What could happen were Trump to fire Mueller
Is Donald Trump preparing to fire Robert Mueller? Is Trump ready to go nuclear on the special counsel, triggering what a senior Republican warns would be “the beginning of the end of his presidency?”
The question is real. Trump has been replacing people and issuing warnings that suggest he is deciding, after months of impatience, to trust himself, dismiss Mueller and shut down the advancing inquiry.
Trump continues to purge his circle. Rex Tillerson yields to Mike Pompeo as secretary of state. H.R. McMaster, his national security adviser, is likely to be followed by the combative John Bolton. Gary Cohn, his chief economic adviser, has been replaced by Peter Navarro (though not in Cohn’s position).
No one at this head table has anything to do with Mueller. The importance of their appointments is that all the president’s men will think as he does: They share his anxieties, his suspicions, his culture of conspiracy. They are militants.
So, if Trump wants to end the anti-nuclear agreement with Iran, Pompeo and Bolton will applaud. If he wants to impose tariffs on imported aluminum and steel, Navarro cheers.
For 14 months, Trump has chafed under Tillerson and McMaster, who blocked him on Iran. He faced resistance from Cohn, too, who blunted his raw protectionism.
Now free of Cohn, Trump has started a trade war. If he gets his way in Iran, he’ll start a shooting war.
What does this have to do with Mueller? It shows a president shedding his resident skeptics. He doesn’t want questions from his flank. He is comfortable with his cashew coterie.
He is also shaking up his legal team. Joseph E. di Genova, a lawyer who was hired Monday, is known for appearing on Fox News, fulminating about the Justice Department and the FBI conspiring against Trump. Guess who’s watching?
There are reports that Trump is considering firing Ty Cobb, his lead lawyer, who has advised co-operating with Mueller. Trump resents that strategy; he wants the inquiry ended.
On the weekend, he lashed out at Mueller on Twitter, accusing him of leading a “witch hunt” and having “13 hardened Democrats on his staff ” and no Republicans. He ignored, again, that Mueller is a Republican. It was the first time Trump assailed Mueller by name.
Trump is angry that Mueller is demanding documents from the Trump Organization to broaden his inquiry. Trump had warned this was his “red line.”
Frustrated, Trump tells friends that he’ll do things his way now. He says he could move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and threaten North Korea, without the sky falling. He knows best. So, why not cashier Mueller, too?
Trump would have to find a chain of command in the Justice Department to dismiss Mueller, but like Henry II and the demise of Thomas Becket, the president need only ask: “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome prosecutor?”
As Richard Nixon learned when he wanted his attorney general to fire special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox, there will always be a willing executioner.
Yes, there would be outrage in Congress, but Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell have no moral spine. Trump is counting on it.
Yes, there would be a constitutional crisis and a judicial challenge. Yes, protesters would fill the streets (civic organizations are planning countrywide demonstrations) and campuses would erupt. Trump loyalists would respond; violence is likely.
It would turn the mid-term elections this November into a referendum on Trump, asking whether obstruction of justice is “a high crime and misdemeanour” which would merit the president’s indictment.
If the Democrats win the House of Representatives, that would bring his impeachment. At minimum, it would end his presidency legislatively. For the next two years, he would pass nothing.
If the Democrats win the Senate in a biblical wave of public revulsion, it would make Trump’s trial and conviction more likely — presuming the help of some honourable Republicans to reach a two-thirds majority. That would be the end of his presidency, definitively.
For Trump, the reality is clear: Fire Mueller, unleash the Furies.