Trump is in trouble. Deep trouble this time. And the impact will be felt in every American state and every nation of the world.
Like a wounded animal, a wounded president can be dangerous, while a White House transfixed by legal jeopardy is a White House unable to back up friends or deter enemies.
For the first time in his presidency, Donald Trump has actually been implicated in a crime. Forget all the chatter about the dysfunction of his administration, the eye-popping stories about his personal conduct and habits, the sheer weirdness of that North Korea summit, and the possibly even weirder one-to-one meeting with Vladimir Putin.
For the first time in his presidency, Donald Trump (pictured in Washington DC in August) has actually been implicated in a crime
All of this pales into insignificance when it comes to the fact that Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, told a court that he committed an offence at the behest of the man who is now the most powerful in the world.
Cohen — who once said he’d take a bullet for the president, such was his devotion — did not like the look of the prison cell he was facing.
This was the man, by the way, who’d teased Hillary Clinton on Twitter that when she was finally jailed over her dodgy email issues she would at least not have to pay for board and lodging. (As Secretary of State, Clinton had used a private email server rather an official government server, although she was later cleared by the FBI of criminal wrong-doing.)
Now, the boot was on the other foot. American prisons — and I’ve been in a few during my years reporting for the BBC — are brutal, lawless places and Cohen was facing up to 65 years had he not pleaded guilty. When Cohen caved, no one sensible was surprised.
But it isn’t just that he caved and co-operated. He has, by being so specific about the president’s connection to the main crime he himself was charged with — campaign finance fraud in relation to ‘hush’ money paid to a porn star and a Playboy model — fired a shot into the heart of the Oval Office. A fatal shot? How the Democrats wish it might be so. How wonderful it would be for them if the president called it a day and shuffled off back to Trump Tower.
Vice president Mike Pence would take over, but the Republican party, having attached itself to Trump so keenly since he took office, would tear itself apart.
All those who said Trump was unfit for office would be vindicated, and at the next presidential election in 2020, a genial political ‘healer’ — former Democratic vice president Joe Biden perhaps — would sweep the board.
![Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, told a court that he committed an offence at the behest of the man who is now the most powerful in the world](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/08/23/01/4F4F967200000578-0-image-a-21_1534983824962.jpg)
Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, told a court that he committed an offence at the behest of the man who is now the most powerful in the world
Well, it ain’t going to happen. Consider what we know about Donald Trump. When he gets into trouble does he compromise? Does he change course?
Hell, no. This president is a fighter, not in any organised or strategic way, but in a way that can change the national and international conversation, by triggering new crises to take the place of the old ones.
So prepare for something big in response. And here is where stakes begin to rise for all concerned. It’s true that pre-election payments to women who said they had sex with Trump might, technically, be a crime because election expenses have to be declared and the money was an effort to keep them quiet. But that’s not the prize here.
The real one is about Russia: the evidence that might link Donald Trump to Russian efforts to destabilise and destroy Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid. All the intelligence agencies believe it happened, but lack the evidence that Trump colluded with it.
Might Cohen go further now? Certainly his own lawyer is hinting very strongly that his client is prepared to share all he knows about ‘the obvious possibility of a conspiracy to collude and corrupt the American democracy system in the 2016 election’.
So could Cohen be the source of the conversations, documents and payments that provide the missing link?
If Trump thinks that is likely there is a real possibility he will reach for the nuclear button. No, not that one. The one marked ‘Mueller’.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller is the former FBI chief who has been investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. He is the man who could bring Trump down.
If Trump is scared he may simply fire Mueller and that would turn a crisis into an emergency.
It is likely then that the Democrats would call for the Senate to be suspended until a constitutional committee could work out whether the president had acted legally.
But that would be just the beginning. What would happen to Mueller himself? To his staff? What about the files they have amassed in the course of their investigation? Could they legally pass them on or might they have to be smuggled out? Could they be prosecuted for mishandling federal property?
Out on the streets the mood would be febrile, even violent. My contacts in the Democratic Party have plans to organise demonstrations in every big U.S. city in the event of Mueller’s firing. I understand the plans are quite precise, even down to the timing: 5pm local time if the sacking is announced in the morning, and 9am the following day if it’s revealed in the afternoon.
This would be the constitutional crisis that would change America.
Of course, Trump has another alternative and it is the more politically savvy option; that is to take the fight to the Democrats in the mid-term elections in November, and whip his base supporters, those men and women with their Make America Great Again hats, into a frenzy of rage.
Tell them his presidency is on the line. Tell them that every diner in America will have to have a transgender toilet if he loses. Make it all about him and him protecting them.
Mid-term elections generally lead to the party with a president in office losing ground because its own supporters are relatively jaded and the opposition more fired up.
If the Democrats win back control of the House of Representatives, the lower house of Congress, they could begin impeachment proceedings against Trump. Now he is genuinely in legal peril, this takes on a new significance.
Millions of Left-wing Democrats are aching for the chance to bring him down. But, if Trump is able to galvanise his core vote, do they have the strength to overcome a Republican surge? Possibly not.
It is entirely possible that the mid-terms could be won by Trump’s party, and with that victory would come a clear path to re-election in 2020.
An even more frightening prospect for Democrats is that they win the mid-terms and go ahead with impeachment, the House of Representatives passes the necessary articles and they are sent to the Senate for the second stage of the process — the one that leads to a president being deposed.
But the Senate (still controlled by the Republicans) says no. And the president goes on to win a stonking victory and a second term in office. That would be similar to what happened with Bill Clinton, acquitted of two charges (perjury and obstruction of justice) by the Senate in 1999. Trump knows little history, but I’m guessing he knows that.
When Michael Cohen pleaded guilty on Tuesday, the U.S. attorney’s office in New York tweeted that his ‘day of reckoning serves as a reminder that we are a nation of laws, with one set of rules that applies equally to everyone’.
That was directed at the president. And while they may be right about the laws, when it comes to politics, I am not sure Trump believes normal rules apply equally to him.
He is down, but not out. And his fightback could be something to behold.
Justin Webb is a former BBC North America correspondent.