WHEN THE WHITE KNIGHT IS TALKING BACKWARDS

Between 1985 and 2005, Garry Kasparov was the greatest chess player on the planet.  He became a human rights activist in post-communist Russia, and was harassed and even assaulted for his work.  He left Russia in 2013 and now lives in New York City.  He can speak authoritatively about dealing with dictators.

On Sunday, he tweeted, “Working with demagogues and autocrats is like working with cancer. You fight it. You cut it out. These aren't political differences, it's deciding if we're going to have politics at all.”

It’s pretty clear that congressional Republicans are leaning towards not having politics at all.  Everything I’ve read lately suggests that they’ve offered a deal to Donald Trump.  What they want from Trump is nine weeks of relative calm, during which they can confirm Brett Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court justice.  They also hope that two drama-free months will allow them to salvage some endangered congressional seats on November 6.

In return, on November 7, Republicans will give Trump the all clear to fire Jeff Sessions and appoint a new Attorney General who will do his best to end, or severely limit, the Mueller investigation.  They will also agree not to interfere when Trump pardons Paul Manafort and perhaps others involved in the Russian conspiracy to steal the 2016 presidential election. 

Plainly stated – assuming my conclusions are correct – in exchange for another Supreme Court seat and slightly improved odds in the mid-term elections, Republicans have agreed to precipitate a constitutional crisis. 

There seems to be a good chance that Democrats will take back the House, and in 2019, begin serious investigations into Trump’s high crimes and misdemeanors.  But it will be much harder to flip the Senate, and even if Democrats were to pick up enough seats to reach a slim majority in that body, a two-thirds vote would be necessary to convict Trump and remove him from office.  It’s hard to see that many Republican senators who’d even be willing to consider such an action.  A more likely outcome is that a Democratic House will find ways to expose Trump’s corruption, but unless he decides to quit, the only way to get rid of him will be to vote him out in the 2020 presidential election. 

Of course, this scenario begs the question of whether Trump could restrain himself for two months.  Between his stream of consciousness campaign rally rants and his rage tweets, it seems more likely that he’ll continue to blurt out incriminating statements. 

Consider this Trump tweet from September 3: “Two long running, Obama era, investigations of two very popular Republican Congressmen were brought to a well publicized charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the Jeff Sessions Justice Department. Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough time. Good job Jeff......”

In other words, Trump wanted his Attorney General to obstruct justice in order to keep two congressional seats in Republican hands.  (And as you might expect, he lied in this tweet.  While Duncan Hunter’s misuse of campaign funds lasted seven years, beginning when Barack Obama was president, the insider trading that brought down Chris Collins happened in June, 2017, which is solidly in the Trump era.)   

Given the viciousness of Trump’s attacks on Jeff Sessions, I find myself wondering if there’s any truth to speculation that Sessions has cut a deal with Robert Mueller in order to avoid prosecution for his own involvement in the Trump-Russia conspiracy.  But it’s equally possible that he just enjoys having a job that allows him to harass minorities, and that he’s willing to endure any degree of humiliation in order to hang onto that job as long as possible. 

Be that as it may, neither Trump nor congressional Republicans know what Robert Mueller will do between now and November 6, and that’s a pretty serious wild card.  If Mueller (or a prosecutor in a different jurisdiction, for that matter) indicts Don Jr., Jared, or Ivanka, all bets are off.  Ditto if Trump is named as an unindicted co-conspirator.  If one or more of those hypotheticals come to pass, Trump is likely to go ballistic.  But Trump is Trump, and he could go ballistic anyway.  Two months is a long time if you’re a crazy person.

In the meantime, Rudy Giuliani is laying down a smokescreen in order to confuse as many people as possible.  In August, he claimed that Mueller was legally required to go silent during the run up to the election.  Of course, there’s no such law, rule, or regulation.  There is a defensible custom that the Department of Justice should avoid even the appearance of using the criminal justice system for partisan political purposes.  (Looking at you, James Comey.)  But neither Donald Trump nor anyone who is likely to be indicted in the near future (looking at you, Don Jr. and Jared) is on the ballot this November.  Candidates who ARE on the ballot in November are obviously free to distance themselves from the Trump crime family.  If they choose not to do that, it’s on them, not on Robert Mueller.

Most recently, Giuliani has told the NEW YORKER that Trump intends to assert a claim of executive privilege to suppress any report that Mueller might issue.  That, in Garry Kasparov’s terms, is deciding not to have politics at all.  It is further proof that Donald Trump is a demagogue who intends to ignore his oath “to protect, preserve, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

The next big battle in the war against this cancer on our body politic will take place on November 6.  We can’t afford to lose this one.