History will not be kind to Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and others who stand by idly.
Jan 26, 2018
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It came with the wind through the silence of
the night, a long, deep mutter, then a rising howl, and then the sad
moan in which it died away. Again and again it sounded, the whole air
throbbing with it, strident, wild and menacing.
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1902.
So, if I read the state of play correctly,
special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating the president* and the
president*’s administration* for obstruction of justice, and Mueller has
been running this investigation for seven months knowing that the
president* came within an ace of firing him last June for the purposes
of, ah, obstructing justice. He’s had this information in his back
pocket every time a member of the administration* came before him under
oath. I’ve never been a criminal defendant charged with obstruction of
justice, but this seems to me to be a bad situation for an obstructor of
justice to be in.
The major scoop in The New York Times
that has shaken up the world can be read in a number of different ways
that all lead to the same conclusion. Right from jump, the president*
has been scared right down to his silk boxers of what Mueller would
discover regarding his campaign’s connections to Russian ratfcking and
regarding his business connections to freshly laundered Russian cash.
This conclusion does not change even if you think that White House
counsel Don McGahn leaked this story to make himself the hero or to
cover his own ass. This conclusion does not change even if you think the
ratlines off the listing hulk of this administration are thick with
fleeing rodents. This whole thing remains a product of the president*’s
guilty mind.
(And the story did shake up the world. The president* went before a gathering in Davos on Friday
and began raving about “fake news” and the perfidy of the American
media. He got booed. Many cats were called. No shoes were thrown, but George W. Bush set a pretty high bar there.)
The
story does explain the curious frenzy over the last week: the
president*’s saying that he’s “looking forward” to a chat with Mueller,
and that he might even deign to have the chat under oath; the apparent
rush to present the Congress with a half-baked “compromise plan” on
immigration that has no chance of passing the House of Representatives;
and the fact that the president* took every member of his inner circle
except his wife to Switzerland. I suspect those folks heard the baying
of the hound even before Michael Schmidt and Maggie Haberman did. More
ominous is the possibility that McGahn—or whomever—leaked this story
because the president* is thinking about firing Mueller now, or in the
near future, and whoever the leaker was understands very well what a
monumental calamity that would be for all concerned.
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You would think that we would see the wheels
turning now. You would think that Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell would
find some slivers of patriotism between the cushions of their sofas and
step up to fulfill the constitutional obligations of their respective
offices. There is a genuine crisis on their doorsteps right now, and,
next week, the president* is supposed to give his State of the Union
address, and god alone knows what he’s going to say. They have not
moved. They have given no indication that they will move. History will
brand them as cowards and as traitors to the country’s best ideals.
History’s not going to be kind to a lot of people who are living through
these insane times.
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