The Incompetence Problem And The Assassinate Hitler Conundrum

Michael Lebron, a YouTube commentator who goes by the name Lionel, brought into focus a key question that hadn't been fully formed at the back of my mind. I kept returning to the puzzle that Winston Churchill and British intelligence pondered during World War II: was it worth going in to assassinate Hitler? Apparently they concluded not, because there was a chance that if they succeeded, the Germans might replace him with a comptent general and change the whole calculation.

Lionel raises this question over the Trump strategy, which so far has endorsed his co-defendant Michael Roman's motion via his counsel Ashleigh Merchant to disqualify Fulton County DA Fani Willis for conflict of interest. Lionel raises this assassinate-Hitler coundrum at 16:52:

Let's say you represent Donald Trump. And you're saying, let's assume, that Fani Willis is involved in some kind of behavior. How does this affect, negatively, Donald Trump? Well, the first question you've gotta ask is very simply this: who is Mr Wade? It appears that there may be a conflict of interest here regarding prosecutors. Now, that may or may not affect this case. Now remember, the bottom line is this, and I want you to be very, very, very very careful I want you to understand something.

How does this affect Donald Trump? This is not a bar grievance. This is not an ethical grievance. This is not a trial about her per se or her sex life or her love life or her financials. The question is should she, or really, her office, be disqualified for what is being said. She apparently hired her lover -- level number one -- hired her lover -- which, OK -- incompetent -- OK -- remember, how does this affect Donald Trump?

May I stop right now? Do you understand something? That this might be -- let me rephrase this. I might want to ask Donald Trump, "Now listen. This might be the best thing you've ever had going for you. They're going to end up giving this case to somebody else. Do you want a good prosecutor, or do you want Fani Willis?

"Because what you're doing now, what you're basically doing, believe it or not, you're saying, hey, we want a new prosecutor. You sure about this? You sure. You've got some of the most incompetent people handling one of the most complicated cases, a racketeering case, predicate acts, and to be able to explain it -- nobody wants this piece of dog crap, nobody wants it. So, President Trump, you sure about this?"

I reflected on this at some length, especially because Lionel helped me clarify my internal version of the assassinate-Hitler conundrum as it applies to this case. The first reply I have is that the strategy of moving to disqualify Willis wasn't Trump's, it was Ashleigh Merchant's on behalf of her client, Michael Roman. Trump's attorneys joined the strategy some days later after presumably reviewing how this did affect Trump.

My second reply is that Trump, his political advisors, and his attorneys appear to be well settled on a strategy of delaying the most important cases until after the election, while leveraging the joke cases -- basically the New York civil and criminal trials -- to his advantage when they go against him, by playing to the free news coverage and the bizarre public personae of his judges and accusers. Yes, the cases can be appealed, but that's down the road, after the election.

I suspect Trump's original strategy had all along been to treat the Fulton County case the same way as the New York cases, using Fani Willis as a foil equivalent to Letitia James, E Jean Carroll, and Judge Engeron. Recall that the Fulton County case was the origin of the famous Trump mugshot.

The Ashleigh Merchant strategy of moving to disqualify Willis came out of the blue, and as far as it affects Trump, it's entirely serendipitous. His primary strategy in all the cases has been, insofar as possible, to delay them until after the election. Lionel thinks it might be a bad strategy in effect to ask for a new prosecutor, but this wasn't Trump's initial idea, and even if Judge McAfee removes Willis and puts the wheels in motion to name a new prosecutor, this won't be a quick process.

And as Alan Dershowitz has pointed out, the defendants who'd originally pleaded guilty will likely withdraw their guilty pleas, which will set a new prosecutor back, but it's by no means certain that a new prosecutor can be found who'd take the case, and it could well be prosecuted in a friendlier county. The balance of uncertainties probably favors Trump -- but he's scored two short-term successes. First, he's created yet another highly effective foil with Fani Willis, who's played into Trump's hands in her testimony. Second, he's unquestionably begun an indefinite process of delaying that trial, which is and has been his overriding objective irrespective of the prosecutor.

As they say, it's better to be lucky than good. A lot of commentators expect Trump just to be good, which he's never been.