Government

Trump Lawyers Find Out The Hard Way That He Screws Everyone In The End

Lie down with dogs, wake up with tweets.

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(Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

Bill Barr seems to have shambled out the doors of the Justice Department without suffering the indignity of a mean presidential send-off tweet, although the day isn’t over yet. Perhaps Commander Twitterthumbs is saving that one for Christmas — you know, to spread the good cheer since Barr wasn’t able to have his $35,000 annual Christmas party at the Trump hotel this year.

But as Barr enjoys his well-earned ignominious retirement, he leaves behind a crew of lawyers manning the Good Ship Executive Branch as it’s taking on water by the second.

White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, who did more than even Bill Barr to protect Trump during the impeachment, in addition to stonewalling even the most basic congressional oversight for the past two years, is desperately trying to bring this wrecked ship safely to shore. But he’s fallen out of presidential favor for the mortal sin of telling Trump that Rudy Giuliani’s crackpot solutions to losing an election by 7 million votes are patently illegal.

No, Mister President Sir, you can’t just declare martial law in all the swing states. There is no legal authority for Homeland Security to impound the voting machines. And, no, for the love of all that is holy, you cannot make Sidney Powell a special counsel to investigate election fraud.

During a heated, five-hour meeting at the White House on Friday night, Cipollone and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows tried to stop Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn, Rudy Giuliani, and Overstock nutter Patrick Byrne from taking the president all the way over the crazy cliff with them.

“Trump is fed up with Cipollone, his counsel,” Axios’s Jonathan Swan reports, adding that “Some supporters of Cipollone are worried that Trump is on the brink of removing him and replacing him with a fringe loyalist.”

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Would that “fringe loyalist” be a lawyer from Texas with an affinity for animal prints and facially nonsensical conspiracy theories? Could be! The Trump campaign already kicked Powell to curb once, and The Daily Beast reports that Michael Flynn’s attorney is out of the running for special counsel. But that doesn’t mean she won’t be joining the Deep State as Cipollone’s replacement. (Dear God.)

Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani is trying desperately to control the narrative, telling everyone that Powell “is no longer part of [our] team. She is on her own.” How long until Trump works out that his pal Rudy and the Elite Strike Force Super Friends Task Team  did a pisspoor job litigating the post-election suits? Powell at least managed to get two of her four Kraken appeals docketed at the Supreme Court, while the Trump campaign’s last, best gasp at overturning the result in Pennsylvania still hasn’t showed up yet. [Edit: They made it. Slow clap. And so much for that motion to expedite which requested that “Respondents should be directed to file their response(s) to the petition by 12:00 noon on December 23, 2020.”]

Back at the Justice Department, Barr’s departure leaves Jeffrey Rosen manning the ship. Rosen, who left Kirkland & Ellis to join this shitshow, will have his work cut out for him trying to contain the fallout from whatever lunatic iceberg we’re about to slam into. Which is the fate of all lawyers in Trumpland, before they are inevitably cast out in a barrage of tweets, with a giant target painted on their backs.

Isn’t that right, Rod Rosenstein?

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Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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