What Happens to the Evidence if Trump Goes on a Firing Spree?

[orangecrush]

Backup options are likely already underway.



"Trump would have to fire many people to keep this evidence from the light of day. He’d have to start with firing some combination of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and maybe more. Whoever replaced them would in turn have to shut down the SDNY probe and the Mueller investigation. This would likely mean more firings. Keep in mind that Sessions has reportedly declined to recuse himself from the Michael Cohen investigation, and refused in testimony last month to state his recusal status. I have written that the decision by Rosenstein and Mueller to refer the case to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York was a calculated risk, indicating that they wanted to spread the investigation to other prosecutors as a hedge in case Trump fired Mueller. In doing so, they appeared to be optimistic that Sessions wouldn’t impede this investigation once it was back under his ambit at “main DOJ.”

If Sessions won’t do this work, then Trump might find someone who will, just as Richard Nixon found Robert Bork to do the work of firing special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Trump has reportedly ordered Mueller’s firing once or twice already. This process would be messy, but conceivably, Trump would cite the rejected and wrong unitary executive theory as constitutional grounds to demand evidence be buried.

As I’ve written before, the way out of this DOJ mess would be state prosecutors. Not only is it permissible for federal prosecutors to share evidence with state prosecutors; it is standard, especially in multi-jurisdiction organized crime cases. And frankly, this case has become an organized crime case. Keep in mind that Mueller was reportedly in close contact with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman last August, around the time there was speculation Trump was planning to fire Mueller. And keep in mind that Schneiderman has filed more than 100 lawsuits against the Trump Organization and so has open investigations into Trump’s various alleged frauds. And Schneiderman was already contemplating state prosecutions when he called for an important change in New York criminal procedural law around the issue of double jeopardy to make sure Trump’s pardons wouldn’t allow him to obstruct justice here, as I encouraged the state of New York to do in a Slate piece."


https://www.google.com/amp/amp.slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/05/heres-what-happens-to-the-mueller-evidence-if-trump-goes-on-a-firing-spree.html


Dead man switch hopefully ready to go.

[unblock]

1. any key firings would only lead to a call for another special prosecutor.

to investigate not only the old stuff but also the firings as further obstruction.

republicans could block it, but i'm not thinking they really want to be overly complicit at this stage.

[jberryhill]

2. It generates more evidence

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. Like turtles, it's special prosecutors all the way down.

[jberryhill]

6. Because the only thing better than lawyers is....

MORE LAWYERS!

[Hekate]

3. Mueller is taking care to disperse evidence instead of keeping it all in his office...

Just as Obama and Biden did. In the long run, the truth will out.

In the short run, hang on to your seat belts.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. Members of the Watergate prosecution team took files out of their offices.

A couple of the Watergate veterans like Jill Wine Banks and Nick Ackerman have talked about this. When the Saturday Night Massacre hit, they knew they'd need to safeguard the files before Nixon's goons got to them. I'm sure Mueller also has some kind of a dead-man's switch all set up.

[orangecrush]

7. fingers crossed.