"Now I’m F---ing Doing It My Way": Trump Prepares For War With Mueller
ZeroHedge,
21 March, 2018
Hours after the resignation of John Dowd, President Trump's lead attorney handling the special counsel investigation, Trump said he "would like to" testify in Robert Mueller's ongoing probe - a move panned by some, including Fox's Judge Napolitano, as a bad move.
The President's 180 comes after the White House legal team had reportedly been considering ways that President Trump might be able to testify - including giving written answers - with Trump's attorneys reportedly having been split on the terms of such a deal, reported the Wall Street Journal earlier this month.
But
that's not Trump's style... After bringing on former federal
prosecutor Joe diGenova on Monday - a former Special
Counsel himself who went after both the Teamsters and former NY
Governor Elliot Spitzer, Trump is reportedly taking the gloves off
according to Vanity
Fair's
Gabriel Sherman.
Earlier this month, Mueller crossed one of Trump’s stated “red lines” when he subpoenaed Trump Organization business records. According to four Republicans in regular contact with the White House, the move spurred Trump to lose patience with his team of feuding lawyers. “Trump hit the roof,” one source said. Today, Trump’s personal lawyer John Dowd resigned under pressure from Trump.
diGenova
- who said
in January that
the Obama administration engaged in a "brazen
plot to exonerate Hillary Clinton"
and "frame
an incoming president with a false Russian conspiracy,"
is married to Victoria
Toensing -
who, as we've mentioned, is a former Reagan Justice Department
official and former chief counsel of the Senate Intelligence
Committee.
“She’s
a killer,” one Republican who knows the couple told Sherman.
Toensing
also happens to represent FBI whistleblower William
D. Campbell -
who claims to have gathered evidence of a Russian "uranium
dominance strategy" which included millions of dollars routed to
a Clinton charity. Campbell testified before three Congressional
committees in February.
The
Campbell connection makes it all the more interesting since Trump
is reportedly considering adding Toensing to his legal team. In
other words, Trump would be teaming up with two veteran bulldog D.C.
attorneys - one
of whom ostensibly has
evidence in the Uranium One scandal. As
Sherman points out in Vanity
Fair,
"The
hiring of Toensing would be a sign that Trump wants to flip the
script and investigate his investigators.
Appearing on Fox News, Toensing has called for a second special
prosecutor to investigate Mueller, the
logic being that he was F.B.I. director at the time that the Uranium
One acquisition was approved."
Following
Mueller's subpoena of
the Trump organization, Trump has been fuming. Last weekend, Trump
encouraged John Dowd to call for an end to the Russia probe,
according to Sherman. "On Sunday, Trump blasted Mueller as
partisan, tweeting: “Why
does the Mueller team have 13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked
Hillary supporters, and Zero Republicans?”"
And
with the hire of Joe diGenova - it's
obvious that Trump is bringing out the big guns for
a direct confrontation with Mueller,
after souring on his legal team's more diplomatic strategy:
Trump’s new offensive is a sign that he’s unilaterally abandoning the go-along, get-along strategy advocated by Dowd and Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer overseeing the response to Mueller. Cobb’s standing with Trump has been falling for months, after Cobb made the now-infamous prediction that the Russia probe would be over by Thanksgiving 2017. Dowd assured Trump that he had a “great relationship with Mueller” and could manage him, according to sources. That obviously hasn’t happened. “Trump just wants something to change and nothing was changing,” the outside adviser said. The genial and mustachioed Cobb has always been somewhat of an odd fit for Trump, whose mental picture of a lawyer is Roy Cohn, his early mentor. Sources said Trump reluctantly conceded to allow Cobb to play good cop. “Trump is looking at this saying, I did it your way for months, now I’m fucking doing it my way,” a former West Wing official said. (The White House did not respond to a request for comment.) -Vanity Fair
diGenova
was reportedly recommended to Trump by Dave
Bossie and Jeanine
Piro -
both of whom are outside advisors to Trump. That said, Fox
News Senior
Judicial Analyst Judge Napolitano thinks Dowd's resignation and the
decision to put Trump in front of Mueller's team would be a
"disaster" for the President.
"It's
very, very easy to trip somebody up when you have all the documents,
you have all the testimony, you have all the prior witnesses and
you're asking somebody questions that you know the answers to and
that they don't," Napolitano said on "America's Newsroom"
in late
February.
Of
Dowd's resignation, Judge Napolitano said:
Dowd resignation - Not good news for the President twitter.com/FoxBusiness/st…
"It's
very, very easy to trip somebody up when you have all the documents,
you have all the testimony, you have all the prior witnesses and
you're asking somebody questions that you know the answers to and
that they don't," Napolitano said on "America's Newsroom"
in late February.
Of
Dowd's resignation, Judge Napolitano said:
.@Judgenap on John Dowd's resignation: "This is the most important member of the [legal] team who viewed every document that was surrendered to Bob Mueller."
4:59 AM - 23 Mar 2018
Sherman
also reports that Trump is considering bringing back controversial
attorney Marc Kasowitz onto his defense team.
“They’re
talking a lot,” one Republican briefed on the conversations said.
(Kasowitz did not respond to a request for comment.) Bringing back
Kasowitz would be a sign of how rattled Trump is by the looming
prospect of being interviewed by Mueller. Last July, Trump sidelined
Kasowitz after it was revealed he struggled with alcoholism and told
a stranger to “watch your back, bitch” in an e-mail. (Kasowitz
has denied reports of alcohol abuse.) Sources also said Kasowitz’s
return would be a signal that Trump is willing to put his own
survival ahead of his family. -VF
Kasowitz
had reportedly told Trump that Jared Kushner needed to leave the
White House.
With
the departure of John Dowd and the addition of diGenova and Toensing
- combined with Trump's desire to testify in the Mueller probe, this
could go either really well for President Trump - or it could be his
downfall. Either way, it promises to entertain.
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