LOOKING FOR CLUES AT THE SCENE OF THE CRIME

If President Obama had fired James Comey when he needlessly re-opened the Clinton email controversy and handed the election to Trump, I’d have cheered. But that moment passed, and since then, Comey appears to have been doing his job, a part of which involved investigating credible claims of illegal collaboration between Russia and various members of Trump’s campaign and administration. That makes Trump’s decision to fire Comey now a very different proposition from the choice that faced Obama last October.

The next several days will determine the future of the republic, as well as the future of the Republican Party. I expect Republicans to be divided between those who will argue that everything’s fine and there’s no need for an independent investigation, and those who will profess to be concerned (perhaps even worried), but who will ultimately concluded that there’s no need for an independent investigation. Who has time to worry about treason when there’s an opportunity to take health care away from millions of people while passing massive tax cuts for the super-rich? Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are keeping their eyes on the prize.

There may be a few Republicans who issue stern statements. Arizona’s two senators have done that, and there are probably others I haven’t seen yet. But talk is cheap. Unless they support an independent investigation, they’re complicit in Russian espionage.

I fear that the Republican Party is hopelessly compromised, but our judicial system is not, at least not yet. Two weeks ago, Louise Mensch and Claude Taylor were conspiracy theorists. This week, their allegations are slowly being verified. Word on the street (Camino de Twitter) is that one federal grand jury has already prepared nine indictments, and another will soon issue sixteen. Even in the unlikely event that Trump and the suddenly un-recused Jeff Sessions find a way to quash those indictments, Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey said on CNN today that a grand jury in New York has been empaneled. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman can’t be fired and won’t be bullied by Donald Trump.

As John McCain remarked, this scandal is a many-legged centipede, and there are more shoes waiting to drop. The stupid runs deep in the Trump White House. They don’t seem to understand that too many people know too much about what they did. And not just in this country. Intelligence agencies around the world share information. It was British intelligence, after all, who brought Trump’s Russian kompromat to the FBI’s attention last fall. Perhaps Teresa May will keep Trump’s secrets. But will Emmanuel Macron in France do the same, especially after Trump basically endorsed Marie Le Pen? Will Germany’s Angela Merkel?

Our allies know that Russia is interfering in their own elections, and they are now beginning to worry about the integrity of the American intelligence community. If they determine that Trump has compromised the FBI and/or the CIA, they won’t allow their own intelligence agencies to be put at risk. Information on Trump’s Russian scandal will either be leaked or perhaps even released outright.

James Comey is now the third person Donald Trump has fired for investigating his Russian connections. That is obstruction of justice, plain and simple. As Josh Marshall put it, “There is only one reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from the decision to fire Comey: that there is grave wrongdoing at the center of the Russia scandal and that it implicates the President.”