If Mueller used federal courts to indict Trump and his merry band, and Trump directed the police agencies of the U.S. to ignore the order (as Jackson directed the U.S. Army to ignore the Supreme Court and relocate the Cherokee, and they complied), then Mueller may find that he has precisely as much power over Trump and his family and friends as Chief Justice John Marshall had over Andrew Jackson.
This wouldn't just provoke a constitutional crisis; it's the very definition of one.
As Alexander Hamilton noted in #78 of the Federalist Papers, "The judiciary... has no influence over either the sword [President] or the purse [Congress]; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments." (Capitals Hamilton's.)
But Trump doesn't need a fight with Mueller in the courts to provoke a crisis: war works just as well.
FDR declared martial law in Hawaii (which wasn't even a state then) after Pearl Harbor, and [then-General] Andrew Jackson declared martial law in New Orleans during the War of 1812. (There's that name again...)
Provoking Iran or North Korea into a limited war may give Trump all the power he needs.
And, as George W. Bush noted to his biographer Mickey Herskowitz in 1999, war gives a president political capital. Bush even thought he'd get enough political capital from invading Iraq (this was before he was elected, keep in mind) that he could use it to privatize Social Security.
"One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief," Herskowitz told reporter Russ Baker that Bush told him.
"My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it," Bush said, adding, "If I have a chance to invade... if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency."
(Much like Schwartz writing Trump's autobiography, Herskowitz wrote the first draft of George W. Bush's autobiography A Charge to Keep. We should attend to the warnings of presidential biographers.)
Privatizing Social Security was very, very important to George W. Bush (maybe as important as staying out of jail is to Trump). Bush ran an unsuccessful campaign for the House of Representatives in 1978 in Texas on that singular platform.
And, after winning reelection and being sworn back into office in 2005, Bush began a campaign, traveling all across the country, trying to convince people privatization was a good idea.
As the San Francisco Chronicle's Washington Bureau Chief Marc Sandalow wrote the day after Bush won reelection, "President Bush proclaimed his election as evidence that Americans embrace his plans to reform Social Security... Bush staked his claim to a broad mandate and announced his top priorities at a post-election news conference, saying his 3.5 million vote victory had won him political capital that he would spend enacting his conservative agenda."
"I earned capital in this campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it," Bush told reporters. "It is my style."
The more Bush traveled pitching the idea, though, the more people hated it. He ultimately gave it up, as Brookings reported.
But if Bush was willing to start a war with Iraq to get himself reelected and privatize Social Security, imagine how much more motivated Trump may be to start a war -- with anybody, anywhere -- if he saw his financial empire slipping away, his presidency imperiled, and his children facing jail time.
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