As Robert Mueller’s investigation continues to close in on Donald Trump, Trump will take increasingly desperate action.
He tried to fire Robert Mueller last June and was stopped only because White House counsel refused. Mueller is pressing to interview Trump under oath, and no one believes Trump can do that without perjuring himself. In addition, so far Mueller has only indicted former Trump advisors, but at some point he’ll start issuing indictments against current White House staff.
Assuming the Democrats win a majority of the House in the 2018 elections, Trump will be impeached in 2019. What is not known is whether the required two-thirds vote of the Senate will vote to convict. Among other things, that will depend on the evidence the Mueller team has gathered by that time. Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General, is the overseer of the Mueller investigation and can fire Mueller or prevent Mueller from making a recommendation to impeach Trump.
Republican House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes released his memo this week claiming that the FBI and Department of Justice are biased against Trump. In in part this is an attempt to generate sufficient cover for Trump to replace Rosenstein with a Trump loyalist.
No less than Speaker of the House Paul Ryan called for release of the Nunes memo. This was despite the FBI saying in advance that the memo contained inaccuracies and omissions – and despite Nunes blocking release of the response memo prepared by the Democrats on the same committee. It is a striking example of Republicans in positions of power placing party above country. Not even the Republicans in Congress during the Nixon Watergate scandal did that.
As further evidence of Trump’s lawlessness, this week Trump refused to impose sanctions against Russia that were approved by almost unanimous votes in Congress.
Odds are good that at some time Trump will find a way to terminate Miller. When that happens, how Congress and the American public respond will be crucial.
Unfortunately, Trump, the master of distraction, may have other plans in mind as well. This week we learned that the White House has asked the Pentagon for more options to strike North Korea. One rumor has a White House aide arguing that an attack on North Korea could help the Republicans retain seats in the 2018 election. The theory, apparently supported by some Trump advisors, is that the U.S. could give North Korea a “bloody nose” without leading to a wider war.
It is obvious folly. China has already stated publicly that if North Korea starts hostilities it will not intervene, but that it will if another country attacks North Korea first.
Perhaps more important, If Kim Jong-un, leader of North Korea, believes his rule is threatened, he will use nuclear weapons: His publicly stated rationale for building nuclear weapons has been to prevent the U.S. and/or South Korea from using military force to topple his regime. It’s not clear North Korea’s missiles can truly strike the U.S. mainland with nuclear weapons yet, but they can certainly strike South Korea, Japan, Guam and probably Hawaii. North Korea has spent years building its nuclear and missile facilities under mountains, so it is extremely unlikely that any U.S. attack could remove North Korea nuclear capability.
Even if the North Koreans did not respond to a U.S. strike with nuclear weapons out of fear of nuclear retaliation, the capital of South Korea, Seoul, is just 35 miles from the border with North Korea. More than 10 million people live there. North Korea has spent decades building tunnels just across the border shielding artillery that can easily destroy Seoul. There are also approximately 38,000 U.S. troops based in South Korea, many near the border.
The question is whether the Pentagon or Trump’s advisors can prevent him from attacking North Korea as the Mueller investigation draws closer and Trump becomes more desperate.