Pat Robertson has made it loud and clear that if you oppose Trump, you oppose God’s plan for this country. So no one expected him to be happy with the news that Mueller Time is officially underway. Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were indicted over the weekend by Robert Mueller as part of the investigation into Russia’s efforts to hack the presidential election.
However, the Virginia Beach Ayatollah’s proposed solution is staggering, even by his standards. Robertson thinks that Trump should step in, pardon everyone involved, and fire Mueller–immediately.
Monday’s edition of “The 700 Club” went to air roughly an hour after Manafort and Gates surrendered to the FBI. So it comes as no surprise that Robertson didn’t take long to deliver his take on the situation. People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch got a clip.
About five-and-a-half minutes into the show, after a CBN News report on the indictments, Robertson put on his lawyer’s hat; he has a law degree from Yale. He mused that Manafort was “an easy target” given his long history as a lobbyist for foreign governments. His bank account is swollen with money from his foreign employers.
Robertson conceded that in all likelihood, Manafort hasn’t registered as a foreign agent, but suggested it was a mere “technical violation.” However, Robertson scoffed that there was “not a chance” that Mueller would find any wrongdoing related to the Trump campaign or administration.
That makes Robertson’s next argument all the more bizarre. He referred his viewers to a Monday morning op-ed dealing with the president’s pardon power. Presumably, Robertson is referring to an op-ed that ran in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, in which former Reagan and Bush 41-era attorneys David Rivkin and Lee Casey called for Trump to pardon everyone involved in the Russia affair.
Robertson harrumphed that it is not possible for a president to obstruct justice “if he talks to one of his people in the Justice Department,” since it is part of “his side of the aisle under the Constitution.” He then parroted what has become a common talking point among Trump diehards–the entire investigation is tainted by news that the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund the “golden showers” dossier. Robertson believed this was an example of a concept he learned at Yale Law–the “fruit of the poisonous tree.” As far as he was concerned, the dossier was “tainted” by Democratic money, and therefore every inquiry arising from that dossier is also “tainted” and must be quashed posthaste.
For that reason, Robertson believed that Trump has to shut this investigation now because it was not worth the “distraction” it has caused from the nation’s business. Apparently he hoped Trump was watching, because he offered Trump some advice on how to go about doing it.
“I think he has every right to shut Mueller down and say, ‘You have gone as far as you need to and I have instructed my Justice Department to close you down.'”
He then wholeheartedly endorsed Rivkin and Casey’s call for Trump to issue a “blanket pardon for everybody involved in everything.” While musing that it might be 2018 before he does so, he all but begged Trump to act quickly, saying, “He’s got to shut this thing down, he’s just got to.”
We need not wonder what would happen had there even been a hint that a President Hillary was thinking of firing a special counsel investigating potential interference in the election. Robertson and others would be calling for people to haul out the pitchforks and torches. Oh, that’s right. When a Democratic president does something like this, he or she is being a dictator. When a Republican president does this, he or she is being a leader.
As Salon’s Matthew Sheffield notes, this is the very same line of reasoning that led to the Saturday Night Massacre, in which Richard Nixon engineered the firing of Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox for seeking copies of the now-infamous White House tapes. Rivkin, Casey, and Robertson are all old enough to know what happened next. Public opinion swung hard against Nixon, and within nine months, the House Judiciary Committee had approved articles of impeachment. Two weeks after those articles were approved, Nixon resigned.
Plus, Robertson seems to forget that there are two state-level investigations of Manafort which are also well underway–one by New York state attorney general Eric Schneiderman, the other by Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance. As Robertson, Rivkin, and Casey are almost certainly aware, presidential pardons have no standing regarding state charges.
Robertson also seems to be ignoring the 500-pound gorilla in the room. Former Trump campaign foreign policy aide George Papadoupolos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about the extent of his contacts with a Kremlin-connected professor. According to the timeline agreed to by both Mueller’s team and Papadoupolos, we now know that Papadoupolos was told that the Kremlin had “dirt” about Hillary–and that when Papadoupolos told his immediate supervisor about those contacts, the supervisor congratulated him. So even if Trump were brazen enough to pardon everyone, we still have the clearest evidence to date that he fostered an environment in his campaign in which it was even remotely acceptable to accept “opposition research” from a hostile foreign government.
But even without that to consider, we now know that Robertson has effectively called for the president of the United States to do something that, at the very least, would meet the real-world definition of obstruction of justice. Well, consider yourself warned, Pat. If Trump follows your advice, we will make sure that both of you go down, and go down hard.
(featured image courtesy The 700 Club’s Facebook)
