Oh Don't You Put Me on the Back-burner

The latest dramatic turn in the ongoing nightmare that is the Russia-trump investigation is one that answered a pressing question: "When is trump going to just say 'fuck it' and try to fire Mueller before Mueller nails him to the wall on Obstruction/Money Laundering/Fraud/Acts of Treason with the Russians"?

The answer was "He already tried!"

Per David A Graham from The Atlantic:

It turns out that Trump wasn’t just rattling his saber publicly: According to a New York Times report late Thursday, the president attempted to fire Mueller in June 2017, roughly a month after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed him. But Trump was blocked by White House Counsel Don McGahn, who reportedly threatened to quit rather than make good on the order. The Washington Post confirmed the story.

The episode adds new intrigue to the already transfixing dance between the president and the special counsel’s probe. Mueller is working to interview Trump in the near future, and has already extracted guilty pleas from two former aides, as well as indicting two more. The episode underscores Trump’s volatile temperament and tendency to act impulsively, and it once again thrusts McGahn and his office into the spotlight.

Trump’s desire to fire Mueller was never especially surprising or hidden. Everyone tied to the Russia investigation seems to have been in his sights at one time or another. Mueller’s appointment stemmed from Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey, and Trump also raged at Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from Russia matters, and at Rod Rosenstein, who he suggested was a random Democrat, rather than a rock-ribbed Republican appointed to his job by Trump himself. The president mused about firing Mueller in an interview with the Times, and in July I wrote that the operative question was not if but when Trump would try to fire Mueller. As it turns out, he already had...

Why is this report coming out now? Graham considers one possibility:

News of the attempted firing comes as Trump’s lawyers negotiate the terms on which the president would offer testimony to Mueller. While the president has long said he didn’t think he’d need to testify, he changed his tune on Wednesday. “I’m looking forward to it, actually,” he said. “I would love to do that—I’d like to do it as soon as possible.” This was followed by the unusual spectacle of the president’s lawyer contradicting him and saying he’d follow legal advice; on Thursday, another Trump lawyer said no decision had been made. Given the president’s previous pretextual justifications for firing Mueller, it would not be surprising to see him argue that Mueller is now irrevocably compromised because he knows that Trump tried to fire him...

That option seems a little too convoluted: that trump would argue "well, I tried firing him so now he's got it out for me" as an excuse to avoid getting interviewed by him, that kind of argument is hard to pull off against prosecutors, special or otherwise. I'm sure a lot of defendants argue to the judge "well you see, the prosecutor hates my guts..." but not a lot of them get any sympathy that way.

The reason I think we're hearing this now is because Mueller has gotten to the point in the investigation where trump is the last person he can interview. As I've noted before, these cases work from the outside in: get the fringe or minor players who were caught, work your way up the chain of the criminal enterprise to key hangers-on, pile up the evidence on the Inner Circle major players, and then nail the Big Bad at the center of the whole crime.

That Mueller wants to interview trump now means the special prosecutor's got enough items on the plate to question the key figure of the investigation. It's not always necessary, but it helps because whatever trump says will - not may, because this is a constantly lying SOB we're talking about - contradict his own earlier words and likely the words of the others that Mueller's already interrogated.

This means we're at the point where trump's defenders are going to try and find any half-baked excuse to paint Mueller in the worst possible light. They've been trying, but not much else has stuck. Even the recent chatter about "secret society" FBI agents on a witch-hunt against trump hasn't panned out.

But this is the interesting thing: Either trump's defenders are leaking this story now to try and argue that Mueller is on a vendetta, or people opposing trump's efforts to Obstruct the investigation into Russia's meddling in US Elections wanted to reveal how the federal agencies are refusing to bend to trump's orders.

I think it may be the latter: on this specific issue, it's likely coming from McGahn's people trying to show McGahn abiding by the Rule of Law (in case trump tries firing him now). But there's the other story about current FBI Director Wray - appointed by trump! - threatening to resign if trump and Attorney General Sessions tried to fire Deputy Director McCabe, who filled in for Comey after Comey's firing and who was a key player in making sure Special Counsel Mueller was able to take over the FBI's investigation into Russian hacking and links to trump's 2016 campaign.

That trump's own hires - who are in positions requiring they abide by the Rule of Law - are forewarnings of how the Federal Government - in particular the FBI, CIA, NSA, and 16 other Intelligence Agencies! - would react if trump tries to Obstruct Mueller by firing him.

These stories are getting out there, not just to trump but to a Republican Congress still refusing to hold trump accountable for the acts of Obstruction and collusion he's already been caught committing. These are warnings: Congress and trump aren't going to get very far if agencies sworn to uphold the Constitution begin refusing to answer any order by Republicans when those agencies can rightly claim every order is illegal.

This is getting close to the end.

This is getting close to an administrative civil war.

Stay aware.