Can Kim Jong-un rescue Donald Trump from impeachment?
If the off-again, on-again summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong-un takes place as scheduled in Singapore on June 12 and an historic agreement to denuclearise the Korean peninsula is reached, two of the unlikeliest men, Trump and Kim, could be in line to win the Nobel Peace prize.
The agreement could involve several drawn-out phases. North Korea has already destroyed its only nuclear facility at Punggye-ri. The destruction was witnessed by an escorted group of foreign journalists but awaits verification by international inspectors. Once verification is completed, the US will gradually reduce its military presence in South Korea from over 28,000 troops to around 10,000. A denuclearised Korean peninsula would eventually lead to negotiations over reunification between north and south. These could be tricky. China is cold to the idea of a reunified Korea which will remove North Korea as a buffer state against a US military presence in South Korea.
Nonetheless if the Trump-Kim summit takes place and is successful, it will mark a geopolitical turning point. It will rebalance power equations across the Indo-Pacific and beyond. However, even as President Trump prepares for a game-changing meeting with Kim, a sword of Damocles that could lead to his impeachment continues to hang over him at home. The sword is held by special counsel Robert Mueller III.
Mueller was appointed more than one year ago (on May 17, 2017) to investigate alleged collusion between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia that could have resulted in rival candidate Hillary Clinton's defeat. US attorney general Jeff Sessions recused himself from the probe citing conflict of interest. Ironically, Mueller has a serious conflict of interest himself. As FBI director for 10 years, he was James Comey's boss. Comey succeeded him as FBI director till he was sacked by Trump on May 8, 2017. Mueller and Comey were colleagues and close friends.
At the heart of Mueller's investigation into the alleged Russian collusion and obstruction of justice by the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election is Comey's role. Comey was investigating Hillary Clinton's e-mail server scandal through much of 2016. He announced at a press conference in July 2016 that while Clinton was "extremely careless" in handling her confidential emails, it wasn't a chargeable offence.
At the same time, Comey was also investigating presidential candidate Donald Trump. But he told no one about it till he was compelled to do so at a Congressional hearing in 2017. Comey meanwhile leaked a series of memos recording his version of confidential conversations with Trump shortly before he was sacked.
Comey leaked those memos (at least one of which was classified) to his friend Daniel Richman, a Columbia Law School professor. What Comey didn't disclose at the time was that Richman was also his personal attorney (that fact was revealed months later).
Richman leaked Comey's memos to The New York Times. That led directly to the appointment on May 17, 2017, of Mueller as special counsel to investigate Trump who had sacked Comey just eight days earlier. Conflict of interest? Unquestionably.
As US district judge TS Ellis told Mueller's team at a recent hearing in a case dealing with former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort: "You don't really care about Mr Manafort, you really care about what information Mr Manafort can give you to lead you to Mr Trump and an impeachment."
Trump has muddied his own case by a string of strategic errors, including issuing contradictory statements over whether he knew about the $1,30,000 payment his personal attorney Michael Cohen made to adult star Stormy Daniels (real name: Stephanie Clifford) to buy her silence over an alleged affair in 2006 with Trump.
The feral media, led by The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post and others, have carried a raft of stories that played up Comey as the nice guy who was wronged by Trump, the philanderer, liar and, in the unconfirmed words of former secretary of state Rex Tillerson and White House chief of staff John Kelly respectively, a "moron" and an "idiot". Over a dozen such stories were exposed as fake but the damage had been done.
Trump's alleged affair with Stormy Daniels meanwhile has brought back memories of how former President Bill Clinton was impeached following sexual harassment charges by Paula Jones and an alleged affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Clinton's impeachment by the House of Representatives was set aside by the Senate.
Trump's detractors in the Democratic party are hoping that even if the Russia collusion and obstruction of justice charges don't stick, the Stormy Daniels affair could lead to the president's impeachment. As in Clinton's case 20 years ago, the impeachment move though will inevitably fail in the Senate where Republicans are in the majority but weaken Trump's authority and chances of re-election in 2020.
The appointment of former New York mayor Rudy Guiliani to Trump's legal team, which is negotiating a sit-down interview for Trump with Mueller, has raised further controversy. Guiliani's bruising take-no-prisoners style could backfire. If Trump refuses an interview with Mueller, the special counsel has threatened to subpoena him. In turn, Guiliani has warned that Trump will fight the subpeona all the way to the Supreme Court.
That could prolong the Mueller probe, polarising the country's already divided electorate ahead of the midterm elections to the Senate and the House of Representatives in November 2018.
Meanwhile, over a dozen Republican lawmakers have officially proposed Trump's name to the Norwegian Nobel Committee for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize if the Trump-Kim summit leads to the denuclearisation of North Korea, an objective that has eluded successive US governments for decades.
Mortified at this development, the Democrats are urging Mueller to quickly bring charges against Trump on Russian collusion, obstruction of justice and the Stormy Daniels payoff which, they say, should be regarded as an illegal campaign contribution since it took place just weeks before the presidential election.
Impeachment or Nobel Peace Prize? Much will depend on how the historic summit with Kim in Singapore and Mueller's investigation in Washington unfold.