T

he Justice Department and Special Counsel Robert Mueller are on a collision course with President Trump; it’s just a matter of time before one of the parties gets hit, and hard.

As the probe drags on ever longer, and gets more complex and convoluted, the president is steadily becoming more and more fed up with the shadow that continues to darken his term.

Trump’s frustration is understandable. Next week will mark one year since Mueller was appointed. Since then, we’ve heard of various aides suspected of money-laundering, others who have lied to the FBI, and indictments against Russian organizations for meddling in the US elections. But what we haven’t heard was testimony proving that members of Trump’s team coordinated with senior Russian agents — which, in case anyone has forgotten, was the reason Mueller was appointed in the first place.

Since then, Mueller has been deepening the investigation, following leads that steadily move further away from his original mandate. Those who’ve been indicted thus far — with all due credit to Paul Manafort, who was Trump’s campaign manager for a short period — were not very close to the president, leading to increasing confusion as to the nature of the investigation and who’s involved in it.

Thus, from what started as a political bombshell that fell on the president, and seemed liable to lead to proceedings ending in possible impeachment, we’re left with a persistent saga that won’t go away, like a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of the president’s shoe. Initially, Trump toyed with the idea of firing Mueller — along with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, who took over the investigation after the attorney general recused himself due to conflict of interest — but ultimately decided against it, probably at the advice of his legal team, who felt that such a move would boomerang against him.

Since then, however, there have been changes. White House lawyer Ty Cobb, who is thought to have pressed Trump to cooperate fully with Mueller, in the belief that this would bring the probe to a speedy end, has since been replaced by Emmet Flood, himself no stranger to highly publicized legal bouts involving the White House. Most notably, Flood represented Bill Clinton during the impeachment proceedings brought against the former president.

Flood is considered combative, and together with other members of Trump’s team, such as Rudy Giuliani, he is gearing up for a do-or-die battle in case Mueller tries to subpoena the president to appear before a grand jury. Trump himself tweeted last week that he’d “use the authority vested in me as president.” It’s unclear what exactly he was threatening to do, but what’s certain is that if Mueller’s investigation doesn’t wind down soon, it could be closed through artificial means.

Meanwhile, there are exciting developments on the legal scene, with T. S. Ellis, a federal judge from Virginia, rebuking Mueller for overstepping his bounds in the criminal case against Manafort.

“You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud,” the judge said, reportedly losing his temper. “You really care about getting information Mr. Manafort can give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump and lead to his prosecution, or impeachment, or whatever.”

And in case he wasn’t full understood, the judge added, “It’s unlikely you’re going to persuade me the special counsel has unfettered power to do whatever he wants.” (Excerpted from Mishpacha, Issue 709)