We all need to be prepared to take to the streets when Trump fires Mueller… which now looks imminent

I know we talked about the Republican campaign to stop the Russia investigation just a few days ago, but quite a bit has happened since then, and I think it’s probably gotten to the point where we should start discussing how we’re each going to respond when the inevitable happens, and Donald Trump attempts to kill the investigation by firing Robert Mueller, the former FBI director appointed by his Justice Department to head the probe. There may be better resources out there, but I’ve signed up to receive notifications through MoveOn’s site, TrumpIsNotAboveTheLaw.org, where people around the country have already begun organizing rallies. [If news of Mueller’s firing happens before 2:00 PM, rallies across the nation will commence at 5:00 PM that very same day. If Mueller’s firing is announced after 2:00 PM, the rallies will begin at noon the following day.] If you want, you can sign up to receive updates by text here.

Yes, it’s true that President Trump went on the record today saying that he would not push Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to fire Robert Mueller. Furthermore, Rosenstein himself said in front of the House Judiciary Committee this past Wednesday there existed no legal justification to fire Mueller. In spite of this, though, I can’t help but think, given the heightened rhetoric coming from Republicans close to Trump, that we’re headed toward an event like 1973’s Saturday Night Massacre, when Richard Nixon gave the word to his Justice Department to fire Watergate independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox, setting in motion a chain of events that would eventually see the president impeached for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress. [Nixon’s Attorney General Elliot Richardson resigned rather than fire Cox, who was, at the time, attempting to get ahold of the audio tapes from Nixon’s secret Oval Office recording system. Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus then did the same, when he was asked. Nixon ultimately promoted Robert Bork, who, according to some, agreed to fire Cox in exchange for the promise of a seat on the Supreme Court. The firing of Cox, however, did not stop the investigation.]

This past week was not a good one for Trump… Among other things, we heard that Mueller was in possession of thousands of emails sent between members of the Trump transition team, and that Trump’s lawyers, John Dowd and Jay Sekulow, had been called in to meet with investigators. Furthermore, we heard from various sources that Trump advisor Jared Kushner was likely to be indicted soon. [Representative Will Bailey‏, who serves on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, tweeted out to Kushner on Friday that he should enjoy his time with his family while he still can.] And Kushner’s legal team, we heard, was shopping for a public relations firm with expertise in crisis communications. So it really wasn’t any surprise, with all of this going on behind the scenes, that we started to hear that Trump, through his proxies, had begun to test the waters… floating the idea of firing Mueller.

Here, for instance, is Fox News innocently asking whether Mueller’s investigation is a deep state coup, ignoring the fact that Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and George Papadopoulus were all indicted by grand juries, not by Mueller, who, by the way, happens to be a Republican that was selected for the job of heading the investigation by Trump’s own Justice Department.

So I guess you could say that things have changed a bit since last spring, when Trump friend, and former Republican Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, described Mueller as having a reputation that was “impeccable for honesty and integrity.” Now, with both Flynn and Papadopoulus having pleaded guilty to felonies, Manafort awaiting trial for a litany of crimes, and Mueller in possession of the Trump organization’s bank records, things are looking a little different. And, given that, it’s no surprise that people on the right are attempting to cast doubt on the entire investigation by painting it as a politically motivated witch hunt.

And all they’ve got to work with, it would seem, are 375 text messages between two of Mueller’s agents, who, back during the campaign, apparently referred to Trump as a “loathsome” “idiot”. Never mind the fact that Mueller is the one that discovered the texts, and then quickly reassigned the two individuals in question… But someone friendly to the Trump administration inside the Justice Department apparently illegally leaked these texts to the press, and now the whole investigation is being reframed as an undeserved attack on the part of pro-Hillary forces within the FBI. [Not only has Fox News’ Judge Jeanine Pirro called for the “cleansing” of those intelligence community officials who are not pro-Trump, but the President himself said this past Friday, that he intends to “rebuild the FBI.”]

But apparently that’s enough to wage an all out war on the Mueller investigation… First there were the television ads featuring Tomi Lahren that were financed by the Steve Bannon-affiliated pro-Trump Super PAC Great America Alliance. And, now, individual members of Congress are getting onboard.

Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, shortly after taking a ride with Trump onboard Air Force One, came out with a call to fire Mueller. “I call on my Republican colleagues to join me in the firing of Bob Mueller,” Gaetz said. This had to happen, according to Gaetz, as the investigation was “infected with bias.” [Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi then picked up the baton and referred to the Mueller investigation as “corrupt” and “worse than Watergate” on Fox News.] And, at the same time, Congressman Adam Schiff warned that the House investigation, which is independent of the Mueller investigation, also appears to be in jeopardy of being shut down.

And, in the Senate, we had Republican John Cornyn, who sits on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, tweeting out the following in response to Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder, who, earlier in the day, had called these attacks against Mueller “BS,” and said that “any attempt to remove Bob Mueller will not be tolerated.”

And all of this, as you might imagine, isn’t sitting well with the rational, fact-loving Americans of either party. The following excerpt comes from an article in The Nation titled, “If Trump Fires Mueller, We Must Impeach.”

…If Trump fires Mueller, as many now speculate is possible, the United States will find itself in a constitutional crisis—where the executive branch rejects scrutiny, checks and balances, and the rule of law in order to protect itself from accountability. The expert on government rights and wrongs is so concerned that—after a Trump-aligned member of the House, Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, appeared on CNN and announced: “I call on my Republican colleagues to join me in the firing of Bob Mueller”…

And here’s a little something from Foreign Policy, another publication that you can’t really just write-off as as yet another liberal rag.

…What will Trump’s reaction be when he figures out he’s been duped — and that the Mueller probe, far from a “nothing burger,” is a carafe of strychnine that poses an existential threat to his presidency? The likely result is that Trump will either pardon everyone involved or try to fire the special counsel, or both. And then the nation will be plunged into a constitutional crisis the likes of which we have not seen since Watergate…

[note: Trump, by the way, hinted earlier this weekend that he might pardon Flynn.]

Oh, and as long as we’re quoting folks, here’s a quote from Walter Shaub, the former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.

This weekend I’m stocking up on portable phone chargers, warm clothes, & gear needed for when we take the streets. I’m concerned the assault on the rule of law is coming over the holidays when we’re distracted. It‘ll be a defining moment for the Republic. https://t.co/Ewn5tdx8e6

— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) December 15, 2017

I could go on quoting people on both sides, but I think you probably get the point. Things are clearly building toward Mueller’s firing, and I have no doubt it will happen. If Trump knows that Mueller has incriminating evidence against him – which I think is almost surely the case, given Flynn’s plea deal – why wouldn’t he? I mean, what has he got to lose? Does he care enough about preserving the fabric of our democracy to just admit guilt and walk away peacefully? I don’t see anything in his past that would make me think that. No, given what I’ve seen, I suspect he’d sooner burn the whole nation to the ground than allow the endgame to play out on Mueller’s terms. And, if it’s going to happen, it’ll likely happen over the holiday, when Congress is in recess, and people aren’t paying attention. It probably won’t happen before the tax bill passes, though. And I think that’s set to come to a vote on Tuesday. [Or, who knows, maybe Trump could fire Mueller right as the tax bill is going to a vote, in hopes that it might pull our attention away from the unprecedented looting of the American middle class.] The only question I have is what Mueller might do before then to thwart Trump’s plans. Is it conceivable, for instance, that we might see Kushner indicted tomorrow, before the tax bill gets voted on? Regardless of how things play out, I think it’s safe to say that this is going to be an absolutely insane week.

So, what will you do when the news breaks that Mueller has been fired? Where will you go? What will you do? Have you already started making a sign? If so, what does it say? Mine, I think, will reference Trump’s bone spurs… Maybe it’ll say something like, “You can’t run from justice. Remember the bone spurs.” Whatever we do, it has to be big and dramatic. We need shock and awe. Our representatives in Congress need to know that we will not sit idly by and allow members of the Trump administration to stop this investigation. We need to fill every congressional office. We need to walk away from our jobs. We need to shut down traffic. We need to fill the jails. We cannot allow this to be just one more thing in a long series of things that we just passively accept as we make our way down this slippery slope toward armageddon. This has to be a red line that we will not allow Trump to cross.