General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSlate - good read "Michael Cohen's Guilty Plea Is a Massive Victory for Robert Mueller's Divide-and-
Michael Cohens Guilty Plea Is a Massive Victory for Robert Muellers Divide-and-Conquer Strategy"
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/08/michael-cohens-guilty-plea-is-a-massive-victory-for-robert-muellers-strategy.html
Donald Trump has a lot more to worry about than just Robert Mueller. That much has been clear since April, when details began to emerge from public court filings regarding the FBI raid on Trumps personal attorney, Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a number of criminal charges, including some stemming from his work for Trump.
That raid wasnt the work of Mueller. Instead, it was carried out by FBI agents acting in coordination with Robert S. Khuzami, a deputy U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. Mueller had referred the Cohen case to Khuzamis office, but that was as far as his involvement apparently went. As I wrote at the time, the distribution of the investigation to a second office served to potentially inoculate [it] from Trumps attacks against Mueller and potential meddling in the broader Russia investigation. Samuel W. Buell, the former lead Enron prosecutor, told me that would make it much more difficult to kill the investigation with a Saturday Night Massacrestyle firing spree. The network of federal law enforcement professionals with experience and reputations, in different respected offices, involved in these matters makes it much harder to come up with a plausible way to surgically stop this, he said at the time over email.
The fruits of that April raid emerged in Tuesdays eight-count guilty plea by Cohen on tax fraud, bank fraud, and campaign finance violations. The confession on those final counts directly implicated President Trump. Its worth noting that Muellers name and those of his prosecutors appeared nowhere in any of Cohens plea documents. Given that the president has escalated his smear campaign against the former FBI director and longtime Republican by referring to him as [d]isgraced and discredited Bob Mueller, it seems like a good thing that another office is handling a major part of the probe. Not only does this distribution of labor offer a rebuttal against the unwarranted charge that Muellers investigation is spiraling out of control, it presents more proof that Trumps consistent demonization of his inquisitors is about his own potential wrongdoing, not theirs.
In his press statement after Cohens guilty plea, Khuzami thanked and individually named the members of the team that worked on this case: Assistant U.S. Attorneys Andrea Griswold, Rachel Maimin, Thomas McKay, and Nicolas Roos, Public Corruption Unit Chief Russell Capone, Deputy Chief Edward B. Diskant, FBI official Bill Sweeney, and IRS investigator James Robnett. For all of these people, I could go on and on about their many virtues and talents, Khuzami said. But the one important thing is they all are satisfied with simply being known as public servants, prosecutors, and law enforcement agents, who are doing their job. That description feels like a direct refutation of Trumps daily assault on the allegedly very bad and conflicted people conducting the witch hunt as part of the deep state. The message Khuzami is sending here is that the people conducting these investigations are ordinary bureaucrats, that they are legion, and that Trumps constant assertions to the contrary are transparent cons.
snip
last section
But as we witnessed this week, even if Trump can insult every investigatorand effectively retaliate against an all too significant number of themhe likely cant stop all of them from getting to the truth.
Its the president versus the law, Buell noted. Lord help us if the law cant win that battle.