Mueller's trail is getting White House hot

If I was president of the United States and my former national security adviser and confidant was arrested and charged with lying to the FBI, I would begin to feel distinctly hot under the collar, as we say in Blighty. The venerable Chuck Todd, former NBC White House correspondent and now moderator (presenter) of NBC's Meet the Press programme, said yesterday that the tentacles of the Russia collusion investigation now only had to go two more steps to reach the president himself, via Jared Kushner, son-in-law, and Donald Trump Junior. Kushner has already been fingered because it has been widely reported that Mike Flynn, the Trumpite who lied to the FBI, had been specifically authorised by Kushner to contact the Russians during the presidential election campaign. If so, Kushner must now also be heading for a federal charge, unless he can show that the auhorised contact with the Russians was purely about trying to improve relations with Moscow and had nothing to do with getting dirt on Hillary Clinton to wreck her chances of beating Trump to the White House. The possibility that Robert Mueller and his inquiry team will be knocking on the door of the Oval Office is becoming more likely by the day. Trump of course has dismissed all the speculation, sending his press office to reassure the media that Flynn was acting on his own and had no authority from the president or anyone else to go and chat up the Russians. This, I'm afraid, is simply beyond belief. Why would Flynn, such a close associate of Trump before and after he became president, decide off his own bat to ring up the Russian ambassador in Washington and offer the carrot of an end to the tough sanctions against the Russian government? Would he not first ask the Big Man himself if he thought this was a good idea? Mueller must surely be thinking along these lines. So the trail has suddenly become explosively hot hot hot. Could this really all end up with impeachment of the president? I never thought it likely, but the longer the investigation continues and the more key people Mueller manages to persuade to cooperate with him, the greater the threat facing the president. Flynn is revealing everything he knows. George Papadopoulos, former Trump foreign policy adviser, is revealing everything he knows. What about Kushner? Will he come clean, I mean totally clean, to save his skin or will he always remain loyal to his father-in-law? In other words, take the blame on his shoulders to protect Trump from Mueller's clutches? A prima facie case of collusion with Moscow to bring down Hillary Clinton still seems far-fetched, in which case Trump will survive but with huge questions over his head for the rest of his presidency. Much will now depend on what Kushner tells Mueller.