Hoist by his own petard

What goes around comes around.  Karma.  You reap what you sow.  What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Or, from Hamlet, when Prince Hamlet turns removes his name from the message saying he should be killed and substitutes the names of the messengers:     "For 'tis the sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petard."    A petard is a land mine explosive.

This blog has commented several times that the "Russia collusion" story may well backfire on Democrats.

   1.  Trump's brand is bellicosity, not patsy-puppet.  The Russia collusion story insinuates that Trump is compromised and therefore under Putin's guidance.   The idea pushes against behavior and reputation, making it an uphill battle.

   2.  If anything very nefarious actually happened, it was done by staff, not Trump.  Trump openly and guiltlessly urged Russia to hack Hillary's email, which takes away the sting of it being covert or "collusion" in secret.

   3. People already knew he and Putin had a mutual admiration thing going.  Trump defined it as good, not bad.

   4.  Most voters don't care.  They think jobs are more important than Russia-collusion, so Democrats get blamed for wasting time and energy and Trump gets to look like the serious one.

But now the Russia collusion story is starting to go bad for Trump.  The investigation is metastasizing.  

Payback time.

The Democrats saw the power of birtherism.   The Russia collusion meme pounded on by Democrats was their version of having learned from Trump that "birtherism" works.  Trump showed that a partisan base of voters is eager to believe implausible bad things about a president of the opposing party.  Hawaii and two newspapers carried out a 50 year conspiracy to fake the birth of Barrack Obama.   The friendly media was happy to enable the trolling.   Trump was repeatedly on Fox News claiming he had shocking, extraordinary secrets.  Other Republicans picked up the idea, artfully hedging, saying that, yes, they supposed Obama was perhaps born in Hawaii, not Kenya, but who really knows anything for sure, or that they would take Obama at his word and he claims to be an American, though they know a lot of people disagree.  

Birtherism worked. A majority of Republicans in polls say they think Obama was a Kenyan Muslim, maybe, probably.

Democrats woke up. Keep asking questions and never be satisfied.  Require the target to prove a negative, prove that they didn't collude. Raise questions, and then with questions having been raised, the results are "questionable."   It is self validating.   And your base loves it.

The Democrats get a Special Counsel of their own.  Twenty years ago GOP politicians who are still around and still in positions of influence raised questions about a land deal known as "Whitewater."  They said it must be investigated.  Clinton said it was nothing, and that in fact he and Hillary had lost money.   Republicans asserted that perhaps there was something un-toward or shady or illegal in the partnership between the Clintons and some friends.  Questions were raised.  The situation was questionable.  Give a Special Prosecutor authority to look and keep looking; let him hire investigators and attorneys; give him authority to compel testimony; let him call a grand jury; let him dig.   

The investigation into Whitewater metastasized into an investigation into Bill Clinton's sexual history.  Make him testify about his history with Paula Jones.  Pursue an investigation of Monica Lewinsky.  The cases could be linked because what he did or didn't do with Jones suggested a pattern of behavior: sexual contact with female subordinates.  Get Bill Clinton under oath.

It worked.  Clinton lied under oath and was impeached.

"Russia collusion" opened the door.  The Russia collusion gambit raised enough smoke that Sessions had to recuse himself.  He was a party and a witness to the campaign and could hardly investigate himself.  Trump dug himself in deeper by firing James Comey, openly saying it was to stop the investigation.   That put the Justice Department and Senate Republicans in a bind.  If they shut down the investigation they were openly condoning obstruction of justice, and that would look bad for them.  

Jim Mueller is unleashed.  He can take the investigation where it leads him, but Russia will lead him everywhere.  Money is like blood in the body of a real estate business.  It is everywhere and it connects to everything.

I predict Mueller will find little actual evidence of wrongdoing--and none by Trump himself--involving formal collusion with Russia.  It is a nothing-burger, just like Whitewater.   People who complain that Democrats are making something out of nothing are right.  

Accuracy and honesty was not the point of birtherism.   Trump knew full well that the birther charge was bogus.  Its purpose was to give the base something bad to believe about Obama, and it worked.   The Russian collusion story gives Democrats something bad to think about Trump.   A great many Democrats are not in on the joke and they think the collusion story is the important thing.  In fact, what is real about it is that it created an excuse to investigate where the real vulnerability is: criminal activity in Trump's financing.     It is the Democrats' version of Whitewater: a nothing-burger that opens a door.

Now there will be a close look at the pricing of the Trump purchase and re-sale of a Florida home with a Russian billionaire.  Now there will a close look at financing deals, and taxes paid and unpaid, and whether Russian money was laundered through some Trump holding or deal.   This is a rich vein to investigate.

Mueller will find something on someone.  He can charge that person and squeeze him.

(Squeezing people to get testimony may seem ugly and heavy handed.  It is. You squeeze and threaten your way up the chain. Find someone who on instructions from a superior typed a letter or facilitated a bank transfer.  They created false document, which makes them guilty of something.  Testify or rot in prison.   A great many people are serving twenty year sentences for drug crimes right now.  Their problem was wasn't that they were high in crime organizations or did some major act.  Quite the opposite.  Their problem is that they were so low in the organization and knew so little that they had nothing to bargain with.  It is cruel and arbitrary.  It is the way drug crimes are investigated and prosecuted every day in America.)

180 degree turn.  

Trump has let the cat out of the bag.  He said he does not want Mueller to look into his financial history, so of course that is the place Mueller must look. Money will lead him on the blood trail.

Newt Gingrich, the Speaker of the House who defended the Clinton Special Prosecutor probe and led the Clinton impeachment is now on Fox News every day frantically warning about the dangers of a runaway special prosecutor.  Gingrich understands it full well, having loved having Kenneth Starr investigate Bill Clinton.   You dig and dig anywhere the information leads until you find a felony.  It worked against Clinton.

Now it is Trump's turn.   Turnabout is fair play.  Hoist on his own petard.