Trump Worse Than Nixon for Rule of Law?

      President Richard Nixon's decision to fire Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox came like a bolt out of the blue on what was otherwise a slow-news, football weekend in October 1973. In the pre-cable news era, all three major television networks interrupted their programming to report that Cox had been fired by the previously unknown solicitor general, Robert Bork, after Attorney General Elliott Richardson and his deputy William Ruckelshaus had resigned rather than carry out Nixon's justice-obstructing order.
      Recalling the episode now 45 years later, Nick Ackerman, one of Cox's assistants, recalled on MSNBC that he left the office that night with several investigative files to safeguard them from possible disappearance or destruction. The precaution proved to be unnecessary. The reaction to the "Saturday Night Massacre" was so instantaneous and so intense that Nixon was forced to acquiesce in the appointment of a new Watergate prosecutor, Leon Jaworski.
      With rampant speculation that President Trump is now on the verge of removing special counsel Robert Mueller from the Russiagate investigation, Nixon is now being recalled, whatever his other faults, aa a believer of sorts in the rule of law. By comparison, Trump appears in this recollection to be a greater threat to the rule of law: a president who might pull out all stops — legal or not, constitutional or not — to thwart the investigation into the Trump campaign's interactions with election-meddling Russian agents.
      Nixon likely had legal authority to remove Cox, his independence at the time unprotected by statute or Justice Department regulation. Richardson and Ruckelshaus refused Nixon's order on the ground that each had promised the Senate in their confirmation hearings to safeguard Cox's position. Today, by contrast, Mueller is protected from removal by a Justice Department regulation that allows Mueller to be removed only "by the personal action of the Attorney General" for "misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest, or for other good cause."
      With Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused from the Russia investigation, the removal power lies instead with the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, who has publicly defended Mueller's conduct in office up till now. Trump's supporters and surrogates envision indirect steps to oust Mueller — for example, by firing Rosenstein and relying on Solicitor General Noel Francisco to be as compliant to the president's wishes as Bork was 45 years ago. As another alternative, Trump could order Sessions or Rosenstein to rescind the regulation or perhaps use his supposed unitary executive power to nullify the regulation himself.
      The speculation about Mueller's possible removal intensified after the Mueller-approved FBI raid on the New York City offices of Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohenr, on Monday (Aprl 9), and intensified further after NBC News' report on Thursday (April 12) that Mueller's office was said to be ready to report four findings regarding Trump and obstruction of justice.
      Trump was widely reported to be beyond boiling-mad after news of the raid on Cohen's office broke on Monday morning. He interrupted a meeting of his national security advisors for an extended tirade against Mueller, for his "witch hunt," and Sessions for his "big mistake" to recuse himself from overseeing the Russia investigation. Trump said that FBI agents had "broken into" Cohen's office; that was his description of the lawful execution of a no-knock search warrant signed by a federal magistrate judge in New York.
      Trump surrogates later described the raid as "Gestapo-like," but Cohen himself said FBI agents acted professionally throughout. The raid, actually carried out by the U.S. attorney's office for the southern district of New York, apparently sought information about Cohen's possible involvement in paying "hush money" to porn star Stormy Daniels or other women to quash accusations of Trump's sexual infidelities in the run-up to the November election. Rep. Chris Collins, a New York Republican who was the first in Congress to endorse Trump, was among those who described the raid as going beyond Mueller's authority. In fact, the letter appointing Mueller gives  him authority to take on other matters discovered in the course of the Russia investigation.
      The week ended with NBC's potentially explosive report that Mueller was prepared to give Congress a bill of particulars about Trump's possible obstruction of justice. The report was described as including four findings regarding Trump's firing of FBI director James Comey, his role in crafting the misleading June 2016 statement concerning the Trump Tower meeting with Russian reprsentatives; the White House's discussion of possibly pardoning witnesses in the Russiagate investigation, and his attempt to pressure Sessions into withdrawing his recusal from the case.
      With the accusatory report possibly imminent, Harvard law professor Noah Feldman imagined the hyper-mercurial Trump ready to do almost anything to raise the drawbridges around the White House. "What if Donald Trump tries to fire Robert Mueller — and fails?" Feldman asked in a column forBloomberg. The result, he went on to warn, "could be a constitutional crisis" with neither of them willing to back down and the courts unwilling to intervene for a definitive resolution..
      Nixon "allowed the Constitution to prevail," MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell recalled on his program last week. "Donald Trump is no Richard Nixon," he went on, in an oddly unfavorable comparison. The political landscape is also different from 1973: Nixon had few defenders on the Cox firing. But Trump's base, and his Fox News chorus, likely would cheer him on in his defiance. The rule of law could wind up lying seriously wounded at his feet.