Dear America,
This past Friday, Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump's pusillanimous, scrofulous sycophant of an Attorney General, fired Andrew McCabe, the Deputy Director of the FBI closest to the Russian- election-influence investigation and the immediate supervisor of that investigations leader, Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The grounds for the firing on the eve of McCabe's eligibility for full retirement benefits--and I mean literally on the eve...late in the day before that eligibility would have commenced--were far less credible than was the retributive motivation behind the action of Trump's minion. But all the specific facts aside, this firing puts us on the verge of the abyss of a constitutional crisis. There is no doubt that Trump ordered the firing, either directly or in the style of Henry II's utterance to his nobles, often quoted as "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest," and that evokes another constitutional crisis.
In late October of 1973, Archibald Cox was the Special Prosecutor, the seventies equivalent of today's special counsel, running the Watergate break-in investigation and its sequacious inquiry. Cox was seeking production by Richard Nixon of some surreptitiously recorded tapes of conversations he had had in the Oval Office that related to the break-in and covering it up, and Nixon--for reasons that became when the Supreme Court subsequently ordered them produced--was refusing to comply with subpoenas. The legalities are not what's important today, but the principles involved are virtually identical to those implicated in the events of last Friday. It is not yet clear that Donald Trump is guilty of some misfeasance, though anyone who has followed his career both in business and the presidency has little doubt that he is. But the furor in The White House, emanating from both Trump and his surrogate lawyers, certainly casts suspicion on The President, who seems pathologically hapless when it comes to defending himself in public discourse. That's because, to paraphrase an old joke, you know when Trump is lying; his thumbs are moving. He continues to obsess about the firing of James Comey--he should have been fired but because of how he handled the Hillary Clinton investigation rather than the Russia investigation, but Trump couldn't even manage that subterfuge--and by implication Jeff Sessions for his recusal from the investigation, which led to the appointment of Mueller in the first place, and one cannot help but wonder why, other than egotism, Trump can't let it go.
This all runs parallel to 1973, and perhaps 1974 when a bill of impeachment forced Richard Nixon to resign in disgrace. Nixon had made the mistake of appointing a Republican with integrity to the Attorney General post. Elliot Richardson, a uniquely handsome and poised Boston Brahman who was a Republican when being one didn't yet impute rumpled suits and intellectual dishonesty. Nixon openly instructed Richardson to fire Cox, and Richardson resigned rather than comply, as did his assistant, William Ruckelshaus, a Hoosier of similarly unimpeachable character and respectability. That left Robert Bork, a poltroon worthy of comparison to Sessions, who ascended to the post of Attorney General from that of Solicitor General when Ruckelshaus resigned. Bork was sufficiently self-serving that he complied, later to be rejected as a nominee to the Supreme Court--most likely because of it--only to see Richard Nixon, under threat of impeachment, appoint Leon Jaworski to succeed Cox. Jaworski pursued Nixon and his recalcitrance to the Supreme Court and the tapes, ultimately the coup de grace, had to be produced and listened to by the entire nation. My guess is that despite persistent denunciations of the rumor by Trump and his minions, our president is preparing to fire Mueller, and the Republican Party of today will take the course of the party of 1974 and impeach Trump. The difference will be that Trump in his arrogance will stay on to be tried...and convicted not for the ostensible collusion that inspired this whole mess, but for the interference with justice that he has pursued since.
Just a thought.
Your friend,
Mike
Leave a comment