Dear America,
When Donald Trump sent his dismissal letter to James Comey, I said to my wife that it wasn't a falling domino, but it was teetering. Since then, I have often returned to that analogy, saying to my wife as we watched the evening news over dinner that another domino was teetering. Yesterday, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen pled guilty to felony counts related to his payment of money in exchange for silence from former sexual consorts of Donald Trump's during Trump's campaign for president. His plea was that specific. It was the biggest domino yet, and it isn't teetering. It fell.
When the Mueller investigation started relative to Russian meddling in our 2016 election, it seemed to me a fools errand. To the best of my knowledge, collusion with someone isn't a crime unless it's collusion in the form of conspiracy to commit a crime. I wasn't then, and I still am not, aware of any law against finding negative information, even scabrous information, other than to use it for extortion. But over time, the investigation developed peripheral inquiries--just like the White Water investigation during the Clinton presidency--but unlike White Water, these have now yielded evidence of subornation of campaign law violations...felonies...by our illustrious president. Like most of the nation that listens to or watches the news every day, I was dazed when I heard the report just after 4:00 pm yesterday that Michael Cohen had said on the record--in open court in front of God, a federal court judge and everybody--that he had committed felonious violations of federal campaign law at the behest of a candidate for federal office in the form of payment of sums of money to women who were accusing Trump of scandalous relations. That candidate could be no one other than Donald J. Trump.
Cohen is now looking at significant jail time because of his conviction, which implicates this question; is Trump's subornation just the tip of the iceberg, and does Michael Cohen know about it first hand; the concatenation of prosecutions may have just begun. An actual evidentiary domino has now fallen, and only time will tell whether it is within striking distance of other dominos that are capable of bringing down our president, though this domino on its own seems sufficient. But there are impediments behind which Trump can hide. For one thing, it seems to be settled law that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted during his presidency, so criminal charges will have to wait at least until Trump is out of office, if then. Of course that is leverage that the Mueller investigation can use against Trump, which he might be able to avert by resigning. All of the comparisons of this investigation have been to the Starr investigation of Bill Clinton and the cognate impeachment and acquittal, but in this respect, perhaps the more appropriate comparison may be to the resignation of Richard Nixon. A bill of impeachment was reported out of the House Judiciary Committee, and within a couple of days, Nixon was at the top of stairs leading to the presidential helicopter flashing his famous peace signs as he departed from the lawn of the White House after resigning to avoid trial by The Senate and virtually certain conviction for...subornation of a felony under the rubric of obstruction of justice. That may be Trump's only option because his conviction in any senate trial ensuing upon a bill of impeachment seems almost a certainty now, just as it was with Nixon pursuant to John Dean's testimony before a Senate committee. Michael Cohen is Trump's John Dean. He is not Trump's Vernon Jordan.
I have written before about the accusations of hypocrisy that the Democrats will face if they retake control of congress and impeach Trump. Their defense of Clinton will be thrown up to them as evidence, but that would be a false comparison. Clinton was accused of suborning the perjurious affidavit of Monica Lewinsky signed by her in connection with the Paula Jones case in which she denied her sexual relationship with Clinton. The allegation was that pressure was applied by Clinton through at least one associate of his, Vernon Jordan. This Trump matter may be just as salacious, but it is fundamentally different. Clinton wasn't convicted because no overt crime was committed. Attempting to persuade isn't analogous to bribing. One is legal, albeit marginally. The other isn't, and the other is what Trump arranged. And while Cohen's role may be analogous to Vernon Jordan's in the Clinton matter in that he was the go-between, he is more like Dean in that when money was discussed, Cohen was there with Trump, just as Dean was when money was discussed by Nixon in the oval office where it was caught on tape, just like the tape in Cohen's law office.
When a ball was hit out of the park in the old days, the announcer on the radio would say, "Goodbye, Mr. Spalding!" I'm wondering, is this "Goodbye, Mr. Trump?"
Your friend,
Mike
Leave a comment