Here's a choice cut:
PAUL JAY: Cohen, under questioning and in his opening statement, laid out some specific things that lead one to conclude that Donald Trump broke the law. They seem to have President Trump on bank fraud and various kinds of tax evasion. There is an argument that goes that a president can’t be indicted while he’s in office. Well, here’s what Cohen suggested–that if Trump loses the election in 2020, perhaps he won’t leave office.
MICHAEL COHEN: Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a peaceful transition of power.
PAUL JAY: Now joining me to talk about that, and other parts, other things that fall out of the Cohen testimony, is Colonel Larry Wilkerson. Larry is a retired United States Army soldier and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. Thanks for joining us again, Larry.
LARRY WILKERSON: Good to be with you, Paul.
PAUL JAY: So what do you make of that? He’s talking about what, that there’ll be an election. He loses the election, or there will be something staged, perhaps, that might lead to not having an election. What do you make of what Cohen says?
LARRY WILKERSON: This was not a surprise to me because about a year ago in the Senate when I was working on the preliminary lobbying efforts to get the United States out of the war in Yemen, I encountered a senator who–a long-serving senator of the Republican Party–who asked everyone to leave his office. He asked me to ask my people to leave. And he asked his people to leave, including his chief of staff. And he said, I have a question for Col. Wilkerson. It calls on his military professional expertise.
So they all left, and we were alone in the office. And he looked at me and he said–looked at his watch, and he said, I’ve got to go vote in a few minutes. But I want to give you a scenario and ask you a question. The scenario is this. Let’s say that we come on the midterms and lose one or both the Houses. And let’s say that after that, the articles of impeachment that even now are being crafted in the House by, largely, the Democrats, if not exclusively Democrats, they become something that Republicans, my party, is interested in. And all of a sudden we move towards that. And here’s the scenario. We go over to the White House with the leaders of Congress, both parties, just as they did, basically, with Richard Nixon after Watergate. And we say to the president “You have two choices, Mr. President. You can suffer these very powerful articles of impeachment. We guarantee you you’ll be removed from office, and after that we’ll prosecute you and your family to the full extent of the law, which is perfectly legal. Or here’s your alternative, Mr. President. You can resign, as Richard Nixon did, and we won’t prosecute you or your family. You have a choice.”
I said, OK. That doesn’t sound like all that implausible a scenario to me. And the senator said, yeah, but here’s my question to you. Trump won’t leave, and he calls to the streets his legions. And as you know, his legions are the most well-armed legions in America. In fact, his base owns probably 75 to 90 percent of the guns in America. And the FBI will tell you that. What’s the military going to do? the senator asked me. My response I won’t share with you, but it was a very, very serious response. And it vouchsafe to talk about the military, the constitutional crisis, and other things.
PAUL JAY: Well, that was, that was actually my next question: What would the military do? Because it’s not just about people in the streets, because if the police and military play any normal role, I don’t think Trump has that kind of force in terms of, you know, people with guns and such. But if he uses, you know, quasi-legal constitutional means, what does that mean? That there’s a staged event like some kind of terrorist attack, or some other kind of national emergency that’s used as an excuse not to have the elections, or not to implement the results of the elections. What would the military do? And it seems to me if Trump is in any way entertaining these kinds of ideas, he better make sure that the leaders of the military are his people. So my question is: Are they?
LARRY WILKERSON: Now, this is the dilemma. And what you’ve just painted is not really, I think, a part of reality. The reality would be that others would see through a declaration of a national emergency, or even a declaration of war; even if it were to order the military to deploy to places like Iran, or North Korea, or whatever. Because I think the leadership would refuse. The leadership of the military has a bifurcated loyalty, if you will. Not just mentioning the Constitution, which is the ultimate loyalty, but they’re loyal to the legislative branch, which is basically that branch which commissions them and approves their stars, and the executive branch.
So when you’re talking about the leadership under a scenario like this, a declaration of a national emergency clearly aimed at deflecting attention from the president, or keeping the president around longer than the statute legislation says for the elections and so forth, is in my view nonsense, because the military would never adhere to that. They’d never follow that. They’d go straight to the Congress. And the Congress would turn it over, I hope. Even my Republican idiots like Mitch McConnell in the Senate would see the dire necessity to take action there, and wouldn’t allow their lust for power and money to overcome totally their desire to keep the Republican tack. I hope. Notice I say “I hope.”
And here's Robert Reich worrying about the same thing.
And here's Robert Reich worrying about the same thing.