As Alan Dershowitz and others have attested, Mueller is something of a “zealot” who will not hear of criticism of the FBI or allegations of prosecutorial abuse. He has excelled in the unique American condition of a 99 percent success rate for prosecutions—about 97 percent of those without a trial—by manipulating the plea bargain system as described. The Bill of Rights’ Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendment guaranties of an independent grand jury, of due process, of no seizure of property without just compensation, of a “speedy” trial, an impartial jury and of reasonable bail, have all effectively been discarded. The normal methods of U.S. justice are to single out targets, roll them upwards on plea bargains until the senior targets in any organization are taken down. It is a profoundly corrupt and unjust system; Mueller and Comey have gloried in it, and the supreme triumph of the prosecutocracy is to drive or remove a president from office. Since the criminalization of policy differences came into vogue with Watergate, which destroyed one of the country’s most successful presidencies over obstruction of justice in a trivial matter by secondary officials, the Democrats have returned to the charge against Reagan and the Republicans actually managed the impeachment of Bill Clinton, though not his removal, over tawdry peccadilloes of no relevance to his fitness to hold the office. None of these crises should have been remotely as serious as they became.

If Mueller follows this path, then it should be Trump’s duty and strategy to counterattack the despotism of the prosecutors.