I don’t agree that the plan is legal rather than political. I think the people on his legal team other than Cobb have never, ever, once seen the two as separable because they are basically anti-rule of law authoritarians, just like Trump. And I their current plan is a purely political plan to be played out in large part in the courts.
Flood is not on board yet. Given their history of floating the names of lawyers they swear are just about to sign up who don’t sign up, I’d say it’s far from a given that happens.
To be more specific, I think Cobb’s resignation ties directly into this:
Yet if Mueller attempts to force Trump to testify under subpoena – as many legal analysts suspect could happen – the sources familiar with the thinking of Trump’s legal team say they believe Trump could successfully challenge the subpoena all the way to the Supreme Court.
One of the sources says the legal team views a subpoena for a presidential interview as “precipitating a constitutional crisis.”
The Trump team’s legal argument, according to multiple sources, is that they believe the special counsel does not have the authority to force a President to appear before a grand jury.
They also believe that Article II of the Constitution, which defines the office of the President, prevents the high court from ordering an investigation into the President’s use of his executive powers. In this case, that could include the hiring and firing of persons like former national security adviser Michael Flynn and ex-FBI Director James Comey.
Their political argument also has changed. While the lawyers were originally in a let’s-get-this-over-with mode, they now believe that time is on their side – especially with the 2018 elections looming.
They believe that Trump has done a good job discrediting the investigators and the investigation itself.
So, this is what I think our DC Summer Stupid Season is going to be–extra stupid with a deliberately cultivated constitutional crisis thrown in. Or, at least, this is where I think their heads are today, but god knows if they’ve shown us anything, it’s that there can be no “strategy” where Trump is involved because a new strategy every day is the same as no strategy.
I think the new plan, as of Cobb’s resignation, is to dare Mueller to subpoena him, fight it all the way to the Supreme Court have Trump defy SCOTUS if/when it orders him to testify, knowing that the moral and intellectual pygmies in Congress won’t impeach him, and then make the impeachability of his defiance a campaign issue in the midterms, which they think will be a total winner for them because the country is totally turning around on this whole thing, buying into the idea that the Deep State is out to get him and the DoJ and Mueller are corrupt Democrat witch hunters.
It is very likely that the #StupidWatergate equivilent of a Saturday Night Massacre may also be an item on the menu in that toxic mix though not yet fixed in the plan. But it’s the kind of contingency plan that tends to take on a life of it’s own merely by virtue of having been planned.
The moral bankruptcy, nihilism, authoritarianism, and incitement to violence and chaos inherent in this cunning plan hatched by those incomparable legal geniuses Jay Sokalow, Rudy Giuliani, Roger Stone, Mr. and Mrs. Victoria Toensig, et. al. is, of course, a feature, not a bug for the likes of Trump, Miller and his various hangers on.
This is the long hot summer of constitutional crisis and durp I believe Cobb is bailing on. Whether it comes to pass is an open question. Many are Trump’s plans, schemes and cons, but few are those that reach fruition.
