Indictment At the Ready

By now, with the advantage of hindsight, it is obvious where Mr. Trump is heading in the weeks ahead. There is nothing more important to him than to stop the investigation into his campaign’s and his direct associations with Russia. His moves all last week scream of a large and ever larger plan to stop it all in its tracks.

Mr. Trump has already set in motion a series of musical chair events that are becoming ever more transparent. No one is being fooled by his rattling of the Attorney General’s cage, his removal of his Chief of Staff, nor of his creating a vacancy as Secretary in the Department of Homeland Security. But, they may be missing the hugely strategic connections between and among each of these moves and the part each plays in a very well thought out plan. From the advantage of hindsight, Mr. Trump’s dismissal of his Chief of Staff is to make room for Kelly, his attacks on Mr. Sessions are focused on moving him out of Justice; his transfer of Kelly to the White House is to move Sessions to Homeland Security, leaving a vacancy for a new, pliant Attorney General. It is a very clever set of chess moves with the focused last move being the firing of the Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

But, there remains one move on the chessboard that Mr. Trump may not be anticipating. And it could be the most dramatic of them all. Mueller is no one’s fool. It is very likely that he understands fully the reasons behind all these twists and turns in appointments. And it is even more likely that he has protected himself and, more importantly, his mission by having prepared in advance an “Indictment At The Ready” to level against Mr. Trump at the exact moment he moves to fire him. Such an indictment would shake the Presidency and this country at their core and set in motion a huge constitutional crisis the likes of which we cannot even begin to imagine.