I’ve been busy. Trying to deduce who Individual-1 is, by reading and re-reading the Cohen charging document. Individual-1 committed a crime by ordering Cohen to commit a crime. I’ve unearthed clues that suggest Individual-1 was a candidate for federal office. I’ve narrowed it down to two suspects: Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
To step way back, over the past 2 years we all badly under-estimated how solidly the Republican Party would commit to the Trump cult. The primary season has shown how terrified members of congress are of the lock-her-up screamers in their districts. Republican primaries have been all about who can express the most devotion to Trump. Never-Trumps have become grovelers, with people like Rand Paul turning from being a bitter enemy and Trump twitter target, into a resolute supporter doing all he can to undermine Mueller. Lindsey Graham likewise – now Trump’s best golfing buddy. It’s pretty clear quite a few Republicans have been blackmailed into loyalty by the Trump Crime Family and their foreign associates, not just via exploitation of hacked emails but also by honeytraps and direct bribery, and not just the obvious ones like Rohrabacher and Nunes.
Because we can no longer assume any chance of return to decency by Republicans, I think it’s now a simple binary based on the mid-terms:
(1) Republicans retain the House, 28% probability (per 538
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-forecast/house/)
This is a pretty awful outcome for America, partly because almost certainly the Democrats will have won the combined vote, for example by +5%. Democrats need to get to +7% to get a majority of seats (some analysts say they need +11%). Voter suppression and gerrymandering would have worked. Survival of the norms of democracy looks unlikely, with both President and House being held while losing the national popular vote (and it would be the 3rd time in 22 years that the Republicans won the House on a losing vote share, after 1996 and 2012).
The Republicans would be in triumphant mode, even more committed to the Trump cult, and would move ahead to fighting 2020 as the Trump Party. Primary challengers like Kasich would drop away. I don’t see why they wouldn’t let Trump fire Mueller, purge Justice and the FBI, and pursue partisan investigations of political enemies. If they’re fighting 2020 as the Trump Party they should do it properly, fully inhabiting the world of “alternative facts” that Trump has invented.
Despite his horrific popularity numbers during economic golden years, possibly Trump could nevertheless win in 2020 due to extreme voter interference, and/or direct hacking of voting systems. Hacking voting systems would probably go unpunished politically, while the investigations and legal fights would take years.
(2) Democrats win the House, 72% probability. The Senate must surely stay Republican, due to the awful map the Democrats face.
The Democrats could win big, because at certain points in each state gerrymandering collapses and reverses on itself. (Imagine a 50/50 state with ten seats, eight of which are Republican by 55/45 and two are Democrat by 70/30. Total vote count is equal between the two parties but gerrymandering creates the 8-2 win. But the popular vote in total then shifts, Democrats winning the state overall by +10%, 55/45. The eight seats are then 50/50, two are 25/75. In other words, the gerrymandered seats can all shift from Republican and potentially give a 10-0 win to Democrats.)
A majority would enable the Democratic House to investigate, subpoena and attack at will. There are multiple angles to investigate, because Trump has never been a monogamous sort of criminal. He likes to **** around with many different sorts of crimes, rather than picking one and vowing to forsake all others for as long as both shall live. There’s everything: sexual assaults and rapes, the Trump foundation frauds, obstruction, the “collusion set” of crimes, the beauty pageant and university scams, the ties to the Italian mafia, the ties to the Russian mafia, the bank frauds concerning his bankruptcies, witness tampering and abuse of offering of pardons crimes, his criminal use of illegal immigrants in his businesses, the Stormy/mistresses crimes and the other “Cohen set” of crimes, the emoluments clause violations - and above all his money laundering crimes and the related tax crimes.
It looks like Mueller is targeting obstruction (because that’s already provable and has precedent in removing a President) and the “collusion set” of crimes (because Russian interference is such a serious threat). He’s letting SDNY handle the “Cohen set”. But a Democratic House wouldn’t need to limit itself so narrowly. Manafort Trial 1, the Virginia trial, demonstrates how nicely money laundering charges fit in with tax charges – tax evasion is an inevitable side effect when you launder money and relatively easy to prove. So you can just go to trial on the tax part and leave the laundering crimes for another day. (Manafort was convicted of five tax charges, one charge of failing to declare a foreign bank account and two bank fraud charges of lying to get loans.) Manafort Trial 2, the DC trial, is going to be on the more serious money laundering crimes and obstruction of justice crimes which are harder to get a jury to understand (plus a couple of technical crimes like failing to register as an agent for foreigners and signing false Foreign Agents Registration Act forms, which should be easy to prove). I think Mueller should expand out from the safe areas of obstruction and collusion into the Manafort Trial 2 type areas of large-scale money laundering, adding in the associated tax crimes – but he seems reluctant. The House could take on this burden. And finally get us the ******* tax returns, which there's no doubt will contain enough crimes for 300 years in prison.
And of course the House is able to reappoint Mueller if Trump fires him, employing him as the House’s special prosecutor.
In this scenario, the sheer weight of Trump crimes would build up over 2019. There’s certainly a risk the Democratic majority in the House would try to impeach too early. But at some point a few Republican House representatives would buckle and join them. The impeachment document could be incredibly lengthy, making Manafort’s list of 25 charges seem embarrassingly small time. And, of course, other members of the extended Trump Crime Family could be indicted directly.
I don’t know if the Republican Senate would then convict on these impeachment charges. But by this time we’d be heading into 2020. Others would join Kasich and McMullin to run against Trump in primaries. The 2020 Senate map is as good for the Democrats as 2018 is bad, and the Republican Party will be looking at losing both House and Senate with a President who the world knows is a criminal, even if the Trump cultist believe he’s Jesus. I can’t see how Trump can win in 2020 in these circumstances, even with electoral fraud. Surely the Republicans would collapse under the weight of Trump’s criminality and impeach or 25th him – trying desperately to restore at least some hope and running to reelect President Pence.
So, end of the day, I think there’s 28% chance of Trump surviving until 2020, immune to reality, and free to attempt to rig the 2020 election with help from his great ally across the sea. And a 72% chance we’ll see a sudden s-curve collapse of Trump’s control over his Republican lap-dogs, hopefully leading to a resolution where he’s removed, hauled into various trials and dies in prison.
