While no one knows special counsel Robert Mueller's next moves, former National Security Agency analyst John Schindler knows one thing for certain: President Donald Trump's efforts to kill the Mueller probe have all been massive failures.
Writing in the Spectator, Schindler says that Trump's surprise win in the 2016 presidential election may be one that he will live to regret, as it's drawn new scrutiny to his years of shady business dealings.
"It has all caught up with The Donald, and there’s no way out," he writes. "The president has desperately sought exits since his first days in office, when he compared America’s spies to Nazis for knowing his secrets... It hasn’t worked, instead having the opposite effect, and America’s spies loathe Trump as they have no other president."
Schindler then turns to Trump's decision to give Attorney General Jeff Sessions the boot and then replace him with Matt Whitaker, a political loyalist who has in the past been highly critical of Mueller's investigation.
He speculates that Trump may have brought on Whitaker thinking he could cripple the probe, but he says any such plans have now backfired spectacularly given bipartisan blowback to his appointment as acting AG.
"Whitaker lacks the political capital to do much of anything at this point, so Trump has no decent cards left to play," he writes. "The White House may try to sink the Mueller inquiry still, in an act of kamikaze-like desperation, but that will only blow up the administration too... President Trump, all his exits blocked, and off-ramps folded up, has settled on rage-tweeting at Bob Mueller as his salve."