Coups

Merriam-W3bster defines coup as, variously:

• accomplishment
• achievement
• attainment
• brilliant, sudden, successful act
• triumph

It's doubtful that Donald Trump meant any of those when he referred to the Mueller Investigation as a coup.

Speaking today to the National Rifle Association, Trump, with his usual mangling of words and and semantics, said They tried for a coup, it didn't work out so well. And I didn't need a gun for that one, did I?

Two things make me nervous about this.  First, (so what else is new?),  Mr. Trump (he of I know words; I have the best words.) clearly doesn't understand the first thing about the proper use of language.  He sees it as a tool, not to illuminate or inform, but rather to confuse and obfuscate.  That, in combination with one other factor, makes me doubly afraid.  Trump's declaration - I didn't need a gun for that one - smacks of wink-wink-nod-nod implicitly advocating the use of guns to accomplish political ends.

Nothing in our recent history can reassure me that Mr. Trump's careless, and uncaring, use of words will not cause something horrific  And if those are his best words, one shudders to think what some of his lesser sabda or mot or neno  might be.

He's In It to Win It

Even Fox and Friends think Joe Biden has a chance, given his announcement video.  That's been characterized as a stinging attack on Donald Trump, and Trump's comments after the deadly Charlotteville neo-Nazi protests.

The Mueller Report, Congressional Subpoenas, and Executive Privilege

Volume 1 of the Mueller Report presents a plethora of activities by Russian quasi-governmental entities that were intended to tip the 2016 Presidential election in Donald Trump's direction.  While the Report acknowledges it found no basis to charge anyone associated with the Trump campaign with criminal conspiracy, it also isn't shy about pointing out every questionable act or decision by Trump associates.

Volume 2 of the Report deals with obstruction of justice.  Like its sibling, it makes no criminal charges, but also does not rule them out.  Further, it notes more than once that:

• Donald Trump refused any in-person interviews with Mueller staff
• the great majority of written answers provided by the Trump legal team say simply I don't remember
• the Trump team did provide several thousand pages of documentation

 Such actions might seem to support Mr. Trump's claim today that he has acted in a truly transparent manner during this investigation.  But his reasoning holds water no better than a leaky sieve.

Trump claims executive privilege as the basis for legal challenges to Congressional subpoenas to current or former members of his Administration.  No can do, Donald.  Since you publicly and repeatedly gave your approval to folks like Don McGahn being interviewed by the Mueller team, those interviews, and the circumstances to which they pertained, are already public record, and therefore not subject to claims of executive privilege.  Nice try, but several months too late.

The only remaining question is how Democrats in the House of Representatives will confront and deal with the looming legal battle over subpoenas and executive privilege.  Whether criminal or civil, that battle will almost certainly allow Donald Trump to use it as a topic at a 2020 campaign rally, perhaps whipping up his audience with a rousing Lock 'em up!

Trump's State of Mind

I have a Twitter account, but use it very little.  I follow very few individuals; I certainly don't keep track of Donald Trump's rants-via-Internet.  But the report we've linked to from CNN highlights what has always been my biggest concern about the current occupant of the Oval Office.

Chris Cillizza wonders:

...  what the reaction would be -- among politicians, among the media -- if George W. Bush or Barack Obama had tweeted ANYTHING even close to this:

 

Morning Psycho (Joe), who helped get me elected in 2016 by having me on (free) all the time, has nosedived, too Angry Dumb and Sick.

 

Talk about the Pot calling the Kettle black ...

Meanwhile, Back at the Border

The Mueller Report remains riveting.  But here's another manifestation of Trump policy and rhetoric.

On Saturday, the FBI arrested the leader of a far-right armed militia group, the United Constitutional Patriots or UCP, whose members have been stopping, at gunpoint, migrants attempting to enter the United States from Mexico.

Conspiracy as Defined in Federal Law

Page 10 of the Mueller report largely consists of a few points of semantics.

1. Collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States Code.
2. For that reason, Robert Mueller focused on questions of criminal liability as defined under federal law governing conspiracy.
3. In that vein, the focus was further narrowed to set aside whether or not members of the Trump campaign coordinated with Russian election interference efforts, since, like the much bandied-about term collusion, coordination has no settle definition in federal criminal law.

A couple of pages later we come to one of the Report's more redacted sections, the Executive Summary to Volume 1.  In layperson-ese, Volume 1 is the summation of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election.  It provides copious evidence that such interference, which began as early as 2014, was planned and voluminous.

So, while the Mueller investigation does not deal with, indeed shows no interest in, collusion, it certainly does not exonerate Mr. Trump or the Trump Administration.  For instance, on page 13, it's noted that the Trump Campaign showed an interest in WikiLeaks' releases of documents, and welcomed their potential to damage candidate Clinton.

Doesn't sound like any synonym for exoneration to me ...