An institutionally questionable development — the Department of Justice goes after President Trump's attorney

10 April 2018

As an attorney myself — I am skeptical about the institutional wisdom of the Department of Justice's course against President Trump

If you missed the news:

The FBI on Monday raided the office and hotel room of Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's personal attorney, seeking information about a $130,000 payment the lawyer made to porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election, sources said.

The search warrants were sought and executed by FBI agents and federal prosecutors in New York in coordination with special counsel Robert Mueller's team after an initial referral from Mueller's office.

Several law enforcement officials confirmed the search of Cohen's office was not the work of Mueller's prosecutors. It involves a matter that the Mueller team came across, which the team concluded did not fall under its mandate and passed on to the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan.

Consider the scope of the 'conspiracy'

From Business Insider:

The Department of Justice had to go to extraordinary lengths in order to carry out the raid on President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen.

On Monday, the FBI raided Cohen's Manhattan office, his home, and his hotel room, as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Vanity Fair reported. The FBI was apparently acting on a referral from the special counsel Robert Mueller.

The Washington Post reported that Cohen was under investigation for possible bank fraud and violations of election law.

Eric Columbus, a former Obama administration official who served in the Justice Department, noted to Business Insider that key actors involved with the warrant were Trump administration appointees. Geoffrey Berman, the interim US attorney for the Southern District of New York, was appointed to his role by Attorney General Jeff Sessions while Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and FBI Director Christopher Wray were nominated by Trump. Two of the three, Berman and Wray, were personally interviewed by Trump for the jobs.

"It shows this is just about the polar opposite of a Deep State plot!" he said.

I tentatively hypothesize the opposite.

Why now, and why regarding this?

You have to wonder how and why the DoJ managed to reverse its customary disinclination to mess with well-established thievery and purulent corruption.

For instance, the 2008 financial sector that crashed the American economy and left persistent effects even to this day.

No substantive prosecutions whatsoever.

Or, alternatively, the myriad manifestations of corruption that have visibly hollowed out American government itself.

No meaningful jabs at those, either.

And similarly — nothing significant against the many monopoly-exercising corporate interests that DoJ consistently ignores with impassioned, laissez faire lassitude (meaning lack of energy).

But along comes a bureaucratically abrasive president

And DoJ suddenly reverses its Establishment Lick Ass course to deal with the President's high profile, but comparatively inconsequential lawyer.

Huh?

Who's going to gain?

At what price?

Contemplate the potential consequences of DoJ's actions

A sensible Department head, planning a controllable course of action, would recognize that the President has the self-restraint of a particularly erratic toddler.

The DoJ is, therefore, knowingly inviting a constitutional crisis in which the President fires Mueller, as well as whomever he believes to be responsible for this "attack" at both Justice and FBI.

Even if the DoJ's intrusive investigation of Cohen and, by implication, the President are plentifully lawful — the Department is further inviting the President to gain political cover by taking the nation into another unnecessary war.

That easily foreseeable step culminating the Military Industrial Complex's uninterrupted and recently renewed false flag narratives against Syria and Russia.

These consequences would be nationally stressful. Not to mention their deadly effects upon victimized foreign populations.

Given those stakes, one should critically evaluate Mueller's ethics in (allegedly) making the referral to DoJ.

Overreaching Mueller's mandate

Special counsel Mueller's brief included only probing alleged Russian election meddling and possibly related ties to the Administration. In other words, looking into the Putin Made Trump a Puppet nonsense.

Mueller's publicly assigned scope did not include gathering unrelated dirt on the President and his minions.

That he is apparently doing so and seeking to act (or have someone else act) upon what he finds, supports the merit of President Trump's outrage.

Parenthetically, notice that the Washington Post twisted the President's anger to make him look bad in a situation in which the average American might empathize with the President's pain.

The moral? — Mr. Cohen better turn out to have been a monster, after the dust settles

I doubt that is going happen.

Instead, Mr. Cohen may turn out to be a less competent example of what Americans already think of as high profile, institutionalized scumbaggery. This is not an Earth-shattering insight. Prosecuting him, while leaving presumably hundreds of other scumbaggery miscreants alone, advances the purported American Cause not one bit.

Given the grave consequences that this dangerously timed DoJ maneuver may kick up, I will be surprised if anyone remembers how ineptly the mess started.

I am not saying that Cohen, if involved in illegal activities, should skate.

I am saying — like any competent cop would — that we should time our interventions, so as to avoid stirring up unnecessarily massive tumult.

National security and American criminal justice are not preeminently at stake in the Stormy Daniels case, are they?

In fact, DoJ could have let the Daniels-Trump civil litigation proceed as it would, probably resulting in the same facts coming to light.

We can tentatively infer that American Federal Government continues to lack common sense and a rationally defensible sense of proportion.

PeteFree.com

An institutionally questionable development — the Department of Justice goes after President Trump's attorney