Donald Trump hits the panic button after Hope Hicks gives him up to Robert Mueller

| 7:32 pm EST December 12, 2017
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Days after Special Counsel Robert Mueller conducted a two-day-long interview with Donald Trump’s closest adviser Hope Hicks, we now know without any doubt that Hicks gave Trump up. We know this because Trump just hit the panic button in a manner which makes clear that Hicks gave him up. Trump has decided to forbid his other White House advisers from interviewing with Mueller, according to several major news outlets, setting up an immediate constitutional crisis.

Trump’s surreal panic move can only be a result of learning that Hope Hicks did indeed fully cooperate with Mueller. It’s not as if she had much of a choice. Donald Trump Jr admitted to Congress last week that he told Hicks about his meeting with the Russian government at Trump Tozwer during the campaign. This in turn meant that Hicks had to either admit to Mueller that she told Donald Trump about it, or find herself under arrest for lying about it. So now Trump is throwing a fit.

To be clear, Donald Trump cannot legally stop his White House advisers from sitting down with Mueller. If they refuse, Mueller can have them arrested for it. There is no question that Mueller will continue to aggressively push forward with his investigation; the question is what approach he’ll take now. Will he go ahead and demand that Trump’s other advisers immediately sit down with him, or will he decide to work around them for now?

After all, Robert Mueller already has much of what he needs from Hope Hicks, Michael Flynn, and the others who have cooperated. Donald Trump is only digging himself a deeper hole, both in a legal sense and in the court of public opinion, by taking this plainly illegal stance. Trump can’t win this; he’s merely deciding to lose on his own spiteful and self defeating terms.