Trump's Tantrums Are Getting Worse as He Gets Desperate for Someone to Fire
On Monday, the FBI raided the offices of Donald Trump's longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, the man who keeps trying to drown the Stormy Daniels fire with gasoline. In response, Trump lashed out repeatedly on Twitter, claiming that "attorney-client privilege is dead" and that the raid is "an attack on our country" (neither of those things are true).
This may seem like standard Trump bluster, where he makes up outrageous claims then gets distracted by the next commercial during Fox & Friends, but Robert Mueller has never been closer to Trump himself. And this is the first major development in Mueller's investigation since Hope Hicks left. As one source close to the president told Axios, prior to this, "Trump could turn to Hope Hicks to explain things to him, suggest wording, simmer him down."
Apparently that cool-down period, where someone gets Trump to "simmer" before he actually follows through on whatever he's saying, has been vital. On Tuesday, the New York Times put out a report confirming that Trump had nearly tried to fire Mueller back in December, after news of a new round of subpoenas broke:
The president’s anger was fueled by reports that the subpoenas were for obtaining information about his business dealings with Deutsche Bank, according to interviews with eight White House officials, people close to the president and others familiar with the episode. To Mr. Trump, the subpoenas suggested that Mr. Mueller had expanded the investigation in a way that crossed the “red line” he had set last year in an interview with The New York Times.
In the hours that followed Mr. Trump’s initial anger over the Deutsche Bank reports, his lawyers and advisers worked quickly to learn about the subpoenas, and ultimately were told by Mr. Mueller’s office that the reports were not accurate, leading the president to back down.
For those keeping score at home, this is now the second documented time that we know Trump nearly fired Mueller, after an incident in June where a White House counsel had to threaten to quit unless Trump back off. But Monday's search warrants for Cohen's offices may have been a tipping point, and Trump is now reportedly deciding whether or not to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
CNN reports that some of Trump's legal advisers are telling him that he could fire Rosenstein and avoid all the "constitutional crisis" baggage that would come from going after Mueller directly. And since the warrants to search Cohen's offices related to payments to Stormy Daniels, and not Russian election interference specifically, they think Trump would be in the clear. Per CNN:
They believe Rosenstein crossed the line in what he can and cannot pursue. And they consider him conflicted since he is a potential witness in the special counsel’s investigation because he wrote the memo that justified firing former FBI Director James Comey. The legal advisers also believe they have successfully argued to the American public that the FBI is tainted and think they can make the same case against Rosenstein.
But Maggie Haberman at the Times claims that Trump has been thinking about firing Mueller, Rosenstein, and even Jeff Sessions for months now, though he's hesitant because his firing James Comey is what led to Mueller running the investigation in the first place. But Trump hasn't gotten anywhere in his life through restraint and accountability. There's little reason to assume he'll tolerate either for long.
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