To:     President Trump

From: Jeff Crouere, Trump Delegate, LA Co-Chair, Talk Show Host

Date:  September 7, 2018

Re:     Helpful Suggestions

President Trump, it has been a rough few weeks. The “Deep State” has literally thrown everything including the kitchen sink at you, but, thankfully, you are still standing.

In elections, Americans usually have an overriding issue on their minds: the economy. In 1992, for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, famed political consultant James Carville coined the phrase, “It’s the Economy Stupid!” to highlight their focus.

After the successful Desert Storm operation in the Persian Gulf, Americans were renewing their attention on the economy in 1992. In that election, the economy was in a tailspin and a recession was dampening the financial prospects for millions of Americans.

In our nation’s history, only two U.S. Presidents have been impeached by the House of Representatives: Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. Both remained in office, surviving a trial in the U.S. Senate. Of course, President Richard Nixon resigned before he would have surely faced impeachment and removal from office.

In the last few days, the possibility of impeachment of the President has been continually raised by the corrupt, biased and liberal mainstream news media infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome. In fact, on Wednesday August 22, from 6 a.m. until Midnight, according to the Media Research Center, the words “impeachment” or “impeach” were used a ridiculous 222 times.

Judge T.S. Ellis, III once referred to himself as “Caesar in [the] Rome” that’s his courtroom though, by the jurist’s own admission, it’s a pretty small place. An exquisitely educated Reagan appointee, since 1984, Ellis transforms himself from mere mortal into mini-deity every time he dons a black toga to judge the accused arrayed beneath his bench who must contend for favor.
 
Donald Trump praised Ellis, recently, for the scoldings he’s been giving prosecutors from the special counsel’s office during the trial of Paul Manafort, ex-chair of the Trump campaign. Manafort is accused of evading taxes, money-laundering, and a passel-full of other financial crimes, mostly having a nexus to unreported income earned from pro-Russia work he undertook for the Ukraine’s former president, Viktor Andriyovych Yushchenko, who fled to Russia before the axe dropped.

Donald Trump says Paul Manafort is being treated worse than Al Capone. A little history is in order. The fella who ordered Al Capone taken down was President Herbert Hoover who was tired of impudent gang murders in Chicago by America’s most famous gangster. Treasury Secretary, Andrew Mellon, who received the order, directed his treasury department to gather intelligence about Capone’s finances and, thereafter, history was writ.

The judge in the case of U.S. vs Capone, James H. Wilkerson, ran a rocket trial on the 23 charges facing Capone. It began on October 5, 1931 and concluded on October 18th of the same year with a guilty verdict. Ironically, Wilkerson bears more than a resemblance to special counsel Robert Mueller.

“We declared clearly that the Russian government did not meddle in U.S. processes, does not meddle and moreover did not meddle in the 2016 elections,” according to Putin aide, Yuri Ushakov, as reported by the New York Times.

It’s reassuring that Russia can still be trusted, though there’s a worry about the triple negative Ushakov uses in his general denial. Math aside, the president, allegedly, will straighten it all out when he meets in summit with Vladimir Putin next month, at which time superlatives will be expressed and best smiles flashed. The event, however, could do some good if it’s a substantive meet and not a P.R. stunt.

The president says he doesn’t want the Mueller investigation to affect the midterms so, naturally, he’s doing everything in his power to make sure it does with eight states holding primaries on Tuesday. Unable to restrain himself, Donald Trump tweeted on Monday, that he has unfettered power to pardon himself for non-existent crimes. His attorney, Rudy Giuliani, went further and claimed the president can’t be indicted, even if he murdered former FBI director, James Comey, and, by extension, if he did, he could pardon himself for that, too.

 It’s a common refrain by Republicans that the Russia investigation, headed by Robert Mueller, should be wrapped-up as soon as possible. Trump surrogate, Rudy Giuliani, has appeared, lately, on television more often than Stormy Daniels’ lawyer and Trump antagonist, Michael Avenatti, to make this point. Both are highly entertaining but each has failed to reveal more substance than form.

" The buzzwords in the Mueller investigation today, one year anniversary of the start of the investigation is witch hunt" and "can't indict a sitting president".

Whether it is a witch hunt of not will be better determined once the investigaton runs its course. Whether a President can be indicted while serving might be an issue that could ultimately be decided by the US Supreme Court. 

However, overlaying both of those questions is another very important issue being discussed on cable TV and in the news recently, namely--what could be the effect should President Donald Trump decide to pardon others being targeted by the federal government? Believe it or not, an ancillary issue is--what happens if he pardons himslf? 

On Friday there was more good economic news as the jobs report showed the unemployment rate dropped to 3.9%, the lowest since 2000. For African Americans and Hispanics, the unemployment rate is now the lowest ever recorded. In April, 164,000 nonfarm jobs were added to payrolls surpassing a 135,000 increase in employment in March. Among the sectors to perform well in April were construction which added 17,000 new jobs and manufacturing employment which surged by 24,000 jobs.