Pleased by his performance in his State of the Union address and claiming vindication by the release of a controversial congressional memo, Donald Trump may have made an important midwinter transition – from embattled to emboldened.
In the fast-paced world of American politics, a week of Trump triumph often is followed by a week of Trump travail, and there are plenty of challenges ahead for the 45th president, including funding the government beyond Feb. 8 and addressing looming immigration issues. But this time Mr. Trump may feel he has the whip hand to fight the most important challenge to his presidency – the multiple investigations into any ties he, his campaign, and his advisers may have to Russia.
Moreover, Trump may feel emboldened to intensify the battle against those who claim he has been compromised by his Russian ties and perhaps even to take the dramatic step of dismissing special counsel Robert Mueller, an action he has longed to make but has been restrained from doing so by senior White House advisers.
Many analysts agree that in a strict sense the three-and-a-half-page memo released last Friday against the wishes of national-security officials and congressional Democrats had nothing to do with Mr. Mueller. House Speaker Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican, made the same argument before the document was released.
But because the target of the memo was the FBI, and because the special counsel himself is a former FBI director, it is not difficult for administration allies to conflate the two.
The narrative being shaped by the White House is that the President has been vindicated, even though the vindication takes the shape of his conviction that top American law-enforcement officials have been compromised. Democrats and the FBI contest that notion, but it is a small rhetorical step from compromised FBI investigators to a compromised investigation conducted by a one-time FBI director.
Another element in the White House argument: In his investigation, Mr. Mueller is relying in large measure on the same FBI that is being chastised in the memo prepared by the Republican staff of the House Intelligence Committee, headed by Representative Devin Nunes of California. Mr. Trump has described the conduct of FBI leaders as "a disgrace."
At the very least, Mr. Trump now has the ammunition to discredit Mr. Mueller – even though the special counsel is not implicated in the memo that the President will use as his rhetorical truncheon. It also helps the President argue that established Washington officials, especially in the FBI, viewed him as an implausible and perhaps illegitimate presidential candidate and have conspired to undermine him as chief executive.
This strategy was evident in the hours after the memo's release and over the weekend. On cable TV, Sean Hannity of Fox News called the Mueller investigation a "witch hunt" that should be "disbanded." On Saturday, Mr. Trump sent out a triumphal tweet: "This memo totally vindicates "Trump" in probe. But the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on. Their [sic] was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead). This is an American disgrace!"
It is, of course, possible that Mr. Trump's preoccupation with this affair is a measure of his fear of its consequences, for his family or perhaps for himself. Either way, the President has undertaken an unusual if not unprecedented attack on the law-enforcement officials who in a broad sense work for him.
Unless Mr. Trump takes dramatic action – and his advisers know the political peril inherent in that – the Mueller investigation will continue. Speaker Ryan, the Republicans' 2012 vice-presidential nominee, has argued repeatedly that Mr. Mueller should be allowed to complete his work. Just last weekend the Justice Department backed the special counsel, arguing that a suit filed by Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump's former campaign manager, should be dismissed. Mr. Manafort, long a fixture in Republican politics and a top adviser to the GOP presidential campaigns of Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole, argued that Deputy Attorney-General Rod Rosenstein, another potential Trump dismissal target, granted Mr. Mueller "carte blanche to investigate and pursue criminal charges in connection with anything he stumbles across."
That contention, shared by the Trump White House, is the sum of all administration fears. Indeed, it is a fear shared by all administrations. Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel that investigated Bill Clinton's conduct in the Whitewater episode, so expanded his remit that his probe led to examination of Mr. Clinton's sexual behaviour and eventually resulted in his impeachment in the House of Representatives, though not his conviction in the Senate and removal from office.
The danger for Mr. Trump in dismissing Mr. Mueller or Mr. Rosenstein comes from an earlier presidential impeachment drive. Such an action would inevitably raise comparisons to the so-called "Saturday Night Massacre" in 1973, when Richard M. Nixon sought to fire independent Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox. In that 1973 episode, Attorney-General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney-General William Ruckelshaus refused to carry out Mr. Nixon's orders, causing a Washington spectacle that contributed to Mr. Nixon's woes and undermined his authority and credibility.
The Watergate allusions underline a fundamental and significant shift in the parties' profiles since the early 1970s. In that period, Republicans generally assumed the basic honesty of the FBI while Democrats suspected it of political mischief and legal overreach. Now the positions are reversed, and the general distrust the Democrats sowed nearly a half-century ago became a contagion that now has made it easier for Mr. Trump to see, and suggest, FBI perfidy.
That sense will only deepen if, as expected, the inspector general of the Justice Department later this month releases a report raising questions about the FBI's role in probes into the private e-mail server used by Mr. Trump's 2016 presidential rival, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. That investigation inadvertently discovered FBI officials' text messages that suggest skepticism of Mr. Trump.
The road ahead is full of peril – a peril widely shared in the American capital, for in the weeks ahead the destinies of Mr. Trump, his Democratic opponents, and Mr. Mueller himself may take shape. This episode may be the classic zero-sum game, for by the time it is over one, two, or all three of these principals in the Washington drama could be damaged.
David Shribman