DING DONG THE WITCH IS

I’ve lost track of the number of times Donald Trump has referred to the investigations into his high crimes and misdemeanors a witch hunt. He did it again on Monday, after the FBI raided the home and office of his personal fixer, Michael Cohen, seizing material related to various illegal activities. It was an awfully aggressive move on the part of the G-Men, and I can’t help but wonder what they were looking for.

The early take is that they were after information on the Stormy Daniels payoff, which is possible. The other hypothesis I’ve seen is that Robert Mueller orchestrated the whole thing as a warning shot against the guy who keeps threatening to fire him. I guess that’s possible too.

According to one of Cohen’s lawyers, the raid was conducted under the auspices of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), working from information passed along by Robert Mueller.

As best I understand it, this means that Mueller’s team found evidence of illegal activity involving Cohen, but considered it to be outside the boundaries of his charge. In that situation, the rules require Mueller to consult with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who had the option to expand Mueller’s charge to include the new crimes or to refer the matter to a U.S. Attorney in the appropriate jurisdiction. He obviously chose the second option.

Once the witch hunters (oops, I mean the SDNY) received this new information, they didn’t just load their tommy guns and smash down Cohen’s doors, like the Gang Busters in days of old. No, nowadays there are a lot of namby-pamby procedures that must be followed. Imagine if the old school Puritan witch hunters in Salem back in 1692 had been forced to deal with such bureaucracy. We’d probably all be speaking Wiccan today.

As best I understand it (I’ll say a second time), a request for a warrant authorizing the raids must have been reviewed and approved by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman – a man who (like Deputy AG Rosenstein) was appointed by Donald Trump. Berman was one of Rudy Giuliani’s law partners, and a donor to the Trump campaign. He is not, in other words, some Deep State mole dedicated to undermining Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is practically foaming at the mouth with rage. But the thing is, he brought it on himself.

“When you’re famous, they let you do it,” as Trump told Billy Bush on the Access Hollywood tape. He was bragging about getting away with various forms of sexual assault, but he could just as well have been talking about stiffing small businessmen or laundering money for unsavory characters from Eastern Europe. Trump did indeed get away with a lot of sketchy behavior. If he got caught – as he did, frequently – he bought his way out of trouble. He paid fines for his casino’s money laundering convictions and settlements to his ex-wives and paramours.

When you’re livin’ La Vida Trump, a few million dollars in fines and payoffs are just part of the cost of doing business.

Until you get to the White House. When you’re president, people start paying closer attention. That never occurred to Trump, probably because he didn’t expect to win. The irony of the situation is that the editors and publishers of the national press are instinctively deferential to power, and especially to Republicans in power.

A smart president would have found a way to manipulate that tendency. A smart president would have acquired at least a minimal understanding of the functions of federal law enforcement and the intelligence communities, and then done his best to stay out of their way. A smart president wouldn’t rely on Fox & Friends for all his information.

Donald Trump isn’t smart. Instead, he spent the past 18 months tweeting out every conspiracy theory he heard on Fox News. He insulted and threatened both the press and his own Justice Department, and he told obvious, demonstrable lies in the process.

Now he’s shocked and outraged that the press and the Justice Department are doing their jobs instead of just taking his word that he’s innocent.

Michael Cohen is the guy who did Trump’s dirty work for him. The legal and financial records he’s kept for Trump probably don’t have anything to do with the Russia election scandal, which is why Mueller passed them on to Berman.

Berman probably wishes this hadn’t been dumped in his lap, but I have to assume that if he finds evidence of criminality, he’ll prosecute. And what are the odds that Trump’s legal and financial records contain no evidence of illegal activity? Slim and none, I’d say.