Paul Manafort’s Attorneys Challenge Special Counsel Bob Mueller

On Monday, October 30, 2017, Special Counsel Bob Mueller indicted President Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and Manafort’s deputy, Rick Gates, as well as George Papadopoulos, a former foreign advisor on Trump’s campaign. Papadopoulos pled guilty and has apparently been cooperating with Mueller for some time. Paul Manafort is not only regarded as an uncooperative witness, now on home confinement, as is Gates, but Manafort’s attorneys are accusing Mueller of “embellishing” the charges Manafort is up on and making other derogatory and demeaning comments about Mueller and his team.

Now Manafort's attorneys are challenging Bob Mueller in court for illegally obtaining evidence! Manafort wants out of home confinement, too. I must say, he's got chutzpah!

Since Manafort has been indicted on 12 charges, the first being conspiring against the United States with others (not others “known and unknown” but others, apparently known!), and faces a potential 80 years in prison (he’s 68 years old), you’d think he’d refrain from mocking his prosecutor.

Trump clearly thinks he’s above the law. Manafort seems to think he’s above the law as well.

People have worried that Trump can pardon whoever he likes after they're indicted, even if they're convicted, just as he pardoned Sheriff Joe Arpaio before Arpaio had been convicted. Trump could pardon Joe Arpaio, but pardoning co-conspirators in an obstruction of justice investigation involving himself, if that is the case, could be construed as an additional attempt to obstruct justice, like when he fired former FBI director James Comey.

It’s against federal law to seek opposition research from a foreign government, especially a foreign government with interests hostile to those of the United States, and it’s against the law to lie to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). You can remain silent, but you can't lie. Lying in a federal investigation is a felony and can get you five years in a federal prison.

(The FBI can lie to us, the American people, as when former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover wrote after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in a three-page memo, “The thing I am concerned about, and so is Mr. Katzenbach, is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin.” The FBI director can lie to us and continue to withhold crucial information about the JFK assassination indefinitely, but we, the public, especially suspects in a federal investigation, can’t lie to the FBI.)

So given that Manafort is facing 80 years in prison and is indicating through his attorneys’ insulting words describing the prosecution and the prosecution’s case that he won’t flip, it looks like Bob Mueller’s job will be to go through George Papadopoulos and pull down Sam Clovis, Papadopoulos’ boss in the Trump campaign. Sam Clovis just withdrew his nomination to become under-secretary in the Department of Agriculture. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) called his withdrawal “a lost opportunity.” (Sen. Grassley seems to have lost his spine when it comes to tolerating corruption in Trump’s administration.)

Speaking of chutzpah, Republican Congressmen have just introduced legislation to remove Bob Mueller from office in response to Pres. Trump's tweet for someone to "DO SOMETHING!" Apparently, they're incensed, as is Pres. Trump, that Mueller is not focused on prosecuting Hillary Clinton. Again, with Hillary, though I'm sure she's not enjoying her own moment in the cleansing sunshine of parts of former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile's new book.

We’ll just have to wait for more indictments and see who’s next. I have full confidence in Bob Mueller. I am fairly confident that if Pres. Trump fires Mueller, we will have a Saturday Night Massacre situation as when Archibald Cox was fired just a few months before Nixon resigned from office. In fact, Sean Hannity on Fox News and other Trump allies are intimating that another Saturday Night Massacre is at hand, that the real crisis is Bob Mueller's failure to investigate Hillary Clinton, and Mueller must therefore be removed from office.

Of course, Trump allies can't seem to understand that Trump isn’t fit to hold office. Trump tweets, watches cable TV, rants against his perceived enemies, golfs a lot, enriches himself in violation of the Constitution's emoluments clause, but he doesn’t do his job as president. Nixon had many positive accomplishments by the time he left office. Trump has none so far. While he engages in the politics of personal destruction, his administration and Republican Congressional allies are destroying regulations meant to protect the environment, prevent more global warming, prevent banks from defrauding their customers with impunity (binding arbitration with the same banks defrauding their customers, like Wells Fargo, instead), and so on.

Now the question is, will Vice President Mike Pence, who was chosen by Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner to be Trump's running mate (Trump preferred Chris Christie), be president if Trump is removed from office? I’m not sure that’s preferable. Other than the fact that a Pres. Pence might be less likely to start WWIII, he’s just as evil and more focused. He also might get reelected. I have mixed feelings about removing Trump from office, as urgent as removing him from office before he bombs North Korea seems to be.