To anyone who lived through Watergate, Robert Mueller’s investigation is surprising in only one regard: How quickly he has put together a case that implicates not just the president but dozens of his underlings.
I’ve seen headlines recently (tl;dr) about living through Watergate. Even those of us who lived through it tend to forget that at no time during the first year of that investigation did the thought of impeachment cross anyone’s mind. Nixon had won 49 of 50 states by demonizing blacks and hippies, who were obviously fronts for commies. He was popular, except with those who opposed the war he had promised to end. People knew that the “burglars” were CIA-connected but didn’t yet have the testimony about the money trail that provided all the dots that have long since been connected. Impeachment? It wasn’t even thought preposterous. It wasn’t thought at all.
For all their bungling, the men involved in Watergate, Nixon above all, knew government and how it works, which is a big reason they were able to stall and stiff-arm investigative attempts. We now know that the leaks to Woodstein came from FBI official Mark Felt. Republican apologists argue that he was angry at being passed over for promotion; they rarely point out that almost all prosecutors and investigators get frustrated that the truth might never get out. Without him, the cover-up might have worked.
Ignorance of government is a big problem with the Trump crew. As Josh Marshall notes in this masterly recap of what we know at this point, Trump wasn’t working with the best people — he was working with castoffs who couldn’t find jobs with one of the other 15 candidates. Given that so many of those candidates refused for so long to accept Trump’s victory, he only picked up retreads (like Kellyanne Conway from the Cruz campaign) late in the game, and even then he only got people who were willing to gamble their reputation within the mainstream GOP. His lawyers aren’t crack D.C. veterans, and even if they were they would have to contend with a client so clueless he unwittingly tweets out his guilt.
The underlying crimes of Trump and crew so dwarf those of Nixon, or even of the Reaganauts who launched Iran-Contra, that it’s impossible to hide them. Manafort’s money-shuffling schemes provide a key for prosecuting Trump and all his spawn for money laundering; just look at the Trump Panama tower fiasco. Flynn’s cowboy diplomacy and links to foreign agents open up all sorts of avenues; I suspect that if these threads are followed to their ends they will find that foreign money entered Trump accounts he used to “self-fund” the campaign.
This administration does not have just a crime or two to cover up — it is a criminal enterprise and has compromised everyone involved from top to bottom. If you think this is anything but the Goths and Vandals sacking Rome, look at Trump’s cabinet, several of whom immediately started spending taxpayer money on personal travel, others of whom furthered the interests of the corporations who have sponsored their political careers. We’re well past the point of these being “ethical” concerns. They should be criminal concerns.
Impeachment happened to Nixon when his crimes became to obvious to ignore. If that never happens to Trump, well, that’ll be the ballgame, won’t it?
Benito Mussolini, who invented fascism, said that it was a fusion of government and corporate industry. The nationalism and racism were the sops to the mob. If that’s not the system Trump is trying to impose, what is it?
How ironic that a political party birthed partly in the name of freedom dies by committing itself to fascism.