Trump has already played the system – so he may as well pardon himself

The big question is what happens if Trump refuses Mueller’s interview request, and the latter counter strikes by issuing a subpoena. Is the president compelled to obey it, or is he above the law on the grounds that, like Judge Dredd and our own gracious sovereign, he IS the law?

Rudy Giuliani thinks that Trump 'probably' has the power to pardon himself (AP)

In his current guise as Fool in the neo-medieval court of Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani has been jiggling his bells once again.

The latest japing masterclass found him turning the slushy residue of his mind to the captivating constitutional conundrum of whether the US president is subject to the law. Eventually, this may have to be decided by the more conventional jurists of the Supreme Court. For now, gratifyingly for Trump, his Fool has judged that the president is above the criminal justice system’s reach.

“If he shot James Comey,” observed Rudy of the former Russian collusion investigator whom Trump has so far restricted himself to sacking, “he’d be impeached the next day. Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him.”

He didn’t need to add that any impeachment process, whether it followed the wasting of Comey or the Democrats retaking the House of Representatives in November’s midterms, would fail. Impeachment requires a two thirds Senate majority. Since the cowardice of Republican legislators is matched only by their sycophancy, that is unimaginable.

In one regard, Giuliani is much like the Fools who serviced Lear and other Shakespearean monarchs. He has licence to speak the truth – though not to power in his case, and certainly not of the objective kind. No one in Trump’s orbit would be allowed to do either.

The version of truth which Rudy speaks is whatever his liege lord truly happens to believe, or be pretending to believe, at the time. During the campaign, Trump said that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without damaging his popularity among the faithful. Now he extends the principle, via his jesting mouthpiece, to taking out a key witness in the ongoing obstruction of justice case with impunity.

So far at least, the only tampering allegation Mueller has turned up involves Trump’s campaign director Paul Manafort, who is suspected of encouraging witnesses to keep shtum. The odds remain against Donald Trump borrowing a piece from his Secret Service detail and icing a former head of the FBI.

But of course that wasn’t Rudy’s point. It being the way of the Fool to speak in riddles, what he was really saying is that there is nothing – absolutely nothing – that other onetime FBI director Robert Mueller (or anyone else) can do to bring Trump to justice.

Here too he was presumably parroting someone who seems agitated than ever by the inquiry, assuming his use of upper case lettering remains a reliable metric. “As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself,” ran a Trump tweet from yesterday, “but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong?”

Why indeed?

Bubbling noxiously away beneath the generic bravado lies a specific worry. Mueller seems close to cordially inviting Trump for a cosy little chat, possibly under oath. The danger in that is obvious to someone unlikely to be confused, in the veracity context, with George Washington.

If the boy Trump had chopped down the cherry tree, he’d have denied it, grudgingly confessed but claimed it was in self defence, brazenly denied it a second time, readmitted it while insisting the tree was a drug-pushing illegal from Mexico, and flatly denied there had ever been a cherry tree there in the first place.

A few days ago, the exposure of a secret memo lobbed another whopper on the pile. Repeatedly and categorically, Trump and his people denied his involvement in an email, sent under the name of Donald Jnr (the quarter-witted son, not to be confused with sixteenth-witted Eric), rejecting allegations about a 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian. Signed by the two of Trump’s lawyers who sent it to Mueller in January, this states that Donald Snr in fact dictated every word.

Of course, one person’s whopper is another’s honest slip. “It was a mistake,” was Giuliani’s impressively brisk explanation. “I swear to God”. Fair enough, but you can’t be getting up to that sort of story-shifting caper under oath.

The big question is what happens if Trump refuses Mueller’s interview request, and the latter counter strikes by issuing a subpoena. Is the president compelled to obey it, like every other citizen? Or is he above the law on the grounds that, like Judge Dredd and our own gracious sovereign, he IS the law?

Whatever “numerous legal scholars” might rule, no one beyond Trump’s coterie of imaginary friends has the answer. This, like so much else in the mystical age of Trump, is unmapped territory. No sitting president has ever defied a subpoena.

If the decision finally goes to the Supreme Court, it will be its most significant case since the judicial coup d’etat handed the White House to George W Bush.

In fact it will be more significant. What the Justices (split 5-4 in favour of conservatives now as then) would have to decide is this: has the country created by the US Constitution, the document designed by geniuses as a timeless protective against tyrannical monarchy, become a tyrannical monarchy? Is the American republic foolproof, in other words, or is at the mercy of mad old King Liar and his Fool?