The Washington Post is reporting that the Trump administration is compiling dossiers whose purpose is to discredit Special Counsel Mueller and his investigators — and researching the power of the pardon.
Some of President Trump’s lawyers are exploring ways to limit or undercut special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation, building a case against what they allege are his conflicts of interest and discussing the president’s authority to grant pardons, according to people familiar with the effort.
Trump has asked his advisers about his power to pardon aides, family members and even himself in connection with the probe, according to one of those people. A second person said Trump’s lawyers have been discussing the president’s pardoning powers among themselves.
The plain implication is that the Trump crowd expects the investigation to yield evidence of criminal behavior and are preparing an escape hatch for themselves.
It’s reasonable, too, to think they must believe the evidence will be in the public domain in the near future, for if they truly think they’re innocent of wrongdoing, or that their wrongdoing will remain obscure for another year or so, they wouldn’t be researching pardon now.
I can easily imagine Trump provoking a Constitutional crisis by challenging the Congress to send armed U.S. Marshals to remove him from office. I can’t imagine him prevailing in such a showdown, but I can imagine him provoking it. I can just as easily imagine him pardoning everybody in his orbit, including himself, declaring his work successful and finished and himself the most accomplished president in the history of the country, and decamping to some corrupt oligarchy where amoral and authoritarian buffoons like him are appreciated.
Whatever comes next, there will be no happy ending.