Photo: Alex Edelman/Pool/Getty
In aTuesday column for NJ.com, Alan J. Steinberg — who served as an Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator under Bush — predicted that while there are not enough Congressional votes to remove Trump, he will resign in 2019 in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
“The self-professed supreme dealmaker will use his presidency as a bargaining chip with federal and state authorities in 2019, agreeing to leave office in exchange for the relevant authorities not pursuing criminal charge against him, his children or the Trump Organization,” predicted the political operative and pundit, who also advised former New Jersey Gov. Christine Whitman.
Steinberg wrote that he believed Trump would turn to such an arrangement because both his historic unpopularity and the specter of an economic downturn make the chances of re-election in 2020 slim.
President Donald Trump.Olivier Douliery/picture-alliance/dpa/AP
While some Democratic lawmakers have vocally supported impeachment proceedings, such a move so far lacks broad political support.
Nancy Pelosi, who was just named the new speaker of the house, has said that she’snot rushing that way.
It “would be a sad thing for our country; it would be very divisive,” she toldEllein an interview published on Wednesday.
The following day, Pelosi added during an interview onTodaythat her focus is on “getting resultsfor the American people,” not removing the president from office.
“Let’s just see what [Robert] Mueller does,” she said of the special counsel probing tiesbetween Russian officials and Trump’s presidential campaign.
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Critics’ drumbeat for impeachment has grown louder since Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen wassentenced to three years in prisonfor lying to Congress about Trump’s prior business dealings with Russia and making illegal “hush money” payments to women who claim to have had affairs with Trump.
Though the president has vigorously dismissed any such talk publicly, he hasreportedly grown worriedin recent months about being impeached.
“I did talk to a source close to the president who said earlier this evening that the president has expressed concern that he could be impeached,”Jim Acosta, CNN’s chief White House correspondent, toldAnderson Cooperin December.
Most recently, on Friday — with the federal government shutdownnearing its third week— Trump expressed skepticism that impeachment could be in his future, highlighting (and exaggerating) his achievements.
“How do you impeach a president who has won perhaps the greatest election of all time, done nothing wrong (no Collusion with Russia, it was the Dems that Colluded), had the most successful first two years of any president, and is the most popular Republican in party history 93%?” he wroteon Twitter.
“Things will settle down,” Trump wrote in a separate message, contending that Democrats “only want to impeach me because they know they can’t win in 2020, too much success!”
In absence of a path forward, the shutdown could become the longest in American history, surpassing the previous record of 21 days in the ’90s, underPresident Bill Clintonand a Republican-led Congress, according toCNN.
source: people.com
