Mueller and the Deep State Declare War on President Trump and the Constitution, while GOP Congress Swamp Creatures Fiddle

WE ALL KNOW WHAT THE REAL NEWS IS. Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed by Deep State Justice Department Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to destroy President Trump and everyone around him. The Mueller appointment was orchestrated by James Comey and executed after Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions fell into the Deep State trap and recused himself unnecessarily from all things related to the 'Russian probe.' Mueller's latest attack comes against President Trump's personal lawyer by raiding his home, office and hotel room to seize documents, a Deep State move so outrageous that only the President's own words accurately describe it : "It is an attack on our country." So, where are we now? • • • HEAVYWEIGHT ANALYSIS FROM EXPERTS. Let's start with the viewpoints that carry weight as legal analysis. • ALAN DERSHOWITZ told a told a radio station in NYC on Monday : “Well, I think Mueller is a zealot. I don’t think he cares whether he hurts Democrats or Republicans. But he’s a partisan and a zealot.” That sets the tome we should take to this perversion of the US legal system. Here is more of and about Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz' commentary -- this time from the Washington Examiner : "Liberal lawyer Alan Dershowitz called this a 'dangerous day' for attorney-client privilege on Fox News’ Hannity last night. He also noted that if Hillary Clinton was being investigated and her lawyer’s office was raided like this, the American Civil Liberties Union would more or less go crazy. Dershowitz added that the silence from the ACLU and civil libertarians on this raid is 'appalling' : 'This is a very dangerous day today for lawyer-client relations...I tell [clients] on my word of honor that what you tell me is sacrosanct. And now they say, just based on probable cause...they can burst into the office, grab all the computers, and then give it to another FBI agent and say, 'You're the firewall. We want you now to read all these confidential communications, tell us which ones we can get and which ones we can't get.'...The deafening silence from the ACLU and civil libertarians about the intrusion into the lawyer-client confidentiality is really appalling,' Dershowitz said. Dershowitz’s decision to maintain his principles on these legal matters and defend the President has cost him. He admits that his liberal colleagues no longer invite him to dinner parties, for which he says he’s now several pounds lighter as a result. He also said that they agree with him, privately telling him his legal defenses of Donald Trump are 100 percent correct, but that he should also shut the f**k up." Dershowitz is righteous about the raid on Attorney Cohen. Alan Dershowitz is a civil libertarian who did not support Trump for President, but he wrote in TheHill of the “Deep State” in Washington : “Civil libertarians should be concerned whenever the government interferes with the lawyer-client relationship. Clients should be able to rely on confidentiality when they disclose their most intimate secrets in an effort to secure their legal rights. A highly publicized raid on the President’s lawyer will surely shake the confidence of many clients in promises of confidentiality by their lawyers. They will not necessarily understand the nuances of the confidentiality rules and their exceptions. They will see a lawyer’s office being raided and all his files seized.” Dershowitz wrote that he believes “we would have been hearing more from civil libertarians -- the American Civil Liberties Union, attorney groups and privacy advocates -- if the raid had been on Hillary Clinton’s lawyer. Many civil libertarians have remained silent about potential violations of President Trump’s rights because they strongly disapprove of him and his policies. That is a serious mistake, because these violations establish precedents that lie around like loaded guns capable of being aimed at other targets. I have been widely attacked for defending the constitutional rights of a President I voted against. In our hyperpartisan age, everyone is expected to choose a side, either for or against Trump. But the essence of civil liberties is that they must be equally applicable to all. The silence among most civil libertarians regarding the recent raid shows that we are losing that valuable neutrality.” Dershowitz issued a blunt warning : “So, stay tuned to this unfolding drama, but remember that prosecutorial tactics used today against President Trump may tomorrow be used against Democrats -- and even against you.” • HARMEET DHILLON and SOLOMON WISENBERG told LifeZette they condemn the FBI's "outstandingly aggressive" seizure of Michael Cohen's communications with the President. And, speaking on The Ingraham Angle on Fox News, Harmeet Dhillon, a laywer and Republican National Committeewoman for California, called the raid and seizure “outrageous and unprecedented,” adding that they will have “a chilling effect” on President Trump himself....the President is exposed right now because he’s missing one of his lawyers, and he’s been looking to hire a new counsel. Who wants to be the lawyer who has their life disrupted because they happened to represent a client -- and whether it’s the President or not -- who’s in the crosshairs of the FBI? So this is a chilling effect," Dhillon warned. Solomon Wisenberg, former deputy independent counsel for Kenneth Starr's Whitewater-Lewinsky investigation of former President Bill Clinton, told host Laura Ingraham that "this is an extraordinarily aggressive prosecution move. You're only supposed to do it if less intrusive means like a subpoena are not available or won't work. It's even more unusual -- to my understanding from the reports -- where they specifically were looking for some communications between President Trump and his attorney. That makes it even rarer....to do it when the attorney is the attorney for the President of the United States is quite amazing. Now it's too early for us to tell, you know, whether it's right or wrong or valid. But I can tell you it is outstandingly aggressive." Dhillon said she believed the President "had a lot of bad advice from the beginning of his administration on legal issues and on his legal appointments. And I think this whole situation is an example of that." Dhillon argued the timing of the FBI's raid on Trump's lawyer is suspicious because the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) is expected to release its review of the FBI's investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a private server and email addresses to conduct official government business : "The timing of this is not accidental, as the other guests have mentioned. I think that the fact that the IG's report is coming out soon at the FBI -- that may guarantee some heavy scrutiny and potentially some prosecutions over there. Maybe this team wants to distract away from that." Dhillon said the DOJ "double standard" between how it handled its Trump and Clinton investigations is "staggering. And this is potentially a constitutional crisis being set up here. It is unprecedented. I've never seen anything like it." • • • ANDREW McCARTHY GETS IT WRONG. McCarthy wrote a long analysis in National Review, titled "The Cohen Searches and Trump’s De Mini-Mess." The full article can be accessed at < https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/04/the-cohen-searches-and-trumps-de-mini-mess/ >. • Interestingly, McCarthy begins by citing Obama 2008 campaign illegalities : "Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign was caught hiding the sources of 1,300 large campaign donations, aggregating to nearly $2 million. The campaign also accepted more than $1.3 million in unlawful donations from contributors who had already given the legal maximum. Under federal law, such campaign-finance violations, if they aggregate to just $25,000 in a calendar year, may be treated as felonies punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment -- with offenses involving smaller dollar amounts punishable by incarceration for a year or more. (See Section 30109(d) of Title 52, U.S. Code, pp. 51–52 of the Federal Election Commission’s compilation of campaign laws.) The Obama campaign did not have a defense; it argued in mitigation that the unlawful donations constituted a negligible fraction of the monumental amount it had raised from millions of “grass-roots” donors. Compelling? Maybe not, but enough to convince the Obama Justice Department not to prosecute the Obama campaign -- shocking, I know. During the Christmas holiday season right after the 2012 campaign, with Obama safely reelected and nobody paying much attention, the matter was quietly settled with the payment of a $375,000 fine." • McCarthy then asks : "Is the $130,000 in hush money Donald Trump’s personal lawyer paid to porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election a campaign-finance violation? Probably, although it’s a point of contention. Even if we stipulate that it is, though, we’re talking comparative chump change. Yet, as that lawyer, Michael Cohen, has discovered, what was not a crime in the Obama days is the crime of the century now. Cohen’s Rockefeller Center law office in New York City was raided by the FBI on Monday. So was his room at the Loews Regency Hotel on Park Avenue, where he has been staying while his apartment is under renovation, the New York Times reports. The agents seized voluminous files and records pursuant to court-authorized warrants obtained by federal prosecutors. The haul includes presumptively privileged communications between Cohen and his client, President Trump." • Since we know that no "crime" by President Trump has been uncovered in the Mueller probe, McCarthy assumes, and he may know, that the "crime" alleged is an infraction of campaign financing laws and regulations. McCarthy then says : "As I explained last November, when we learned that Mueller had forced an attorney who had represented Manafort to testify against him, there is a so-called crime-fraud exception to the attorney–client privilege. If a client’s communications with a lawyer are for the purpose of carrying out a fraudulent scheme, they lose any claim to confidentiality. Theoretically, then, Trump and Cohen have a legal as well as a factual problem. Legally, if they conspired to execute a payment in violation of campaign laws in order to silence Clifford, their communications in this regard would not be privileged. Factually (if implausibly), both Cohen and Trump claim that the former did not tell the latter about the payment to Clifford; and that Cohen made the payment in his personal capacity, not as Trump’s lawyer. How, then, can they now claim attorney–client privilege in connection with the transaction?" • Let's think about that. IF Michael Cohen was acting without client Trump's knowledge or approval -- and let us be clear, the raid was meant to find cooperation between Cohen and Trump or instructions from Trump to Cohen because the real Mueller target here is not Cohen, it is Trump, just as it was in the General Flynn case -- there is arguably no campaign law "crime" because Cohen was acting alone -- and he can argue that his independent payment(s) to Daniels falls under McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, a 2014 landmark campaign finance decision of the United States Supreme Court. The decision held that Section 441 of the Federal Election Campaign Act, which imposed a limit on contributions an individual can make over a two-year period to national party and federal candidate committees, is unconstitutional. The case was argued before the Supreme Court on appeal after the United States District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the challenge. It was decided on April 2, 2014, by a 5–4 vote, reversing the decision below and remanding. Justices Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, and Alito invalidated "aggregate contribution limits" (amounts one can contribute over the two-year period) as violating the First Amendment. Justice Thomas provided the necessary fifth vote, but concurred separately in the judgment while arguing that all contribution limits are unconstitutional. WHAT Cohen would argue is that he was supporting the Republican National Committee and its candidate. • That argument would take the SDNY case against Cohen, if there is one, all the way back up to the Supreme Court, which now has a conservative majority. • Andrew McCarthy makes a point that cuts against his argument for the raid being related to campaign law crimes : "Even if it’s not nearly as consequential as the specter of “collusion” with a hostile foreign power, the porn-star payment undeniably happened...the best argument in Trump’s favor is one that claims mitigation, not innocence. Compared with other possible campaign-finance infractions that have been settled without criminal charges [à la Obama], this one -- if it is one -- is a trifle....it happened a decade before Trump was elected. While extramarital, the tryst was consensual by Daniel’s account. The White House denies it happened. • The SDNY is no longer run by Preet Bharara, whom Trump dismissed, as is routine, along with other Obama appointees after taking office. The acting US attorney is Geoffrey Berman, a Trump appointee named by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to serve on an interim basis while awaiting confirmation. BUT, OH MY GOODNESS, ABC News reports that Berman is recused from the Cohen investigation, although it does not identify which of his assistants are involved in the case. Is recusal the new GOP online game of choice??? • McCarthy does note that : "One suspects that there must be more to the SDNY’s investigation of Cohen than the Stormy Daniels transaction -- a suspicion echoed in the [New York] Times report, which describes the searches as 'related to several topics, including a payment to a pornographic film actress.' Prosecutors are admonished that, because raiding a lawyer’s office has serious constitutional implications, it should be avoided unless truly essential to a significant criminal investigation. If the only matter under investigation were a potential campaign-finance violation that would normally not be grist for criminal prosecution, it would be outrageous to raid a lawyer’s office -- especially the president’s lawyer. Not only must high-level Justice Department approval be obtained before seeking a search warrant for an attorney’s premises; the prosecutors and their superiors must explore whether less intrusive investigative alternatives -- such as seeking the desired materials by grand-jury subpoena -- would be viable. That the government must have decided they were not viable is remarkable. A prosecutor gets a search warrant when the subject cannot be trusted to cooperate and hand over materials voluntarily. But Cohen has been cooperating with investigators, at least ostensibly. His counsel, Stephen Ryan, maintains that Cohen has been giving information to 'all government entities,' intimating that he has cooperated with Mueller in addition to providing extensive documentary evidence and testimony to congressional committees. The fact that Cohen’s law practice was searched anyway cannot help but remind us of former Trump-campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s case. Manafort’s Virginia home was raided by Mueller’s team even as he was in the midst of cooperating with and surrendering documents to congressional investigators." • McCarthy explains that the issuance of search warrants : "necessarily means a federal judge found probable cause that evidence of at least one crime would be uncovered in Cohen’s premises. In addition to the potential campaign-finance offense, the feds are reportedly weighing bank-fraud charges -- possibly on a theory that steps taken to hide the nature and purpose of the payment to Daniels entailed misrepresentations to a financial institution, although that is just speculation at this point." • As for the search of a lawyer's office, McCarthy states : "Whenever a law office is searched, the Justice Department imposes safeguards to protect the attorney–client privilege. The search is conducted, and the materials seized are reviewed, by a “clean team” of prosecutors and agents who are knowledgeable about the investigation but are not working on it. The clean team determines what files are relevant to the matter under investigation, with any irrelevant files returned to the attorney. With respect to any files the clean team deems relevant, the attorney and any affected clients are given an opportunity to claim that the files contain privileged communications and should be returned. Where the parties cannot agree, such privilege claims are decided by a judge. After this process has run its course, any documents that have been found relevant and unprivileged are provided to the prosecutors and agents handling the investigation. This way, the right to counsel is vindicated and the clean team ensures that the investigation team is not tainted by exposure to privileged communications. As I can attest, SDNY prosecutors and judges are adept at conducting this process with minimal intrusion on the attorney–client privilege." [Remember what Dershowitz said about the "clean team" : "they can burst into the office, grab all the computers, and then give it to another FBI agent and say, 'You're the firewall. We want you now to read all these confidential communications, tell us which ones we can get and which ones we can't get.' " • • • MICHAEL COHEN HAS A LAWYER, TOO. The New York Times quoted Cohen's attorney Stephen Ryan : "Today the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York executed a series of search warrants and seized the privileged communications between my client, Michael Cohen, and his clients. I have been advised by federal prosecutors that the New York action is, in part, a referral by the Office of Special Counsel, Robert Mueller. The decision by the US Attorney’s Office in New York to conduct their investigation using search warrants is completely inappropriate and unnecessary. It resulted in the unnecessary seizure of protected attorney client communications between a lawyer and his clients. These government tactics are also wrong because Mr. Cohen has cooperated completely with all government entities, including providing thousands of non-privileged documents to the Congress and sitting for depositions under oath.” • A spokesman for special counsel Mueller referred Fox News to US Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Title 28, Section 600.4 regarding “additional jurisdiction,” : “If in the course of his or her investigation the Special Counsel concludes that additional jurisdiction beyond that specified in his or her original jurisdiction is necessary in order to fully investigate and resolve the matters assigned, or to investigate new matters that come to light in the court of his or her investigation, he or she shall consult with the Attorney General, who will determine whether to include the additional matters within the Special Counsel’s jurisdiction or assign them elsewhere." “Elsewhere,” in this case, could be a referral to the US Attorneys’ Office in the Southern District of New York. When asked whether it was Attorney General Jeff Sessions or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein who directed the jurisdiction, the Justice Department declined to comment. • Last week, Trump was asked by reporters during a gaggle on Air Force One whether he knew about Cohen's $130,000 payment to Daniels. “No,” Trump responded. When asked why Cohen made the payment, Trump said, “You have to ask Michael Cohen -- Michael's my attorney.” Trump also said he did not know where Cohen got the $130,000 to pay Daniels in the days before the election. • We should note that it is only the timing that is the issue here. If Cohen had made the payment in 2014, there would be no campaign contribution infraction -- as it is, the charge is a real legal stretch. • When President Trump responded to the raid in comments to reporters Monday afternoon, he said : “It’s a disgraceful situation. I have this witch hunt constantly going on. It’s an attack on on our country [and] what we all stand for.” The President added that the special counsel’s office is “the most conflicted group of people I have ever seen.” • • • IS IT NOW OPEN WAR BETWEEN TRUMP AND THE DEEP STATE? Townhall's Guy Benson wrote on Tuesday : "On its face, the FBI simultaneously raiding the home and office and hotel room of Trump's longtime close confidante and personal attorney seemed like a pretty big deal. How does one spin this as anything other than a major escalation?" It seems we are at war -- with Mueller, the SDNY US Attorney's Office, Rod Rosenstein, the Deep State at the DOJ and FBI, the entire Democrat Swamp in Congress, the still existent but now largely underground #NeverTrump GOP Swamp, Obama-appointed federal judges, and the ever-present ProgDem lapdog mainstream media. • President Trump called the probes on him and his team a “pure and simple witch hunt” because these extreme partisans are determined to destroy him. On Tuesday, after the Cohen raid news broke, Trump took aim at the Russia probe led by Mueller, calling his team “the most biased group of people” for refusing to investigate 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server as secretary of State : “We’ve had that hanging over us from the very, very beginning. And yet the other side they're not even looking. And the other side is where there are crimes and those crimes are obvious.” Trump's comments immediately led to speculation that the FBI raid on Cohen's office could lead Trump to fire Mueller, a step lawmakers in both parties have repeatedly warned the president would lead to a constitutional crisis. When asked the question, President Trump said : “We'll see what happens....Many people have said ‘you should fire him. Again, they found nothing and in finding nothing, that's a big statement.” • The New York Post's Michael Goodwin wrote on Sunday -- before the Cohen raid -- that : "Washington is full of blather, bombast and bullsh-t, but a line about Robert Mueller was the most important thing spoken or written there last week : “Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsel’s office, declined to comment.” Since Mueller’s office never says anything outside court publicly, who knew he had a spokesman or needed one? The line was included in a Washington Post story that said Mueller told the White House that President Trump was not a target of the criminal investigation. The story could be a big deal -- if true. But the report is nonetheless remarkable because it was the first leak in memory that carried good news for Trump. After breathless drip, drip, drip reports that had the President practically being frog-marched to a firing squad at dawn, the fever broke. Every dog has its day, and the Washington media decided this President’s day comes once every 15 months. True to form, news outlets immediately pivoted back to their regularly scheduled programming of stories saying Trump is in imminent danger. • Goodwin says : "Enough. The violent swings of the leaky pendulum make this an excellent moment to call timeout on the Mueller probe. What does he have, where is he going and when is he going to get there? Those are basic questions that need to be answered. The American people deserve facts instead of waters muddied by partisanship, innuendo and special access to biased big-media companies. Mueller’s team includes some active Democrats, and whether they are behind the anti-Trump leaks is, for the moment, beside the point. The point is that the leaks are creating a reality all their own about the investigation and the President. It’s time to clear the air of rumor and speculation and put the facts on the record. It’s not as if the public has been impatient. Mueller was appointed in May of last year to pick up the FBI probe started in the summer of 2016." Goodwin lays out some of the questions America deserves answers to now : "Although there have been indictments, nothing implicates Trump in wrongdoing. Yet even the hullabaloo about whether the President will agree to be interviewed is carried aloft by leaks. Has Mueller formally asked and has Trump formally declined? Who knows? Then there’s the question of whether Mueller believes he can indict a sitting President, or whether he can subpoena Trump to a grand jury. Again, Mueller is, publicly at least, silent." • Goodwin says : "We know there is a possible issue of obstruction of justice over Trump’s firing of then-FBI Director James Comey. Given the stakes, the public has a right to know at this point what it all adds up to. If Mueller won’t speak for himself, his handler, Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who created Mueller, should speak for him. A concise report about where the probe stands would be enough. Mueller could make a statement, or Rosenstein could testify to Congress....The Mueller probe is the most important investigation in a generation and is casting a cloud over a Presidency. Yet many important things we supposedly know about it come from sources whose motives and honesty can’t be verified. If this were a probe involving a third-level bureaucrat, assassination-by-leak would be distasteful but not as meaningful. But this is the presidency, and even Trump haters should be appalled at the shoddy process. In its story about Mueller saying Trump is not a target, the Washington Post also said the special counsel is 'preparing a report about the President’s actions while in office and potential obstruction of justice.' Is that true? Is the report the end of it? Enough questions. It’s time for answers. • One group that seems willing to let the Mueller probe run on forever, and in any direction Mueller chooses despite his 'Russia mandate,' is the GOP Senate leadership, who fear that presidential firings of Mueller, Attorney General Jeff Sessions or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would cause chaos in Washington and dim Republican hopes of holding their congressional majorities. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley declared in a CNN interview Tuesday -- ???Senator Grassley, why are you even talking to CNN??? -- that “it would be suicide for the President to fire him." BUT, Wednesday we learned that the Senate Judiciary Committee is moving forward with legislation to limit President Trump's ability to fire special counsel Robert Mueller. Judiciary Chairman Grassley wants to add the bill to the panel's business meeting agenda scheduled for Thursday, a spokesman for the Senator confirmed to The Hill .Senate GOP Whip John Cornyn said : "I have made my views public, and I hope he’s listening to those of us who say it would be a mistake.” Only Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell seemed more sympathetic to his President, insisting that legislation to protect Mueller was unnecessary because cooler heads would prevail : “I haven’t seen a clear indication yet that we needed to pass something to keep him from being removed because I don’t think that’s going to happen, and that remains my view. It’s still my view that Mueller should be allowed to finish his job. I think that’s the view of most people in Congress.” • We can take odds on that being true, because the Swamp awlays protects its elite position. • In the more pro-Trump House, freshman Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida told Fox News : “I understand the President’s frustration with the hypocrisy playing out at the Department of Justice. Frankly, it would be warranted if we made changes at the very top of the Department of Justice. I think there is a sufficient basis to fire Rosenstein in particular, and likely the attorney general for not doing his job.” That suggestion, according to TheHill, shocked other Republicans, such as Seantor Susan Collins, who said : “If the President were to fire the deputy attorney general, that would be an extraordinary crisis and a real problem, and I just don’t think he’s going to do it.” • White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders only added to GOP fears when she told reporters that Trump “certainly believes that he has the power” to end Mueller’s investigation. Legal experts say Trump does not have the power to fire Mueller directly. Under Justice Department regulations, that authority falls to the agency official in charge of the investigation -- in this case Rosenstein. According to TheHill, many GOP Senators fear firing Mueller would pose new risks to their majority. And, Trump also has reason to fear a Democratic takeover of the House and Senate, which would unleash investigations of his administration. And, of course, Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer tried to ramp up pressure on Republicans Tuesday by defending the integrity of Mueller’s work and calling for Senate floor action to protect him. • • • WHAT NEXT? The Washington Post has a solution that may be honorably provided -- but that may also be just another ProgrDem trap to try to catch Trump. WP reporter Philip Bump suggested on Tuesday that instead of firing Mueller, Trump should fire Rosenstein : "Why not simply fire Rosenstein and replace him with someone who will fire Mueller? According to CNN, firing Rosenstein has been added to the list of remedies that Trump is considering in order to blind Mueller’s investigation. It might also be the most damaging to Mueller’s efforts -- even more than trying to fire Mueller himself. Were Rosenstein fired, authority over Mueller’s investigation would kick down to solicitor general Noel Francisco until a permanent replacement was identified....Trump might be able to quickly and easily get a more pliable person to fill Rosenstein’s shoes. A law passed in 1998 gives the President the authority to fill any vacant positions that require Senate confirmation with any other person working in the government who’s already been confirmed by the Senate....There’s one caveat. It’s not entirely clear that Trump could use the Vacancies Act after having fired someone." The Vacancies Act applies when the current officeholder "dies, resigns or is otherwise unable to perform the functions and duties of the office.” But, the debate over the law before its passage included consideration of this question -- with some Senators taking the position that vacancies from firings could be filled under its authority. • The WP's Philip Bump conveniently explains : "Let’s assume, then, that Trump fires Rosenstein -- which, unlike Mueller, he has the authority to do. Let’s say further that Rosenstein is replaced with someone more than willing to provide the sort of political cover that Trump has long lamented he’s not getting from Attorney General Jeff Sessions." Louis Seidman, Carmack Waterhouse professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University, explained to Bump : "Trump moves someone in to replace Rosenstein,...and that person would then say, ‘You can’t subpoena the President, and what’s more you can’t investigate his financial holdings.’....Seidman further suggested that Rosenstein’s replacement could reel in the authority that Mueller already had been granted....could refuse to sign off on further prosecutions....could fire Mueller -- although that would kick up much more of a firestorm. But,...Seidman said, he could unwind much of what’s already in motion : 'Depending on how aggressive this person wanted to be, they could dismiss the criminal cases, they could get rid of the grand jury. In the end, if Trump is determined, the people he appoints could shut it down. They can’t shut down a state investigation, and I think Eric Schneiderman' -- New York’s attorney general -- 'would suddenly become a household name,' he continued. Shifting the investigations to the state level would have the additional downside for Trump of making it impossible for him to issue pardons." • Maybe Rush Limbaugh has better ideas for the President. Talk-radio host Limbaugh warned Tuesday that the FBI’s raid on the office of President Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, and the documents and records they took has just one purpose : “The thing that I have to keep in mind as I keep up with the latest so-called developments of this story, the one thing that you have to always keep in mind if you want I think to have the best chance of understanding what’s going on and putting it all into some kind of perspective, you have to remember that the objective of all of this is to get rid of Donald Trump. From the moment Trump won the election, the tampering with his transition, the creation of the Steele dossier, the use of the FBI and the DOJ and the entire apparatus of the Washington establishment, to the appointment of [Robert] Mueller as the special counsel, the whole purpose of that has been to reverse the outcome of a fair and duly constituted election that many in the Washington establishment simply do not wish to accept.” Lmbaugh noted that Fox News host Laura Ingraham said the Mueller probe “is about to get really ugly.” While there has been speculation that Trump might fire Mueller, the special counsel likely would be replaced. So, Limbaugh suggested a much simpler route for Trump : pardons : “So what if Trump pardons Cohen? What if Trump pardons anybody he wants in this mess? What if Trump pardons himself? You might say, ‘Rush, that’s very bad. It’s against the rules.’ We’ve already gone way past the rules here, folks. We’re now at survival....You don’t have to fire anybody. Just grant everybody pardons.” Limbaugh continued : "Firing Mueller and Rosenstein is exactly what people want him to do, make him look like he’s out of control, make him look like he’s hiding something. And I think they’re trying to goad him into doing it again because they don’t have anything on Trump! They may have something on Mueller. They don’t have anything on Trump. I don’t think right now they have anything they could prosecute Trump on. Impeach, different thing. That all hinges on the Democrats winning the House of Representatives in 2018." • • • DEAR READERS, there are no easy solutions for saving the Trump presidency. What we know is that it must be saved because it is the last chance for saving the US Constitution and the Republic as envisioned by the Founders and kept intact until 2008. Although it is far too soon to consider the idea in practical terms, many ProgDems are worried President Trump will use the US Constitution, which provides for the suspension of habeas corpus -- the right of citizens not to be held indefinitely without being told why or being allowed a judicial hearing -- and for the declaration of martial law. ARTICLE I, Section 9.2. provides : "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." ARTICLE I, Section 8.15. provides : "To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions." Article I deals with the legislative branch of government, but the Supreme Court has allowed the declaration of martial law by the President or Congress. On the state level, a governor may declare martial law within her or his own state. The power to do so usually is granted in the state constitution. Congress has never declared martial law, which is the exercise of government and control by military authorities over the civilian population of a designated territory. Martial law is a rare measure used to control society during war or periods of civil unrest or chaos. At the outset of the Civil War, in July 1861, Congress ratified most of the martial law measures declared by President Abraham Lincoln. Its martial law declaration gave the Union military forces the authority to arrest persons and conduct trials. • If the radical Progressive Left actually tries to disrupt the operation of civil law and order, these extreme remedies should be considered at both state and federal levels.