MUELLERS HERE, MUELLERS THERE, MUELLERS, MUELLERS EVERYWHERE!

Remember when your ex-friend told you that Donald Trump was playing chess while everyone else was playing checkers? If you thought Trump was unintelligent, it was because you were failing to see his long game.

There certainly are chess players in this surreal drama where we now live, but none of them are named Donald Trump. Vladimir Putin is playing chess. Kim Jong-un is playing chess, and thankfully, Robert Mueller has been playing chess from the moment he was appointed special counsel.

Remember when we were afraid Donald Trump would fire Robert Mueller? Or that he would order Rod Rosenstein to do the dirty job? Remember when he tried so hard to discredit the Mueller team by branding them as 17 angry Democrats, even though most are registered Republicans?

It seems like ages ago that Matthew Whitaker would either fire Mueller or clip his wings by defunding the investigation or limiting its scope. It seems like years ago that William Barr would stop the investigation in its tracks by declaring it out of bounds the very moment he was sworn in as attorney general.

But that was yesterday, and this plot never pauses long enough for the audience to take a breath.

To his small credit, Donald Trump has always been afraid of Robert Mueller, but this is not fear based on deductive reasoning. In his heart, Donald Trump knows that he is incapable of comprehending the use of strategy. He is intellectually limited to instinctive moves. He knows to fear Mueller like a cocky hyena knows to fear a relentless lion, sensing that he is being stalked by a superior predator.

He smells it. And now, he shows it. We can see it in his eyes and hear it in his devolving speech.

Mueller did what Trump would never be able to imagine, because it does not exist in Trump’s universe. Mueller made himself dispensable. He did this by making more Muellers.

In a simultaneous chess exhibition, a superior chess player, or grandmaster, will play as many as 40 or 50 opponents at one time, by moving from one chess board to the next after making a move.

Now imagine that instead of a grandmaster, the lone player is one who cannot think beyond the immediate present. And imagine that his opponents are sharing information amongst themselves to help them prepare for their next moves.

At one table sits the Southern District of New York, nicknamed the Sovereign District of New York because of their reputation of independence, relentlessness, and track record in taking down high-profile criminals.

Sharing the next table are the Attorney General for the State of New York and the Manhattan District Attorney. A presidential pardon works for federal crimes, but not for state crimes. Do you think that career white collar criminals like Donald Trump and Paul Manafort cheat on their federal tax returns but not on their state tax returns? Is it likely that the Trump Organization and the Trump family meticulously operated within state and local laws? Look no further than to the Trump Foundation and Trump University for the answer to that question.

Now, as Michael Cohen and the future witnesses named by Cohen, lead to more House investigations by more U.S. attorneys, more attorneys general, and more district attorneys who will take their places in the most important chess tournament that has ever taken place – important legally, politically, and morally.

And what are the stakes?

Well, let’s start with the future of the Trump presidency, the survival of the Trump business empire, the freedom of Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. When lawbreaking is allowed to become your privileged routine, you don’t do less of it. In fact, you stop giving it a second thought.

What is giving them a second thought are those sealed indictments that await Mueller’s decision to unseal them – at the time of his choosing. They are all part of Mueller’s unrevealed long game.

Donald Trump is feeling his powerlessness. His rambling two-hour speech at CPAC smelled of desperation. His failures on the world stage have shattered his “Only I can fix it.” myth, just when he needed it the most.

Publicly referring to Apple’s Tim Cook as Tim Apple is just another poetic reminder that the man who went to such great lengths to conceal his grades and S.A.T. scores is as ill prepared to handle the escalating chess attacks as he was to assume the lofty position that he never really wanted.

Just think! Instead of taking second prize, he could have had Trump Tower Moscow. As the man himself would say, Sad! Very SAD!

OPERATION GODZILLA

Donald Trump knows how to play offense, and he is good at it. He learned early-on that if he fought dirty, and never let up, and ignored all of the rules, others would step back and let him have his way. If they didn’t, he would sue them.

The heart of the Trump offense is not strategy. The man who famously does not read is not a student of George Washington, or Ulysses Grant, or Ike, who at war was the hero of D-Day and at peace, mobilized the wheels and gears of government to revolutionize our infrastructure by creating the interstate highway system.

The heart of the Trump offense is simple. It is loudness – overwhelming and unrelenting loudness, battle tested to drown out the voices of perceived adversaries. Up against non-stop loudness, the reasonable and the rational have wound up battered and bloodied.

And that might explain why so many of my fellow anti-Trumpers are noticeably lacking in optimism, in spite of the great Blue Wave that placed the people’s House in the hands of the Democrats. The Mueller investigation, though richly productive, continues to be quiet – too quiet if you have been nervously biting your nails, waiting for the big takedown.

Now, Democrats are running the committees, and they too have been nerve-rattling quiet and way too reasonable and rational to give hope to many that are waiting and praying for a Democracy-loving King Kong to arrive on the scene and save us from the godless Godzilla.

To those of you looking for Kong, please believe me:

The game has changed.

Six Democrats, possessing different styles, different skills and different super powers – brand new super powers – will soon have him cornered, and we will begin watching him take the blows in real time. Finally, he will have to play defense like his presidency and the future of his adult children depend on it.

A foreign government is not supposed to help elect a president of the United States, but Russia did exactly that. Devin Nunez, the now former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, did back flips to convince us that our real enemies were our own intelligence agencies, and that these deep state, Obama agents were out to frame the innocent POTUS.

Nunez made sure that witnesses, called before his committee, were handled gently. In fact, witnesses called before all House committees were handled gently, if they were called at all. For Devin Nunez and his committee counterparts, protecting America was replaced with protecting Trump. This heist took place, while the one man who could have stopped it, Paul Ryan, stood silently and impotently at the door.

Now Paul Ryan is out and Madam Speaker is in.

His speakership will be defined by his feeble excuses for not using his voice.

She, on the other hand, took the gavel, not simply as a person who fought for her job and was clever and savvy enough to win it, but as one filled with the belief of her appointment with destiny.

Devin Nunez is out and Adam Schiff is in.

While Nunez publicly trashed the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Constitution, Schiff, the ranking member, could only watch the charade and call it out in the press. Setting the record straight earned him the Trump tweet-name, Little Adam Schitt.

Now, Little Adam Schitt is chairman, and real investigations are about to begin. New witnesses will be called. Old witnesses will be recalled. Subpoenas will be issued. The story of: What did the president know about Russia and when did he know it? is about to unfold before our eyes.

And there will be more – a lot more.

Ranking members, Jerry Nadler on the Judiciary Committee, Richard Neal on Ways and Means, and Maxine Waters on Financial Services could only watch the Republican charade and call it out. Soon they will start calling witnesses. Corrupt cabinet members, abandonment of Puerto Rico, immigration, family separation, money laundering, campaign violations, possible criminal behavior by Don Jr., Ivanka, and Jared, and the pursuit of Trump’s tax returns will all be getting a long awaited dose of daylight.

And, that first sustained blast of daylight will take place on February 7th, when Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, grants former Trump fixer, Michael Cohen the opportunity to come clean, as all of us watch. Michael Cohen is on his way to a three-year prison term. He branded himself as Trump’s go-to hatchet man, once boasting “I would do anything to protect Mr. Trump.” He would like to change both his prison sentence and his public image.

In fact, he hopes that loudly serving the crime boss’s head on a platter will make him the hero of this story. Grateful though we may be, history will not be so kind, regardless of the secrets he might reveal.

The real heroes, like Mueller, will be strategic, focused, and unflappable.

For Adam Schiff, Richard Neal, Maxine Waters, Jerry Nadler, and Elijah Cummings, the tone has been set and probably much of their agendas. They will go after the truth, while being goaded by committee Republicans (like the rabid Jim Jordan) to lose their tempers, to appear overzealous and vindictive, but they are unlikely to take the bait.

And Godzilla will do everything he can think of to drown them out, to stomp on them and their hearings.

But they have been preparing for their moment for what must seem like an eternity, and they understand that history is watching.

Of course, nobody understands that more than Madam Speaker, who wields a very big gavel and is not afraid to use it.

RUINED LIVES

Once upon a time there was a con man – a world class con man.

He did not start out to be a con man. He bought a business. He wanted it to be bigger. He needed it to be bigger. So he grew it and leveraged it to the max, and grew it some more, until it failed. And he went bankrupt.

But that did not stop him, or even slow him down. He started over.

He had a big loud personality and he was a natural born salesman. He convinced thousands of people to trust him with their hard earned money. He became a huge success at projecting success.

You have probably known men like him, in your own life, but this man was bigger, more self-confident, and more flamboyant than the smaller and more common versions that cross our paths.

The con man made millions and eventually billions. He lived a lavish lifestyle – a lifestyle of the rich and famous.

Then came rumors of bribing government officials and money laundering.

The Feds began investigating.

I need to pause here, in case you think I am speaking of Donald J. Trump, which I am not, except that there is a connection.

Robert Allen Stanford had been running a $8 billion Ponzi scheme, defrauding nearly 30,000 investors.

Federal investigators raided his offices and gathered evidence. When Stanford’s business empire crumbled, he blamed the government’s “Gestapo tactics” for its demise. He maintained his innocence even after he was found guilty of money laundering, mail fraud, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice.

The prosecution, in seeking the maximum punishment, argued compellingly that he was guilty of “economic murder,” for the many lives he had ruined. Robert Allen Stanford, who had become one of the richest men in America, is now serving a 110 year sentence in federal prison.

To win that jumbo sentence, the prosecutors needed slam dunk evidence, and they needed the testimony of someone who knew where each and every body was buried, and just how each of those bodies got there.

They needed to flip James Davis, Stanford’s college roommate, best friend, blood brother (yes, they did the blood mingling thing), chief financial officer, and co-conspirator. They needed to make him testify against his blood brother.

And they did!

What you should know about this gratifying (except for those who were swindled) crime and punishment story is that the prosecutor who led the investigation was Greg Andres.

Greg Andres now works for Robert Mueller. He is just one of seventeen hand chosen specialists investigating Donald Trump. You don’t hear so much as a peep from any of them. Quiet is becoming the new cool.

Oh one more thing!

As the Mueller investigation moves closer to its conclusion, Donald Trump will make this personal. You can count on it. He will single out the investigators as being Hilary-loving and-Obama-loving, elitist political hacks. But I seriously doubt that Greg Andres will be intimidated by name calling coming from the subject of an investigation, regardless of how dangerous that subject might be.

If you doubt me, just ask former Bonanno mob boss, Vincent “Vinnie Gorgeous” Basciano, who hated Greg Andres so much that he planned on killing him.

As mob rat Generoso “Jimmy the General” Barbieri testified in court:

 “Basciano said that Greg Andres destroyed the Bonanno Family. He ruined all our lives. We should make an example of him.”

With the hope of getting a few years knocked off his life sentence, former Bonanno mob boss, Joseph Massino gave prosecutors the specifics of the planned “hit.”

According to Massino, Vinnie Gorgeous would walk into a restaurant on New York’s east side where Greg Andres was known to dine on Thursday nights, walk up to his table and shoot him.

Vinnie Gorgeous did not get to kill Greg Andres. Instead, he and other key members of the Bonanno crime family are serving life sentences in federal prison.

Greg Andres did, in fact, ruin all of their lives, and it was he who made examples of them!

Besides Greg Andres, and of course Robert Mueller, there are at least sixteen team members who are not yet finished ruining the lives of those who deserve it.

They are: Andrew Weissmann, Michael Dreeben, Jeannie Rhee, Zainab Amed, Aaron Zelinski, Kyle Freeny, Andrew Goldstein, James Quarles, Elizabeth Prelogar, Brandon Van Grack, Adam Jed, Scott Meisler, Rush Atkinson, Brian Richardson, Ryan Dickey, and Uzo Asonye.

And, for now, that is my two minutes worth.