トランプをめぐる動き - ミュラー委員会、法廷裁判
トランプを取り巻く状況は、アメリカ国内にあって、きわめて緊迫した状況下にある。１つは、特別検察官ミュラーにより進行している大統領選へのロシアの干渉とトランプ陣営とのか関わりをめぐる疑惑調査である。そしてもう１つが、先週、ニューヨークの司法当局が (ミュラーからの照会を受けて) トランプの弁護士コーエンの事務所、自宅、ホテルに証拠物件押収を断行したことである。司法当局は明確にコーエンを金融犯罪を含む複数の犯罪容疑者として取り調べることを前提にこの行動を起こしている。トランプがいずれを恐れているかと言うと、後者である。というのは、コーエンはこの10年、トランプだけを顧客とする弁護士で、実際にはフィクサーとして暗躍してきており、したがってトランプの黒い部分をすべて知り尽くしている、というか、表裏一体となって活動してきた人物であるからである。その事務所や自宅から大量の物件が押収されたということは、トランプの金融取引、女性問題のもみ消しなどをめぐる証拠書類が大量に司法当局の手に渡っているということを意味する。
つまり、トランプを取り巻く環境は、つい最近生じたこの押収ケースの方が、はるかに深刻なものである。この欧州物件の中には、例のポルノ女優ストーミーとの一件（口封じの契約と口止め料）も含まれていると報道されている。トランプはこの問題をめぐっては、それを阻止するためにこれまでにも様々な手を打ってきたが、ストーミーと弁護士アヴェナッティ(この弁護士は非常に有能で弁も立つ。そして何よりも勇敢である) は、それに億することなく弁護活動を展開しており、いまでは大きな台風の目になっている。欧州物件のなかにはトランプをめぐる情報（そしてトランプ本人によるもの）の他に、コーエンがとっていた録音テープのようなものが存在している模様である。当然そこにはトランプの肉声が含まれている・・・。
トランプは、これらの証拠物件を、まずはトランプがチェックする権利を裁判所に要請するという行動に出たが、裁判長はそれを却下し、第３者の機関を設けて、証拠物件の選別的作業（つまり、弁護士と顧客のあいだの機密情報とそうでない情報の選別）を行うことを決めている。
トランプにとって、ミュラーとこのニューヨークでの裁判とどちらがより危険かというと、じつは後者なのである。というのは、後者の進行を止めることは大統領の権限外の事項だからである。これが決定的に大きい意味をもつ。
＊＊＊
下記の記事は、トランプがいまにもミュラーを解雇する決断を下すのではないか、という問題を扱っている。大統領は特別検察官や、司法省のトップの解雇を行う権限を有しているからである。
この問題は、１９７０年代初期のウォーターゲート事件を彷彿とさせるものである。ニクソンは、司法長官や副司法長官に特別検察官を解雇するように命令を下すも、いずれもそれを拒否し、そして彼ら２人は辞任の道を選んだ。ようやくそのさらに下の官僚をニクソンは指名し、そしてこの人物はそれを受け入れて特別検察官を解雇するに至った。が、国民の激しい非難行動、そして議会での弾劾へと事態は進展し、ついにニクソンは辞任に追い込まれるに至った。
この経緯を当時つぶさに追い掛けていたジャーナリストがこの記事を書いている。このジャーナリストが語っていることで、注目に値する点として最後にある感想がある。叔母の住んでいたカンザスにあって、２１世紀になるまで、穏健な共和党が支配する政治状況が続いていたが、いまではカンザスも極右的派が支配する状況になってしまっているという。そして当時と異なり、トランプを支援するベースは、ミュラーを解雇しても、「トランプはワシントンを支配下におくことになる」と信じているという傾向が強い、という世論の専門家の話を引用している。
共和党のトップ (マッコネル、ライアン) は、本来の信条をかなぐり棄てて、トランプに媚びるように行動する事態に陥って久しい。トランプは大統領としてあるべきでないことをいくら行っても、「政策が大事」的スタンスをとり、ツイッターでの傍若無人な発言に対しては耳をふさいできているという非常に腐ったような状況になっており、11月の中間選挙では大敗する可能性が大になっている。ライアンは今期かぎりで辞職する声明を発しているが、その時の発言も、腐ったような発言で終わっている。「家族との生活を大事にしたい」が中心で、「いまの共和党の状況に満足している」的発言で終わっている。マッコネルも昨日、超党派で策定されているミュラーを擁護する法について、きわめて消極的で事実上、それを取り上げない方針でいることを表明している。
民主党もこうしたトランプにたいする批判的動きとしては、いま１つ弱弱しい。不思議なほど、トランプによってめちゃくちゃに言われているオバマやヒラリーの声が聞こえてこない。サンダースは唯一例外であるが、それでもいまの民主党をリードするというような状態にはなっていない。
これに対し、世論調査では、ミュラーの調査続行を支持する声が圧倒的に高いという現実がある。そしてこのことを反映しているのであろう。SNSを中心にした反トランプ行動への決起が発生している。もしトランプがミュラーを解雇した場合、その日のうちに抗議行動を決行するというもので、すでに30万人の応答があると伝えられている。
これらの問題は、アメリカ憲法精神の崩壊をもたらす危機的なものとして、多くの人によって受け止められているものである。
'A
political volcano just erupted': is the US on the brink of the next Watergate?
As Trump
threatens to fire Mueller, a journalist who was reporting during Nixon’s
Saturday Night Massacre reads the warning signs
Stanley Cloud
Wed 18 Apr 2018 06.00 BSTLast modified on Wed
18 Apr 2018 08.29 BST
·
Ever since
the Watergate scandal
of the 1970s, the golden rule for presidents under investigation by a special
prosecutor or special counsel has been that the president shall not fire the
person conducting the investigation. For there – as medieval maps sometimes
warned travelers – “be dragons”.
Donald Trump
has been lectured repeatedly on this score by various advisers and pundits. Yet
word keeps leaking out of the White House that Trump would like nothing more
than to fire Robert Mueller.
So far, Trump has heeded the warnings. But how much longer, one wonders, can a
man who famously bragged that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get
away with it be expected to resist temptation to dismiss the special counsel?
The story of the man who brought down Nixon and its
'exact parallel' today
Read more
Since May
2017, Mueller, dogged as Inspector Javert in Les Misérables, has been
investigating assorted misdeeds allegedly committed by Trump and his aides –
from “collusion” with Russians meddling in the 2016 presidential election to
the payment of large sums of hush money to a porn actor and a former Playboy model.
Mueller has
already either indicted or wrung guilty pleas from 19 people, including Trump’s
former campaign chair. What’s more, it appears that Mueller is following a
trail left by former FBI director James Comey, whom Trump did fire last year, on
a possible obstruction of justice charge against the president.
Clearly, Trump
is feeling pinched and would like the cause of his pain to vanish. So let us
review the short history of that golden rule everyone keeps warning him about.
Quick guide
What are the allegations in the Trump-Russia
investigation?
Show
Advertisement
On Friday, 19
October 1973, Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox issued a subpoena for
copies of tape recordings made by Richard Nixon in the Oval Office. With that,
Nixon decided he’d had just about enough of Cox, an upright and highly
respected attorney and Harvard law professor.
The very next
day, Nixon ordered his attorney general, Elliot Richardson, who had appointed
Cox the previous May, to fire him immediately. Richardson refused and resigned.
Sign up for Guardian Today US edition: the day's
must-reads sent directly to you
Read more
His successor
in the justice department’s chain of command, the deputy attorney general,
William Ruckelshaus, likewise refused and resigned.
Next up was
the solicitor general (and acting attorney general), Robert Bork, who obeyed
the president’s order, fired Cox and kept his job. The White House announced
the firing – soon dubbed “the Saturday Night Massacre” – at 8.35pm that same
night.
As a member of
Time magazine’s Watergate reporting team, I well remember that night 45 years
ago. Normally, by 8.30pm on a Saturday night, the magazine was entering the
final stages of its weekly production cycle. But on this Saturday night, Time’s
Washington bureau was in all-out crisis mode – correspondents, including me,
were frantically phoning sources in Congress, in the White House, in the
justice department, at the FBI and anywhere else imaginable, trying to learn
what precisely had happened and why and what the ramifications were. Until the
previous December, I had been on a three-year assignment, covering the Vietnam
war. So I was not unfamiliar with what it felt like to report under pressure.
But this situation was something completely new to me.
The Watergate complex in Washington DC on 20 April 1973. Photograph: AP
We all
understood that a political volcano had just erupted, and I think many of us
sensed that the US was on the brink of being changed forever. Not since the
civil war had an American president seemed so close to impeachment and never
before had the list of impeachable “high crimes and misdemeanors” against a
sitting president been so lengthy.
The words
“constitutional crisis” were on just about everyone’s lips as the full impact
of the Cox firing began to be felt during those hectic hours of crash
reporting, writing and filing by telex and phone that were necessary in order
for us to get the news into the magazine that would be in mailboxes and on the
stands 48 to 72 hours later.
Soon, Congress
also swung into action. At least 22 impeachment resolutions were quickly
introduced in the House, along with 12 bills and resolutions, sponsored by 94
Democrats and four Republicans, calling for the appointment of a new special
prosecutor. So ferocious was the public and official outcry that within 12
days, a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, was indeed appointed, and would
win access to the Nixon tapes before the supreme court. In the meantime, the
Senate select committee on Watergate continued its televised hearings,
uncovering layer on layer of criminal and unconstitutional behavior.
Ex-FBI agents say Comey is 'damaging the agency' as he
clashes with Trump
Read more
Eventually,
the tapes obtained by Jaworski provided the “smoking gun” of Nixon’s
involvement in the Watergate cover-up, which in turn led the House judiciary
committee to approve three articles of impeachment on bipartisan votes, and
forced Nixon’s resignation in disgrace less than a year after the Saturday
Night Massacre.
As for me, I
knew Nixon was doomed politically when, just a week after the massacre, I
received a letter from Irene Cloud, my aunt who lived in the tiny town of
Kingman, Kansas, some 50 miles or so west of Wichita. Cloud was a dedicated
Lincoln Republican in the moderate, anti-slavery Kansas tradition that had
existed from the civil war to the 21st century, when the far right captured the
state house.
An unmarried
grammar school teacher, Cloud wrote me rarely but always to a purpose. When I
opened the envelope, I found inside a light blue sheet of note paper on which
in her perfect, schoolmarm’s hand, she had written “Dear Stanley, I have
reached the conclusion that Mr Nixon is a bad man …”
If Nixon had
lost my Aunt Irene, he had lost the nation.
Not everyone
today believes that Donald Trump will necessarily suffer
the same fate as Nixon should he fire Robert Mueller. At least two good friends
of mine who are experts in measuring public opinion – and who are not
themselves conservatives – told me recently that they believe Trump’s “base” in
the Republican party will stick with him in a way that Nixon’s base, including
my Aunt Irene, did not. “They would think firing Mueller was just another
example of Trump bringing Washington to heel,” said one.
Perhaps so.
But there are still dragons out there.
Stanley Cloud was part of Time magazine’s Watergate team, and went on to
become Time’s Washington DC bureau chief
＊＊＊
McConnell
says he will not allow vote on bill protecting Mueller from firing
Republican
Senate majority leader says bill is ‘not necessary’ because Trump will not fire
special counsel, despite bipartisan fears
Lauren Gambino in Washington
Wed 18 Apr 2018 02.32 BSTLast modified on Wed
18 Apr 2018 13.47 BST
·
The Senate
majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has said he will not allow a vote on a bill
that would protect the special counsel Robert Mueller from being fired by
Donald Trump, despite bipartisan concern that the
president will act on an impulse to end the Russia investigation.
McConnell said
on Tuesday that he did not believe legislative action was necessary because
Trump would not fire Mueller, who is overseeing the FBI investigation into
possible collusion between Trump associates and Russia.
“I don’t think
he should fire Mueller and I don’t think he is going to,” McConnell said during
an interview on Fox News on Tuesday. “So this is a piece of legislation that’s
not necessary, in my judgment.
Trump’s latest tirade suggests he is moving closer to
firing Mueller
Read more
He continued:
“I’m the one who decides what we take to the floor,” he said. “That’s my
responsibility as the majority leader and we will not be having this on the
floor of the Senate.”
McConnell’s
comments come days before the Senate judiciary committee is expected to
consider the Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act, a bipartisan
bill that is a compromise between two rival plans. The legislation, written by
the Republican senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Lindsey Graham of
South Carolina, and the Democratic senators Cory Booker of New Jersey and Chris
Coons of Delaware, would codify regulations limiting who can fire a special
counsel.
The bill would
also provide the special counsel a 10-day window during which the special
counsel could seek an expedited judicial review by a panel of judges to
determine if the removal was justified. If the judges determined that it was
not and the firing violated the “good-cause requirement”, the termination would
be reversed.
While the
effort has attracted bipartisan support, Republicans remain broadly opposed to
the bill, with several members of the caucus questioning the constitutionality
of such legislation. The Republicans who support the bill, including Graham and
Tillis, say they too don’t believe Trump will fire Mueller and have tried to
cast the effort as good policy rather than a response to the mounting public
tensions between the president and the special counsel.
Sign up for Guardian Today US edition: the day's
must-reads sent directly to you
Read more
McConnell
added during the interview that Trump would never agree to the legislation,
even if Congress passed it.
“Just as a
practical matter, even if we pass it, why would he sign it?” McConnell said.
Trump has
publicly attacked the Russia investigation as a “witch-hunt” and has reportedly
ordered Mueller’s firing on at least two occasions. Last
week, after a raid to seize documents from his personal lawyer by a separate
division of the FBI, Trump lashed out on Twitter, calling the investigation an
“attack on our country”. He has
publicly criticized Mueller and Rod Rosenstein, the Department of Justice
official overseeing Mueller’s investigation.
The Democratic
Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, urged Republicans on the Senate judiciary
committee to still allow the bill to move forward and said he hoped that their
persistence would push McConnell to reconsider.
“While I’m
glad the majority leader believes the president would be wrong to fire Special
Counsel Mueller, it’s a mistake not to pass legislation to protect the
investigation,” Schumer said in a statement. “We ought to head off a
constitutional crisis at the pass, rather than waiting until it’s too late.”
