Prez has weak defense, worse offense in Russian probe
It is well known that the best defense is often a good offense, especially when one’s defense isn’t looking all that good. With two significant guilty pleas by high-level Trump aides, two indictments and a series of judicial determinations that special counsel Robert Mueller has probable cause to believe that top members of President Trump’s team are guilty of federal crimes, the president’s assertion that he is the victim of a “witch hunt,” never credible, lies in tatters.
Small wonder, therefore, that Trump’s allies have ratcheted up their attacks on Mueller, whose reputation for integrity among Republicans and Democrats alike may be unsurpassed by any public servant over the last halfcentury. Their aim is to reduce the impact of what has already come down the pike, and what may be following behind it. Most notable is not how poor the Trump defense looks, but how weak his offense is.
Over the weekend, a lawyer for Trump’s transition team released a letter that looked more like a public relations stunt than a serious legal grievance. His complaint: that in August 2017 — when Trump was president and the General Services Administration was part of his administration — the GSA complied with the special counsel’s request for emails generated by the Trump transition operation germane to potential collusion with Russia.
According to Trump’s lawyer, this gave Mueller’s lawyers access to “attorney-client” communications.
In the first place, it is not immediately clear how communications between the Trump team and Russian intermediaries, or between transition officials about such communications, qualify as “attorney-client” communications, unless Trump’s associates were looking to the Russians for legal advice. The Trump lawyers have not shed any light on this theory.
Second, since the Trump lawyers knew about requests for the emails as far back as March, if they really thought there were “privileged” documents in the possession of the GSA, they could have sought a court order preventing them from being disclosed. That they didn’t suggests they knew they had no basis for doing so.
Even now, if there were any communications that have been disclosed they think were privileged, they are free to identify them and ask a court to order them returned. They haven’t done that either.
All of this and more indicates that this is more balderdash from the Prince of Balderdash, the president of the United States. It won’t be the last of it.