Looking ahead — and over his shoulder
Trump touts success in the Senate, but special counsel investigation deepens as a former aide pleads guilty to lying to FBI
The highs and lows of a presidency rarely come in such quick succession. But within hours, President Donald Trump watched as one of his closest former aides pleaded guilty and promised to help prosecutors seek out more targets, then stayed up late to cheer on the Senate as it broke through months of gridlock to pass the largest tax cuts in years.
Scandal and success in short order left the White House whipsawed and searching for a path forward that would generate more of the latter while knowing that the former is not going away anytime soon. Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser who pleaded guilty to a felony Friday, was the fourth person near Trump to be charged, and few in Washington expect him to be the last.
No president in modern times has faced such a major investigation so early in his term even as he was still seeking to establish his political footing, much less one with as little popular support in polls as Trump has. The challenge for Trump in the weeks to come will be how to press forward on his agenda without letting the ominous drumbeat of indictments and court hearings consume his presidency. ‘Cracks in the White House’
“The White House has to continue to operate and cannot be perceived as waiting for the next testimony, the next announcement or the unanticipated issue,” said Tom Griscom, a former White House official who helped President Ronald Reagan recover from the IranContra scandal in the 1980s. “The American people wanted to see a president that was engaged and able to move his agenda even with the distraction of an investigation.”
Initially at least, Trump followed that script Saturday morning by concentrating his Twitter feed on his legislative achievement. “Biggest Tax Bill and Tax Cuts in history just passed in the Senate,” he wrote.
But his restraint did not last long. “What has been shown is no collusion, no collusion,” he told reporters when he left the White House for a day trip to New York. “There’s been absolutely no collusion, so we’re very happy. And frankly last night was one of the big nights.”
Within a couple of hours, he went back to Twitter for a more forceful response.
“I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI,” Trump wrote. “He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!”
The special counsel investigation into Russia’s interference in last year’s election has driven him to fits of anger for months, and his staff could hardly be surprised that he would vent that again. From their point of view, his first comments Saturday at least were not aimed at investigators.
“The Flynn plea is important, too, because it shows that the cracks in the White House front that everyone suspected are real,” said David Greenberg, a presidential historian at Rutgers University. “And they may widen. It seems likely to deepen the sense of siege in the West Wing. That siege mentality can be crippling.”
Hard to tame
Trump is hardly a model of political discipline, and keeping him focused has been a major preoccupation of his staff from the beginning. Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer overseeing the response to the investigation, has repeatedly urged Trump to keep quiet about it, with mixed results. John F. Kelly, the retired Marine general serving as White House chief of staff, tries to keep Trump’s day filled with meetings on policy issues but has yet to tame the president’s Twitter habit.
“To be sure, an event like this can be a drain on morale, especially for those who worked with and like General Flynn,” said Shannen W. Coffin, a former counsel to Cheney. “For the rest of the White House, it’s important not to get dragged down into the Washington speculation game, and that they keep their eyes on the ball on the president’s priorities in domestic policy, judicial appointments, national security and the like.”
Coffin pointed to Kelly, who has enforced more order on the West Wing operation, if not on the president himself. “With some internal discipline, which the chief of staff has imposed, there’s no reason this should become all consuming,” he said.
Trump has options for shortcircuiting the investigation that other presidents might not have contemplated in similar circumstances.
Having fired James Comey as FBI director, Trump could likewise fire Robert Mueller, the special counsel, or he could pardon Flynn or others swept up in the investigation. Either tack would almost surely provoke a bipartisan firestorm and, critics warned, potentially expose Trump to impeachment proceedings for obstruction of justice.
Lawmakers were quick to warn Trump away from such a course in the hours after Flynn’s plea.
“I think any pardons or any type of shenanigans with this whole process would be very troublesome,” said Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, one of the Democrats considered friendliest with Trump.