From “Grab ‘em by the p–ssy,” to, “Sh–hole countries,” to, “I fired his a— so fast,” to so much more: Donald Trump’s ride to reckoning has been paved with expurgations.
With his criminal fraud conviction in Manhattan, one of them just took on new and deeper meaning:
“I’m f—ed.”
Extended: “Oh, my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m f—ed.”
This is what Trump blurted to staffers in 2017 when a bear of an investigator, former FBI director Robert Mueller, was appointed special counsel into Trump’s relationship with Russia.
When Mueller’s report came out, Attorney General Bill Barr paint-sprayed it with whitewash. Trump crowed “complete and total exoneration.”
That’s not what the report said. Mueller stated that Trump could be criminally liable for obstruction. He just couldn’t be indicted in office.
Now let the record reflect seven years after his appointment how Mueller helped hold Donald Trump accountable for a criminal conspiracy over fraudulent records and hush money to a porn star.
This comes from the lead prosecutor in the Mueller probe, Andrew Weissman.
Weissman’s work helped send former Trump campaign director Paul Manafort to prison for illegal lobbying overseas.
In the process of investigating Manafort’s financial crimes, Weissman stumbled over a curious transaction – a $130,000 payment from another Trump associate, attorney and so-called “fixer” Michael Cohen. Recipient: a lady named Stephanie Clifford.
“My first thought was of the infamous blue dress” associated with Bill Clinton’s romantic entanglement with Monica Lewinsky, he writes in “Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation.”
Weissman didn’t know his porn figures, didn’t know the screen name that would end up in court filings and on Americans’ lips.
He also didn’t know exactly what to do about the suspicious activity he had uncovered. He went to Mueller.
Unlike Kenneth Starr’s investigation of Bill Clinton, which lily-padded from a weird Arkansas land deal to a presidential tryst, Mueller said his probe would be limited to the Russia angle. But he did share Weissman’s suspicions with investigators at the Southern District of New York.
There you have it: Mueller’s tip led to this.
Speaking of Mueller and the Russia probe: One of the crimes for which Michael Cohen went to prison for doing Trump’s bidding was lying to Congress about the extent to which Trump negotiated with Russian interests for a proposed Trump Tower in Moscow – all the while seeking to lead our government and saying there were no such negotiations.
A shady go-between for Trump with the Russians, Felix Sater, thought that a business arrangement with Russia and with Vladimir Putin would boost Trump’s global profile into the stratosphere.
In Michael Isikoff and David Corn’s book, “Russian Roulette,” Sater is quoted telling Cohen of a trip to Russia in which, “I will get Putin on this program, and we will get Donald elected. Buddy, our boy can be president of the USA, and we can engineer it.”
Trump had several business ventures in Russia. He produced a Russian version of “The Apprentice.” He initiated a Trump Vodka line. He relied on easy cash from Russian oligarchs when Florida’s real estate market sagged.
As Isikoff and Corn write, a Moscow tower with “Trump” name on the side was his fondest wish – until even bigger things beckoned.
“Russia is a ruse,” he said in a 2017 White House press conference. “I have nothing to do with Russia. Haven’t made a call to Russia in years.”
Watergate is the first time I heard the term “plausible deniability.”
Richard Nixon’s denials proved implausible.
Donald Trump could not lie his way out of this web of lies.
We who believe no person is above the law owe the Mueller investigation a debt of gratitude. Let history so record.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.