Trump's Strategy Part 2: Jury Tampering
This is a companion piece to my earlier OP:
Trump's strategy: Become the bullet lodged too close to the spine.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210549213
Start out with a simple common sense conclusion: Everything that seems so obvious is true, leave fake "confusion" to "mainstream" talking heads on television. It was never inexplicable why Trump has consistently been deferential to Putin. The reason has always been simple; Putin has the goods on Trump. And now Mueller has the goods on Putin having the goods on Trump, plus proof of multiple other illegal practices that Donald Trump has engaged in around the world for years, if not decades. Donald Trump is a guilty man.
Donald Trump always assumed that he wasn't a big enough fish for the feds to ever go after him with their "A Team" full force, while he remained a private citizen. Bribes, payoffs, "celebrity status", book keeping slights of hand, out of court settlements and general pandering to corrupt officials both here and abroad had always been enough to keep him out of jail. Trump's corollary assumptions were that 1) the President of the United States is too big to jail, and 2) the President of the United States controlled the Department of Justice, and hence the off switch to any potential prosecutions.
There is not now, nor was there ever any plausible legal defense for Trump's numerous legal "transgressions" were the truth ever to be revealed about his actual nefarious activities, on multiple interlocking fronts. When Trump gave up the relative safety of his private citizen status, and then crashed against the limitations on his executive authority as President (especially after his Attorney General Sessions was forced to recuse himself), obstruction of justice became Trump's most viable legal strategy. Yes, a high risk gamble, but what other choice was left him? It was double or nothing, and now it increasingly appears as if Trump will lose that bet. Now Trump is vulnerable on two legal fronts, both the underlying crimes and the cover up of them.
Here is the bottom line. Trump is guilty of numerous crimes and Special Prosecutor Mueller, and now the Office of US Attorney for the Southern District of New York are, or soon will be, in possession of overwhelming evidence to establish his guilt beyond any shadow of doubt. Trump can not hurt his legal case further now, through his own actions or that of Rudy Giuliani or anyone else, because he is already mortally wounded in the court of law. Trump can pretend that evidence of his guilt does not exist, he can act as if evidence of that guilt does not exist, but it does. If investigations continue the evidence will be revealed. It likely will be revealed, one way or another, even if Trump somehow succeeds in shutting down Mueller. It really doesn't matter anymore if Trump or one of is agents says something that “hurts his case”, that legal case is already doomed. Trump will use every trick in the constitutional book, and then some, to avoid testifying in court as a sitting President. Trump would gladly trigger a constitutional crisis rather than be tried before any Judge or conventional seated jury. He will refuse to honor any subpoenas to appear.
Trump would rather take his chances with Congress and impeachment. After the House impeaches him (during the next Congress) his case will move to the Senate where Trump needs just 34 votes defending him to defeat the super majority needed to remove him from office. That is his chosen jury, a jury which he can legally tamper with through strong arm intimidation tactics. Trump will threaten the careers of Republican Senators who choose to vote against him by poisoning their support among home state Republican voters should they become disloyal. He already knows each of the jurors and how they can be gotten too. He just needs 34 Senators, from the reddest of red states, in order to stay in office. A 35 to 40 percent presidential approval rating is more than enough for Trump's plan to work, if most of that minority of voters is rabid enough to believe it's just a liberal and establishment plot, a coup to unseat their chosen leader, when his impeachment trial hits the Senate.
That is the belief set Trump is working to instill now in a select and strategic cadre of voters through all of his wild utterances and Tweets. Evidence has absolutely nothing to do with it, and the truth is irrelevant to his purpose. Whatever lies it takes, whatever extreme “deep state” conspiracy he needs to promote, if that can net Trump 34 votes in the Senate it's a win. Trump knows Nixon never faced a criminal court or a single day in jail. He knows if things get messy enough a Jerry Ford like pardon resolution might become his get out of jail free card. And he just might get away with that, in a bid to prevent a great unraveling, during the dark days that would follow a failed vote in the Senate to constitutionally remove Trump from the White House.
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