Sunday 17 December 2017

Trump/Mueller blow-up in the making

I predict that Donald Trump and Robert Mueller are approaching a mighty bust-up. The way things are going Trump is not the sort of person to sit idly by while his reputation is slowly torn to shreds. He has endured with growing impatience the indictment of some of his former closest aides and advisers, he has read with increasing fury the speculation and FBI-sourced hints of imminent action against the people he trusts, and he must be totally frustrated that every time he announces a new initiative it gets smothered by the RUSSIA COLLUSION!! stuff. I'm speculating of course that he's furious but I'm absolutely sure I'm right. Now, one of his many lawyers has claimed that the thousands of emails that were passed over to the Mueller team should never have been given to them because they had been written during the election campaign when they were "private" and not when Trump had taken over as president when all emails emanating from the White House are "government" property and therefore legally available to an investigator such as Mueller. Well, it's all a bit late for that brilliant piece of legal judgment, the deed is done. But it gives Trump and co some ammunition against Mueller. They are thinking to themselves, Mueller is basing his investigation on emails that were unlawfully obtained. They weren't of course because Trump's lawyers, being a bit slow in the brain department, just handed them over without thinking. So Mueller acquired them lawfully in that sense. He didn't steal them. BUT, they shouldn't have been handed over in the first place because etc etc. Now that opens up an interesting scenario. If Mueller got his indictments against Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, George Stephanopoulos and the others as a result of THOSE emails, do Trump's lawyers have the right to demand that the indictments be overturned? If this happened in a court case, and it was proved that evidence of wrongdoing had been acquired by an unlawful process, a judge would have to rule against the prosecution. So there is a little window of opportunity here for Trump's legal team. Mueller could be in trouble. As far as the anti-Trump voters are concerned, it won't make any difference, whether the emails should have been kept private or not. The emails said what they said and Mueller acted accordingly. But if this lawyer who has just woken up after a long sleep has got his facts right, Trump will be jumping up and down. This could be his great break. I can see tweets going back and forth until an almighty row erupts between the Trump team and the Mueller investigators. Trump will berate Mueller for behaving illegally and suddenly the former FBI director gets a summons to the Justice Department and he is fired as special counsel. That's my prediction for what it's worth.

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