When ridiculousness is the best defence

Last week CNN’s Chris Cuomo said, “a storm is coming” warning about the imminent release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report about a possible collusion between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign. While the Russian investigation has been looming over Donald Trump even before he assumed the presidency, this time around the odds might change. Trump has repeatedly and relentlessly used a combination of pressure tactics, intimidation, lies, and humiliation in order to discredit the Special Counsel’s work. He has unleashed a dirty public war against the Russia investigation as well as whether or not he obstructed justice by firing James R Comey, the former director of the FBI. Trump has resorted to language unbecoming of the President of the United States and more associated with the tone of a mafia boss, by calling those who cooperated with Robert Mueller as “rats”. That language belongs more to “The Sopranos” than the White House.

The Mueller report would soon be sent to the Justice Department. Once the attorney general, William P Barr, receives the full report, he may or may not submit the report in its entirety to Congress and the public. He is not legally obligated to share the full details of the report with Congress. He can choose to only share a summary report from which information that is incriminating and damaging to the president would be redacted. This discretion of the attorney general was built into the regulations after independent counsel Kenneth Starr gave Congress a lengthy report on President Bill Clinton’s sexual relations with a young White House intern named Monica Lewinsky.

Furthermore, Mueller’s report would be redacted in the name of protecting the intelligence sources and methods. Neal Katyal, a former department official who wrote the special counsel rules, said, “Barr has to make sure that the investigators’ sources and methods are not going to be compromised and that grand jury information is protected.” Trump is going to love the governmental tradition and the good old national security mantra winning the day despite the fact that he campaigned against this very culture.

It is noteworthy that William Barr has a pro-Trump bias, partly due to his expansive view of the executive power and also because he had written a 19-page memo in which he had argued that Mr Trump’s firing of Comey did not constitute an obstruction of justice. California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein said, “The subjects of the investigations get to the very root of our democracy, and to withhold it from the American people would be absolutely unacceptable.” So, it is totally expected that a full report may not see the light of the day and after trying to read the expressionless face of Robert Mueller for about two years, the American people would continue to be an uninformed citizenry.

The most interesting part in this entire drama came from Trump’s lawyers, arguing that since President Trump has been public in his brazen attack on the Mueller investigation, therefore, he is not conspiring against it. He fired one FBI Director and considered firing his replacement. He humiliated his first attorney general for failing to “control” the Russia investigation and installed a replacement who is also gone. Installing loyalists, demanding loyalty and trading favours in a typical “Goodfellas” style is not a conspiracy because Trump has been openly disdainful of the Mueller investigation, goes the strange logic.

Trump has criticised the Mueller investigation more than 1100 times impeccably chronicled by The New York Times in its story titled “Trump Has Publicly Attacked the Russia Investigation More Than 1,100 Times”. In a nutshell, Trump’s strongest defence in the possible storm ahead is his ridiculousness. It is reminiscent in a funny way of Hinckley Jr who pleaded insanity in his defence after he tried to assassinate President Reagan. Trump’s lawyers are indirectly pleading stupidity and ridiculousness; Trump’s strongest traits. I hope they win.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 28^th, 2019.

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