The Powell Gambit

 

News that Donald Trump might seek the appointment of Sydney Powell as special counsel to "investigate election fraud" provides a new window onto Trump's sheer animal cunning and utter nihilism. Last week I imagined that the theatrics being planned by Senator-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) and Representative "Mo" Brooks (R-Alabama) at the joint session of Congress on January 6th, at which they plan to object to the certification of the Electoral College vote, might be the "final insult" to our collective intelligence by the Trumpist movement. This is not to say that Trump himself and his followers will not continue to spew vitriol and nonsense. But January 6th looked like the last opportunity for Trump's clown posse to use the actual organs and procedures of government to score political points. 

The appointment of Powell would change all that. The idea is simple but viciously clever. A key plank in the Trump mythology is the claim that his opponents saddled him with the "Russia hoax" and the Mueller investigation out of purely political motives, to restrain what would have otherwise been an "even more" powerfully transformative presidency. The appointment of Powell would thus be a case of "turnabout is fair play," except that Trump would of course (wink wink) insist that it was not really turnabout, since the "election fraud" is "real," while the "Russia hoax" was not. 

The strategic brilliance of this idea is that it would effectively create a proxy by which Trump himself could stay in government past January 20. Powell would be given a suite of offices, a budget of tens of millions of dollars, and would be empowered to hire a staff of dozens (if not hundreds) of lawyers and clerks. She would have the full attention of the media because, however ridiculous the pretext on which she had been credentialed, her office would have real power to issue subpoenas and empanel Grand Juries.

 The rallying cry of Trump and his goons would be "it is just like Mueller!" But of course, Powell would be very different than Robert Mueller in many respects. She would not limit her investigations to any narrow brief, but would begin casting as wide a net as possible as soon as she got rolling. She would also be very free in sharing information about her ongoing investigation with the press. We would begin hearing very lurid details about Hunter Biden's love life within minutes of Powell turning on the office lights. 

A key aspect separating Powell from Robert Mueller is her place at the lunatic fringe of our politics. She has publicly allied herself with the "QAnon" movement, which claims that the Democratic Party is a cabal of Satan-worshiping, blood-drinking pedophiles. The object of installing her as a special counsel is thus not to launch any credible legal threat against the Biden White House, but to set them up for a political firestorm.

Why? Powell is such a toxic figure that she can be counted upon to become completely intolerable, given any modicum of real authority. She will use the platform of special counsel to broadcast progressively more egregious obscenities, until the sheer level of racism, antisemitism, homophobia, and xenophobia issuing from her office becomes so poisonous as to compel her dismissal by the Biden White House (it will be a choice between ejecting Powell and losing the support of tens of millions of mortally offended voters).

This will of course be met with theatrical howls of outrage from throughout the GOP. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and Kevin McCarthy will call fire and brimstone down on Joe Biden for daring to do what even Donald Trump did not! Fire a special counsel! Heaven forfend! The Saturday Night Massacre replayed! Will the nation ever recover!

To be sure, this will only buy Donald Trump a few more months of relevance. If Powell is appointed in January I would expect her to be gone by April or May and forgotten soon thereafter. But anyone who believes that Trump would not do this out of simple spite has not been paying attention. And there would be other dividends. Money could be raised on the plume of outrage. The "embarrassment" of firing a special counsel would leave the Justice Department open to charges that any investigation of Trump himself was "politically motivated."

I must say, as disgusted as I am by the sheer hypocrisy and nihilistic malignancy of such a maneuver, the very idea displays more imagination and creativity than I gave Trump and his minions credit for. I do not doubt that Trump would do this in a heartbeat, but it will not be so simple to accomplish. He will need an Attorney General who is willing to be associated with such a grotesque stunt. William Barr, who has demonstrated that there is a limit to how much disgrace he is willing to bear, is exiting. But finding someone willing to go along with this plan as acting AG will not be easy. It must be an attorney who has not yet been disbarred, but has all of the ethics of a gangster consigliere and no future ambition of virtually any kind. Even Rudy Giuliani would most likely blanch at the prospect. 

We live in interesting times, and the next thirty days may be an especially intriguing interval. Arriving at a point where we only had to worry about the tens of thousands who are dying of a novel plague would, amazingly, make the world a more boring place. Here's hoping that we can reach that juncture soon.