Betting on Trump’s downfall
A triumphant grin spreads across Bob “Fearless Fosdick” Mueller’s gravely serious face. “Gotcha now, lowlife!” he exclaims.
It’s an imaginary scene. But maybe, just maybe, it’s not far from the slowly emerging truth.
Is Captain Ahab about to harpoon Moby Dick, finally? Full disclosure: I have a vested interest in the matter. Sort of.
I have a friendly wager with one of the Cro-MAGAnon Trump Deplorables. My bet — one beer — is that the Swamp Powers That Be (some Republicans included) will drive Trump out of office before the clock runs out on his allotted four years. In fact, I’ve made that prediction in print, right here in this space.
At first, my wager didn’t look promising — at least, not according to Andrew C. McCarthy. He’s the indispensable, go-to guy on the Mueller probe. His assessment was that Mueller seemed unlikely to hit pay dirt on a Russia-collusion or an obstruction-of-justice case.
McCarthy follows the Mueller probe for National Review. That’s a conservative outlet, but don’t let that fact distract you. He spares you the partisan and ideological hooey. He follows strictly the facts and applicable law. And does so with a sharp eye that would put a hawk to shame. For two decades he was a top Justice Department prosecutor, for the Southern District of New York. He led the prosecution that in 1995 nailed Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 11 others in the first World Trade Center bombing. He not only knows the main highways of the law well but also the off-road routes of prosecutorial strategy and the Byzantine byways of Justice Department policy.
From what McCarthy was saying, my wager at first was looking like a loser. But now the prospects are looking up. Thanks to, of all things, Bimbo Eruptions.
Bimbo Eruptions couldn’t bring down Bill Clinton. But according to the ever-perspicacious McCarthy, they just might topple Trump.
The Trump bimbo erupters are two pay-day-seeking ladies who once covered the rent by flaunting their mammarian assets for Penthouse and Playboy. Now, with age and gravity taking their inexorable toll, the two are seeking to monetize their Trump encounters with tell-all stories.
The Trumpster contingent scoffs. But not McCarthy. Which breathes renewed hope back into my wager on Trump’s downfall. The Bimbo Eruptions for Trump, he says, add up legally to “a
serious,” not a laughing, matter. Trump, he says, may now be facing “real legal peril.”
It’s not the sexual flings per se that are the problem. It’s the NDAs — the non-disclosure agreements related thereto. These present the potential legal pitfalls, according to McCarthy.
The NDAs were drawn up by Trump’s lawyer and sometime business partner — Trump’s “fixer,” as he’s been called — Michael Cohen. NDAs may be perfectly legal — or not. Not if they involve activity that could be construed under federal statutes as meeting the legal definitions of extortion or fraud. Or conspiracy to commit one or both. So explains McCarthy.
It would not seem to augur well for the legitimacy of the Trump-related NDAs that all names affixed to the documents are reportedly fictitious. Even Cohen is reported to have used a nom de plume, to conceal Trump’s identity, according to one line of speculation.
Meanwhile, Mueller has arranged for G-Men from the Southern District of New York to descend on lawyer Cohen’s office and residences with baying bloodhounds and courtstamped search warrants.
Excitable voices on the right shouting themselves hoarse in protest over what they say is a gross profanation of the attorney-client privilege of confidentiality. But here McCarthy interjects three legal points perhaps worth pondering:
One, a federal judge would not likely have issued such a sensitive search warrant without a probable cause having been presented indicating some activity in possible contravention of a specific statute or statutes.
Two, the lawyer-client privilege does not extend to illegal activity between the two, say extortion or fraud to silence another party.
And three, a non-disclosure agreement — even a legitimate one — is not enforceable against the compelled testimony of a grand jury.
Yes, for Trump to be toppled — even legitimately based on fraudulent or extortionate Bimbo Eruptions NDAs — would amount to flagrantly lopsided justice, taking other matters into account. I am thinking, for example, of the Justice Department’s refusal to lift a finger against Hillary Clinton’s onewoman crime wave — her destruction of 30,000 emails under subpoena, her deal handing Putin 20 percent of America’s uranium production capacity while parties involved donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, and so on. Lock her up, indeed.
Still, Hillary’s unpursued felonious transgressions are, legally speaking, no bar to pressing a case against Trump if the facts and law support such a case.
That Trump might be collared and perp-walked while Hillary waddles off into her sunset years untouched for her myriad and flagrant serial misdeeds would, of course, hardly speak highly of the quality of American justice.
I’ll console myself meanwhile thinking about the beer I may be on the verge of winning.
~davidneese@verizon.net