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Unanswered question hangs over the GOP’s anti-Mueller offensive

"'Blow the Mueller House Down', says the big bad conservative right"

The Rachel Maddow Show / The MaddowBlog


Then FBI Director Robert Mueller arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., May 16, 2012, to testify during a hearing.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP

12/11/17 10:41 AM—Updated 12/11/17 03:43 PM
By Steve Benen

Promoting a piece from a far-right pundit yesterday, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said ..

Opinion | Robert Mueller has got some explaining to do https://t.co/aFU2okfRuU

— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) December 10, 2017

.. yesterday that Special Counsel Robert Mueller “has got some explaining to do.” It was a timely reminder that when it comes to the Trump-Russia scandal, many Republicans have begun turning their fire, not on the White House or its benefactors in Putin’s government, but on the official overseeing the investigation.

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[Loading this one sucks for me. It's not gonna.]
The Rachel Maddow Show, 12/4/17, 9:24 PM ET
Trump team turns to specious legal arguments as pressure builds
Bob Bauer, former White House counsel, talks with Rachel Maddow about Donald Trump’s legal jeopardy in the Russia scandal, and whether Trump has it within his power to make the Robert Mueller and the Trump Russia investigation go away.
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[INSERT:] Ok, thi one at least looks on the same topic.

Trump disdain for law could backfire in obstruction case
The Rachel Maddow Show
8/25/17
Bob Bauer, former White House Counsel under President Obama, talks with Ari Melber about the legality and propriety of Donald Trump's
pardon of Joe Arpaio and the potential fallout for Trump in his obstruction of justice investigation. Duration: 13:34
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-disdain-for-law-could-backfire-in-obstruction-case-1032892995746
.. inside the first quarter here, 8/25/17: Weekly Address
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=134603426
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GOP members of the House Judiciary Committee, for example, appeared desperate .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/republicans-hammer-mueller-fbi-as-russia-investigation-intensifies/2017/12/06/4a6097ca-dabb-11e7-b1a8-62589434a581_story.html .. last week to tear Mueller down. Several congressional Republicans have also called for .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/08/01/another-conservative-house-republican-calls-on-mueller-to-resign/ .. Mueller’s resignation. Conservative media, meanwhile, has become almost hysterical .. http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/07/media/fox-news-mueller-investigation-coverage/index.html .. in targeting the special counsel, eager to discredit the entire probe.

Clearly, Mueller’s investigation is causing some of Donald Trump’s allies to panic, and their fears are well grounded. It’s hardly unreasonable to think the Russia scandal poses an existential threat to this presidency – a threat made more potent following the arrests of Trump’s former national security advisor, campaign chairman, and others.

The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne today touched on .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-attacks-on-mueller-push-us-closer-to-the-precipice/2017/12/10/97762606-dddb-11e7-89e8-edec16379010_story.html a question that too often goes unasked.

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Because we are inured to extreme partisanship and to the political right’s habit of rejecting inconvenient facts, we risk overlooking the profound political crisis that a Trumpified Republican Party could create. And the conflagration may come sooner rather than later, as Mueller zeroes in on Trump and his inner circle.

Only recently, it was widely assumed that if Trump fired Mueller, many Republicans would rise up to defend our institutions. Now, many in the party are laying the groundwork for justifying a coverup. This is a recipe for lawlessness.
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There was a point earlier this year in which Mueller, a Republican and a former FBI director, received bipartisan praise. With him at the helm, the political establishment declared in unison, there was reason to feel confidence in the integrity of the investigation.

But as the threats to Trump’s presidency have grown more serious, so too has the GOP’s willingness to attack Mueller. Trump’s conservative media allies have begun practically begging the president to fire the special counsel before Mueller brings down the White House.

So what happens if he does?

Trump, by his own admission, already fired a sitting FBI director in order to help derail the investigation into the Russia scandal. At the urging of his far-right allies, the president may very well consider doing the same thing with Mueller in order to, as Trump put it to Russian officials, relieve the “pressure” of the scandal.

Greg Sargent had a good piece .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/12/04/its-time-to-ask-every-republican-this-question-about-trump-and-mueller/ .. on this last week, explaining that every congressional Republican should go on the record responding to a straightforward question: “If President Trump tries to remove special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, would you view that as an impeachable offense?”

There’s nothing rhetorical about this. The White House hasn’t hinted that Mueller’s ouster is on the table, but Trump has warned about various “red lines” that he expects the special counsel to honor. That was before congressional Republicans and the GOP’s media allies began characterizing Mueller as Public Enemy #1.

When Nixon pulled his Saturday Night Massacre .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre .. and fired the official overseeing the Watergate scandal, it was the beginning of the end of his presidency. It’s in the public’s interest to know whether Trump would face a similar fate under similar circumstances, or whether Congress’ Republican majority would applaud the radical escalation.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/unanswered-question-hangs-over-the-gops-anti-mueller-offensive

See also:

Mueller Has a Roadmap and the End Game Is Nigh
President Trump is unhinged because Michael Flynn knows everything about his ties with Russia and he’s talking.
[...]
So what is Mueller’s end game? Assuming he survives in office and doesn’t suffer his own “Saturday Night Massacre,” I think he’s aiming to indict the president of the United States for multiple felonies. Trump’s lawyers know this. They’ve told him what Mueller’s intentions are. Maybe this explains Trump’s wild-eyed endorsement of child-molester Roy Moore in Alabama, his deranged retweeting of anti-Muslim videos from some British neo-Nazi website, and his surreal resurrection of Obama’s alleged Kenyan birth. He can see the end coming, and it’s driving him crazy. President Donald J. Trump knows that he and his White House are surrounded by investigators, and they are asking questions of literally every single person who worked on the Trump campaign and in the Trump White House. He knows, because John Dowd, an old time D.C. lawyer who has been through the wars of Washington scandals, has told him, that once an investigation like Mueller’s starts, you can’t stop it. Like a house of cards collapsing, you can’t move your hands fast enough to grab enough cards to put it back together. It just keeps coming down until the whole thing is on the floor.
https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/president-trump-unhinged-because-michael-flynn-knows-everything-about-his-ties-russia-and
.. h/t BOREALIS .. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=136609890