Recently I was watching one of the cable news channels and the discussion turned to yet another of Trump’s outrageous statements, when one of the commentator said something like, “This isn’t how an innocent man behaves”.  Sometimes a phase like that one sticks with you because at the time you think to yourself, “You know, that’s so true”.  That’s how it was with me when I heard those words in reference to trump; If Trump is truly innocent of all possible criminal charges, this isn’t how he would behave.

An innocent man would say, “Bring it on; I have nothing to hide”.  He would pledge his complete cooperation with an investigation and that of his entire staff.  Then he would then go out of his way to demonstrate that he and his staff is being totally cooperative.  And if the investigation involves national security, such as a convert attack of a foreign power on the basis of our democracy, an innocent man would praise and encourage the work of the investigators.

Things that an innocent president would never do:

• Ask for a “loyalty pledge” of the Director of the FBI who is supervising the investigation.
• Ask the Director of the FBI to help him disprove certain salacious sections of the Steele dossier.
• Enlist other security and justice officials to help him persuade the Director of the FBI to shut down the investigation.
• Fire the Director of the FBI and later brag that he did so to shut down the investigation.
• Throw a tantrum when his Attorney General (who he appointed) recused himself from the supervision of the investigation because that made the AG unavailable to control and/or shut down the investigation in order to protect him.
• Throw another tantrum when his Deputy Attorney General (who he also appointed) who took over the supervision of investigation appointed a Special Council to lead the investigation.
• Try to establish that his business dealings constitutes a self proclaimed “red line” which cannot be included in the investigation (which was also a stupid move which is tantamount to telling a detective investigating a murder that he can’t look in the closet where the body is hidden).
• Spend the next 11 months trying to convince the public that the investigation is a hoax, a “witch hunt”, with the obvious objective of trying to ensure that any negative findings of the investigation will not be believed.
• Continue to complain and moan about the fact that his Attorney General recused himself because he is no longer in the position to provide him protection from the investigation.
• Lie continuously that the investigation is being run by Democrats who are out to get him when all of the leaders of the investigation are Republicans, many he appointed himself.
• Continually lie about how “tough” he has been on the foreign power which is the subject of the investigation while continuously failing to condemn or adequately punish their attacks on the country he has sworn to defend.
• Try to continually divert attention to the flimsy allegations of the misconduct of his former Democratic opponent who has now retired to private life.
• Conduct an all out assault on the reputation of the Special Council – who all involved praised as “a man of absolute integrity” and “the perfect person to lead the investigation” before it began.
• Make two aborted attempts thus far to fire the Special Council and continue to consider how that might be accomplished with the least political fallout.
• Leak that he is considering firing the Deputy Attorney General who is supervising the investigation in order to replace him with someone willing hinder the investigation and/or shut it down completely.
• Encourage friendly news media to adamantly defend him and to continue do everything in their power to undermine the investigation.
• Throw his person lawyer and “fixer” under the bus upon learning that the fixer is being investigated for possible crimes committed while attempting to protect him from suffering as the result of possible illegal campaign contribution, fraud, money laundering, etc.

In addition, before the investigation was initiated, an innocent man with nothing to hide would have never done:

• Continually act like an unfriendly foreign power, which is now one of the subjects of the investigation, has somehow managed to exert some sort of nefarious control of him.
• Fill much of his campaign staff positions with individuals with strong links to that unfriendly foreign power.
• Ask that unfriendly foreign power to help find dirt on his election opponent.
• Allow key members of his campaign to engage in secret communications with representatives of that unfriendly foreign power.
• Tolerate the actions of key members of his campaign staff and close family members to meet with representatives of that unfriendly foreign power with the express intention of obtaining compromising information on his opponent.
• Tolerate, and even encourage key members of his campaign staff and family members to lie about their involvement with agents of that unfriendly foreign power.

On the contrary Donald J. Trump acts like a man who has a lot of incriminating and embarrassing information hidden away both in this country and abroad and who is relatively certain that a thorough investigation of the type which Special Counsel Mueller is and others are conducting will pull all of the skeletons out of their closets.  He also acts like a man who is being blackmailed by the Russian intelligence agents.  As it becomes more and more apparent to Trump that the investigations of Special Council, and now that of the Justice Department’s Southern District of New York, are tightening their nooses around his neck, look for his behavior to get more and more erratic as his paranoia increases and he becomes more and more desperate.

Cajun   4/13/2018