2. Trump’s “run out the clock” strategy (April 24, 2019)

Remember that Trump did not grow up in a political family nor did he rise through the political ranks, running for lower office before making the leap to the White House. He doesn’t have the political instincts of a Kennedy or a Bush or even a Clinton.  All knows about the law (and maybe human relationships) he learned from the business world where it served him pretty well. 

His mentor was a guy named Ray Cohn, who was Senator Joe McCarthy’s counsel during McCarthy’s effort to rout supposed “communists” from the army and the government.  McCarthy, as well as his Communist hunt are have been thoroughly discredited and stand as a low moment in US senatorial history.  Cohn died in 1986, relatively young at 59, disbarred and disgraced, of AIDS-related complications. 

But Cohn was a mentor for Donald Trump in his young years.  Cohn was a “political fixer” much as Michael Cohen was for Trump in his business life, and Trump, in the throes of the early Mueller investigation, was said to have asked “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” — the person who would have his back and make his troubles go away.

This Axios article about Trump’s effort to use the law to avoid the obligations of checks and balances (trying to deny Congress the ability to conduct oversight to verify and explore the elements of the Mueller report) refers to Cohn as the person who taught Trump to “weaponize the legal system.”  Understanding what that means is important to understanding Trump – his business life was conducted by using the law to declare bankruptcy to protect his assets while getting out of failed projects and he often paid contractors and employees less than he owed them and essentially dared them to sue him, knowing that they couldn’t afford the long legal process, even if they would eventually win.

That is the context in which to understand this piece about how Trump is trying to use the law to “run out the clock” or put off the consequences of the Mueller investigation until the election, and to try to gain sympathy as a person besieged by congressional legal demands.  The risk he runs is frustrating temperate Democrats like Speaker Nancy Pelosi who are calling for investigation rather than introducing immediate articles of impeachment.  Congress has more than one way to hold an uncooperative president accountable.

2. Trump’s “run out the clock” strategy (April 24, 2019) by Mike Allen

Facing a multi-front war in the post-Mueller world, President Trump is turning to litigation strategies that he long used in business — resist, delay and sue.

• “Trump can run out the clock by taking a hardline position,” a source familiar with the president’s legal strategy told me.
• “The president thinks it’s in his political interest to keep the fight going, and make it harder for the Democrats to have a coherent message.”

Trump told the WashPost’s Robert Costa yesterday that he is opposed to current and former White House aides providing testimony to congressional panels.

• “There is no reason to go any further, and especially in Congress where it’s very partisan — obviously very partisan,” Trump said.

The day before, the Trump Organization sued House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) to block a subpoena that seeks years of the president’s financial records.

• The suit amounts to Trump, the leader of the executive branch, asking the judicial branch to stop the legislative branch from investigating him. (AP)

Bloomberg’s Tim O’Brien, who was sued by Trump in 2006, told me: 

• “This completely comports with Trump’s approach to business and life.”
• “Roy Cohn taught him how to weaponize the legal system when he was still in his late 20s — nearly 50 years ago.”

“Trumpian extreme” … Matt Miller, a former Obama Justice Department official, told me Trump’s “legal position here is quite weak, and the White House counsel and DOJ must know they will lose.”

• “But he’s trying to drag everything out in hopes the political salience of each scandal dies out by the time the courts enforce subpoenas.”
• “It’s a typical administration strategy, but taken to the Trumpian extreme, where they don’t even turn over the things administrations have always turned over in the past.”