Several months back President Trump stated that Mueller’s investigation must end before September in order to avoid interfering with the midterms. Well, there has been a little bit of back and forth about September 7th versus September 1st, but for all intents and purposes here we are. There are all kinds of rumbling in the media. The most tempting headlines come from politico and the New York Times so I skipped looking at those. Instead I’ll use my own marvelous logic to analyze the situation.
Tomorrow is September 1st and it’s a Saturday. Saturday is typically the perfect day to do something that you don’t want maximally covered in the news. What better day to fire Mueller! Do I think this will happen? I give it a 20% likelihood.
What I do hear, is that Giuliani is compiling a report on the deficiencies of the Mueller investigation. He is going to highlight the partisan decisions in the choice of targets. This will allow him to characterize the investigation as biased and therefore illegitimate. And this I assume will be the basis for pulling the plug on Mueller. I figure it’ll take at least a few weeks to unfold this little passion play. But I don’t imagine once it gets started that it’ll have to be much beyond September 15th before some definitive action will occur. My take on this is that it’s a 50% likelihood. It’s as likely as not to happen within the next two weeks.
And finally, what is the likelihood that nothing will happen until after the election. Well, previously I would have said very likely. But I think things seem to be shifting. That is reflected in a 30% likelihood. I think Mueller has done a lot of damage and seems to be intent on poisoning the mid-terms. President Trump recently said that Jeff Sessions will remain until after the mid-terms. I no longer think that’s true. I think it’s as likely as not that he’ll fire Sessions and begin a counter-attack against Mueller and company before the mid-terms.
Now what would that look like? I assume that firing Mueller, Sessions and Rosenstein will be just the tip of the iceberg. He must appoint a prosecutor to start actions against all the co-conspirators. He must begin proceedings to appoint replacements in the Justice Department and FBI. He must provide public information to the US citizenship and he must do all this without panicking the cowardly sheep in the Congress.
So, all of that’s fine. Good stuff. But look at the risk associated. The screeching from the media could be enough to throw the mid-terms to the Dems, even the Senate. So this is an enormous risk. Then why do I think it’s more likely than not that he will move before the midterms? Because Mueller is going to come out with a late October, maybe even early November surprise to absolutely sway the election. And I think Trump is a risk taker. I think he will roll the dice to prevent Mueller from calling the shots.
We definitely live in interesting times. If you have an opinion, leave it in the comments.
