruction of justice may be the quickest and easiest to prove – and thus the shortest path toward taking Trump down. Now that Trump has just publicly asked his allies to commit obstruction on his behalf, Mueller’s job may have become that much easier. This is in addition to what Mueller gains from Monday’s arrests of Trump’s underlings.
