Trump won the election by being an outsider, much like Jimmy Carter once did in the wake of Watergate, but he is too far outside for his own Republican Party, let alone the Democrats. These forces have always sought an excuse to get rid of him, but Trump has provided them with plenty, treating the rest of the country’s elected representatives with contempt, as if only he has a mandate and that mandate is to get rid of them, not the other way round.
Professor Robert Reich, admittedly a Democrat, reckons there are already four grounds on which to impeach Trump, with a fifth about to happen .
All the grounds given are indeed “High Crimes and Misdemeanours” as defined by the US Constitution. Trump must have been aware of his predicament, but blusters on committing more crimes on the grounds that he is somehow above reality, a trait very characteristic of political leaders and big businessmen, but not ultimately beneficial to them or anyone else.
The interesting thing however is: what grounds will be used to impeach Trump? The latest suggestion is that Trump’s handling of James Comey’s firing constitutes obstruction of justice, adding yet another ground to what is already a long list. But we have been down this road many times before.
The one thing we can say about making public accusations against a high-profile figure is this: whatever the publicly stated reasons for removing the person, they won’t be the real reasons why those behind the prosecution want to get rid of them.
This famously happened as far back as the Council of Constance in 1416 when it tried the Antipope John XXIII. John’s crime was being on what was suddenly considered the wrong side of the split in the Western Church, which his former supporters wanted immunity from being part of. However, as Edward Gibbon noted, when it came to his trial “the most scandalous charges were suppressed – the Vicar of Christ was only accused of piracy, murder, rape, sodomy and incest”.
More recently a scandal engulfed the English county of Somerset in 1986 over the decision not to renew the contracts of two of its cricket team’s star players, both West Indians, who had helped the club win multiple trophies after they had never won any before. The official reason for the sacking was that the two stars were no longer pulling their weight. In fact one of the sacked players had been reported to be a drug user, and Somerset’s other big star, Englishman Ian Botham who resigned over the issue, was proven to also be a drug user around the same time, the headlines concerning this being cited as a distraction for the club.
So will we ever hear why so many people with the power to do it want Trump out? It is unlikely, for one reason – look who has been appointed the Special Counsel!
Wolf Tending Sheep
One of the grounds to impeach Trump is his alleged collusion with Russia to win the election. Important overseas governments, not least that of the US, always try their hand at influencing elections in other countries in the way they like. However actively colluding with other governments to influence an election is a serious violation of US law. Russia may have committed no crime, but anyone colluding with it to procure a particular election result certainly has.
However the Department of Justice investigation into this matter will now be overseen by Robert Mueller, the former assistant FBI Director. Initially this appointment was greeted with jubilation, particularly by those who drew parallels with the gradual destruction of Richard Nixon by the appointment of investigators he had long resisted appointing himself. But what do we know about Mueller?
We know that he has longstanding links to the gun running empire of Senator John McCain. We know that he has a history of laundering corrupt governments – it was his agents who were brought in to whitewash former Georgian president Saakashvili over the probable murder of his own Prime Minister, and his government’s part in the illegal exportation of arms to terrorists through issuing fake end user certificates.
We also know that he was FBI Director immediately before James Comey, who was apparently asked by Trump to end the investigation into Michael Flynn’s Russia links. Such a request is, by definition, obstruction of justice. Now Comey has been fired, allegedly for bungling the previous investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails – in other words—not convicting her, as Trump continually demanded during his campaign. Even if that is the real reason he was fired, it is clear that Trump only wants people around him who will play by his rules.
There are plenty of other lawyers in the US with the credentials to be a Special Counsel in such an important matter. The one chosen is yet another of the people who were immersed even thicker in the “swamp” Trump said he wanted to drain than the people he fired. Mueller is another who was actually committing the crimes, not giving the orders. The likes of McCain can’t get away with illegal activities without somebody signing a free pass, and only Mueller was able to do this as far as US law enforcement is concerned.
So Mueller is left with two choices. He can find no evidence against Trump, and risk further allegations of a cover-up, rightly or wrongly. Or he can find the evidence Trump wants him to find, the stuff least damaging to himself, and impeachment tries to proceed on that basis.
It is well known that Al Capone was never tried for any of his prodigious array of crimes but for tax evasion, due to his connections with anyone who might be able to prosecute him. He was convicted of that crime alone. An investigation into Trump’s campaign which produces evidence of small “errors of judgement” would not exonerate Trump but make it more difficult to impeach him, as Mueller’s investigation would be presumed to have looked at larger matters, but decided he had no case to answer.
There used to be an award in the US called the Stella Award, which was given for filing the most frivolous lawsuit. You can just see President Donald Trump demanding that the Stella Award be revived for whoever tries to impeach him based on Mueller’s report, rather than the multitude of reasons which could have been used.
With Enemies Like These …
We are also unlikely to know the real reason Trump will be impeached because he has pulled off a standard political trick which many thought him incapable of – manipulating the opposition to suit himself.
There are many with a genuine, impeachment-worthy grievance against Trump. But there are also people who hate Trump simply because he won, and will invent any excuse to try and remove him.
The worse Trump behaves, the more these two forces will align. When anyone comes out with a real issue, Trump can rely on someone to support them by spouting a stupid one.
In 1989 British politician Lord Aldington won an unprecedentedly large sum in a libel action he had brought against the author Nikolai Tolstoy, a distant relative of the novelist, and businessman Nigel Watts. The defendants had accused him of committing war crimes during the Second World War due to his involvement in the forced repatriation of various exiles back to the Soviet Union, where many were summarily executed. Aldington insisted that he had not known what would happen to these people if they were returned to the Soviet Union, but Tolstoy and Watts had stated the contrary in print.
It emerged during the trial that Watts had been involved in a long dispute with a company Aldington had been chairman of, and was desperate to smear him in any way possible. Tolstoy’s claims about Aldington had far more substance, and it later emerged that crucial documents about Aldington’s involvement had disappeared from Ministry of Defence files. Nevertheless, getting involved with Watts and his vendetta seriously damaged Tolstoy’s case, and was a major factor in the jury upholding Aldington’s claim, no one wanting to listen to sound arguments which were coupled with insane ones.
The forces trying to impeach Trump are very predictable: his political opponents, those he has fired, the liberal media he frequently attacks and anyone who considers themselves better than him. All these constituencies will cling onto any excuse to railroad him, just as Nigel Watts did when he discovered Tolstoy’s writings. However valid the reasons for impeaching Trump are, if they come out of the mouths of any of these people everything can be dismissed as part of the same “establishment conspiracy” Trump was elected to fight, despite all he has done to entrench it further.
Nixon avoided impeachment by resigning. It is often forgotten that the first attempt to impeach Nixon failed because it was sloppily worded. No specifics of what he might have done or when were given, and the House of Representatives would not support such vague charges because they sounded exactly like the bellyaching of professional malcontents. Only when the actual charges were spelt out in detail, at a second attempt, did the proceedings begin which forced Nixon to step aside to avoid worse.
The worse Trump behaves, the more he is likely to create a Trump Out campaign which prevents the actual issues being heard. Ever seen this before? It is exactly what happened in Ukraine, when genuine citizen protests against actions of the Yanukovych government were hijacked by outside forces, principally the US, to become a “popular revolt” against Russia and in favour of the EU. This gave more opportunities for John McCain to illegally sell guns. Robert Mueller made that happen, like he has made so many similar things happen in his various posts.
Kerr’s Cur Part Two
The only question remaining is who Mueller himself is working for. As a Special Counsel, he theoretically works for no one and has the powers of any other US attorney.
But if there was any such thing as an impartial lawyer, cases would not be resolved by hearing conflicting arguments. Everything rests on how far the laws can be made to fit the argument the client wants to present, not a dispassionate analysis of the whether the relevant laws have been broken. The existence of many different legal systems in different countries, which insist on addressing the same matters in very different ways which reflect the history of that country, is further evidence of this .
Mueller will be expected to produce the result his friends want. Trump is hoping that Mueller will first of all be loyal to him, unlike Comey. But is there any evidence that this is the case?
Any new US President who takes office is confronted with the crimes the US is committing all over the world as part of long term policy set by people who were not elected, in defiance of US constitutional principles. Their predecessors had faced exactly the same problem: even if they had wanted to change things, they were here today and gone in eight years. Look at what the US has done in Afghanistan and Iraq, and you see how difficult it would be to even attempt to set new rules within even a two-term presidency.
A man with Mueller’s background in the Deep State has more friends in high places than Donald Trump will ever have. He doesn’t need Trump, but does need those friends to cover his back. Doubtless he will find some reason to exonerate Trump. But that will not stop him joining efforts to remove him in other ways – with even less reason being given for this action, and thus no public oversight of the process.
The appointment of Robert Mueller is an attempt to whitewash Donald Trump’s crimes. But all it will do is make the truth about those crimes ever more opaque, while still resulting in Trump’s removal from office. No valid explanations, no reason, no accountability. Trump will find out the hard way this is what the Deep State will always want, and that no amount of words or chicanery will ever change that.
Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
