LIKE A BIRD ON A WIRE, LIKE A DRUNK IN A MIDNIGHT CHOIR
I was in my mid-20s and had just moved to Tucson when revelations from the Watergate scandal began to look serious enough to warrant talk about impeachment. I learned a little about constitutional law in 1973 and 1974, just by watching the televised Senate Watergate hearings.
Now I’m picking up some cool new legal terminology from Robert Mueller. “Proactive cooperator,” for instance. George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty earlier this month to lying to the FBI about working with Russia as a member of the Trump campaign, was arrested in July. But the arrest was kept secret for three months, and it’s interesting to speculate about why. Out of all the theories I’ve read, my favorite is the “proactive cooperator” hypothesis.
This theory posits that Papadopoulos agreed to cooperate with the FBI almost immediately, and he became what the indictment that was unsealed on Monday called a proactive cooperator, which often means that in return for leniency, the perp agrees to wear a wire while talking to higher value targets so that the FBI has a recording of them saying incriminating things.
Papadopoulos wouldn’t have had enough juice to talk to Donald Trump directly. But with a script from Mueller’s team, he would have been able to call some bigshots in the Trump campaign, tell them that the FBI was after him, and ask for advice. If that’s what actually happened, and if anyone he spoke to suggested that he lie or promised to help cover for him, Mueller has them dead to rights.
Whether or not that theory proves to be valid, we do know that Papadopoulos received some email encouragement from people higher up in the Trump campaign. The indictment speaks of a “high ranking campaign official” and “another high-ranking campaign official,” and lastly, a “campaign supervisor.” The Washington Post says that Mr. High Ranking is Corey Lewandowski; Mr. Another High Ranking Official is Paul Manafort, and Mr. Supervisor is Sam Clovis.
Lewandowski and Manafort are familiar names. They both did stints as Trump’s campaign manager before giving way to Steve Bannon. You would be hard put to find three more unsavory characters to run your campaign.
Lewandowski is known for having anger management issues. In March, 2016, he manhandled a Breitbart reporter in Florida, and a protestor in Tucson. He tends to annoy those he doesn’t assault, and as a result, hasn’t lasted long in gigs as a political commentator. Donald Trump apparently remains fond of him, and his access to Trump allowed him to find a niche as a lobbyist.
Manafort’s expertise is money laundering and advising dictators. Despite the fact that hundreds of millions of dollars passed through his hands over the past decade, by 2016, all he had to show for it was $17 million dollars in debt – not to banks, but to scary Ukrainian oligarchs. The only thing he did really well during this period was to stay out of jail. The last thing he should have done was to take a high-profile position in a presidential campaign. But he was desperate, and he volunteered to work for free as Trump’s campaign manager so he could pay off his debts by leaking confidential information to those oligarchs. And Donald Trump, who hires only the best people, gave him the job, apparently without vetting him.
Sam Clovis is a little less famous. He looks like Jabba the Hut’s stunt double. He’s also Trump’s nominee to be Chief Scientist at the Department of Agriculture. What are his qualifications for that office? He’s a Tea Party yokel who hosted a right-wing talk radio show in Iowa. Since there’s plenty of agriculture in Iowa, and since science is mostly fake news, Trump decided that Big Sam was good to go. His lack of scientific credentials is actually a plus. The quality of his work wouldn’t suffer if he were forced to do his job from prison rather than a government office or laboratory.
Trump’s Unholy Three highlight one of the differences between the Trump-Russia scandal and Watergate. They probably wouldn’t have even made the cut as one of the third-rate burglars who did the original Watergate break-in. Haldeman and Ehrlichman wouldn’t have touched these phonies with a ten-foot pole.
Nixon and his cronies were despicable, but they were fairly smart. Not as smart as they thought they were, obviously, but compared to the grifters and bigots in the Trump entourage, they look like criminal masterminds.
The Watergate investigations took two years to play out. Comparatively speaking, Robert Mueller is working at warp speed. That’s partly because he seems to have put together a real all-star team of legal talent, and partly because the most of the people he’s investigating are idiots. And for both of those things, we should be grateful.