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1. Victor Davis Hanson Column

Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and military historian, has said admiring things about certain of Donald Trump’s policies — his judicial appointments, for example, his handling of the economy and attention to modernizing our military — ergo he is an intellectual in the service of evil. One of our most provocative military historians, Victor Davis Hanson has given us painstakingly researched and pathbreaking accounts of wars ranging from classical antiquity to the twenty-first century. Now he juxtaposes an ancient conflict with our most urgent modern concerns to create his most engrossing work to date, A War Like No Other. Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and military historian, has said admiring things about certain of Donald Trump’s policies - his judicial appointments, for example, his handling of the economy and attention to modernizing our military - ergo he is an intellectual in the service of evil. Hanson treats this calumny with some portion of the.

Victor Davis Hanson (born September 5, 1953) is an American classicist, military historian, columnist and farmer. He has been a commentator on modern and ancient warfare and contemporary politics for National Review, The Washington Times and other media outlets. He is a professor emeritus of Classics at California State University, Fresno, the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in classics and military history at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and visiting professor at Hillsdale College. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush, and was a presidential appointee in 2007–2008 on the American Battle Monuments Commission.

• 2Writing
• 3Political views

Early life, education and today[edit]

Hanson, a Protestant who is of Swedish and Welsh descent, grew up on his family's raisin farm outside Selma, California in the San Joaquin Valley, and has worked there most of his life. His mother, Pauline Davis Hanson, was a lawyer and a California superior court and state appeals court justice, his father was a farmer, educator and junior college administrator. Along with his older brother Nels, a writer, and fraternal twin Alfred, a farmer and biologist, Hanson attended public schools and graduated from Selma High School. Hanson received his BA with highest honors in classics and general college honors, Cowell College, from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1975^[1] and his PhD in classics from Stanford University in 1980.^[2] He won the Raphael Demos scholarship at the College Year in Athens (1973–74) and was a regular member of the American School of Classical Studies, Athens, 1978–79.

In 1991, Hanson was awarded American Philological Association's Excellence in Teaching Award, given annually to the nation's top undergraduate teachers of Greek and Latin. He was named distinguished alumnus of the year for 2006 at University of California, Santa Cruz.^[3] He has been a visiting professor of classics at Stanford University (1991–92), a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California (1992–93), an Alexander Onassis traveling fellowship to Greece (1999), as well as Nimitz Fellow at UC Berkeley (2006) and held the visiting Shifrin Chair of Military History at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland (2002–03), and often the William Simon visiting professorship at the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University (2009–15), and was awarded in 2015 an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from the graduate school at Pepperdine. He gave the Wriston Lecture in 2004 for the Manhattan Institute. He has been a board member of the Bradley Foundation since 2015, and served on the HF Guggenheim Foundation board for over a decade.^{[citation needed]}

He is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor emeritus at California State University, Fresno,^[3] where he began teaching in 1984, having created the classical studies program at that institution.^{[citation needed]}

Since 2004, Hanson has written a weekly column syndicated by Tribune Content Agency,^[4] as well as a weekly column for National Review Online since 2001, and has not missed a weekly column for either venue since he began. He has been published in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Times Literary Supplement, The Daily Telegraph, American Heritage, and The New Criterion, among other publications. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal (2007) by President George W. Bush, as well as the Eric Breindel Prize for opinion journalism (2002), and the William F. Buckley Prize (2015). Hanson was awarded the Claremont Institute's Statesmanship Award at its annual Churchill Dinner, and the Bradley Prize from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in 2008.^[3]

Writing[edit]

Hanson's Warfare and Agriculture (Giardini 1983), his PhD thesis, argued that Greek warfare could not be understood apart from agrarian life in general, and suggested that the modern assumption that agriculture was irrevocably harmed during classical wars was vastly overestimated. The Western Way of War (Alfred Knopf 1989), for which John Keegan wrote the introduction, explored the combatants' experiences of ancient Greek battle and detailed the Hellenic foundations of later Western military practice.

The Other Greeks (The Free Press 1995) argued that the emergence of a unique middling agrarian class explains the ascendance of the Greek city-state, and its singular values of consensual government, sanctity of private property, civic militarism and individualism. In Fields Without Dreams (The Free Press 1996, winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award) and The Land Was Everything (The Free Press 2000, a Los Angeles Times notable book of the year), Hanson lamented the decline of family farming and rural communities, and the loss of agrarian voices in American democracy. The Soul of Battle (The Free Press 1999) traced the careers of Epaminondas, the Theban liberator, William Tecumseh Sherman, and George S. Patton, in arguing that democratic warfare's strengths are best illustrated in short, intense and spirited marches to promote consensual rule, but bog down otherwise during long occupations or more conventional static battle.

Victor Davis Hanson Column

In Mexifornia (Encounter 2003)—a personal memoir about growing up in rural California and an account of immigration from Mexico—Hanson predicted that illegal immigration would soon reach crisis proportions, unless legal, measured, and diverse immigration was restored, as well as the traditional melting-pot values of integration, assimilation, and intermarriage. ^[5]

Ripples of Battle (Doubleday 2003) chronicled how the cauldron of battle affects combatants' later literary and artistic work, as its larger influence ripples for generations, affecting art, literature, culture, and government. In A War Like No Other (Random House 2005, a New York Times notable book of the year), a history of the Peloponnesian War, Hanson offered an alternative history, arranged by methods of fighting—triremes, hoplites, cavalry, sieges, etc.) in concluding that the conflict marked a brutal watershed event for the Greek city-states. The Savior Generals (Bloomsbury 2013) followed the careers of five great generals, arguing that rare qualities in leadership emerge during hopeless predicaments that only rare individuals can salvage.

TheEnd of Sparta (Bloomsbury 2011) is a novel about a small community of Thespian farmers who join the great march of Epaminondas (369/70 BC) into the heart of the Peloponnese to destroy Spartan hegemony, free the Messenian helots, and spread democracy in the Peloponnese.

Hanson has edited several collected essays (Hoplites, Routledge 1991), Bonfire of the Humanities (with B. Thornton and J. Heath, ISI 2001), and Makers of Ancient Strategy (Princeton 2010), as well as a number of his own collected articles (An Autumn of War [2002 Anchor], Between War and Peace [Anchor 2004], and The Father of Us All [Bloomsbury 2010]). He has written chapters for works such as the Cambridge History of War, and the Cambridge History of Ancient Warfare.

Carnage and Culture[edit]

Hanson is the author of the 2001 book Carnage and Culture (Doubleday), published in Great Britain and the Commonwealth countries as Why the West Has Won, in which he argued that the military dominance of Westerncivilization, beginning with the ancient Greeks, results from certain fundamental aspects of Western culture, such as consensual government, a tradition of self-critique, secular rationalism, religious tolerance, individual freedom, free expression, free markets, and individualism. Hanson's emphasis on cultural exception rejects racial explanations for Western military preeminence and disagrees as well with environmental or geographical determinist explanations such as those put forth by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997).^[6]

American military officer Robert L. Bateman, in a 2007 article on the Media Matters for America website, criticized Hanson's thesis, arguing that Hanson's point about Western armies preferring to seek out a decisive battle of annihilation is rebutted by the Second Punic War, in which Roman attempts to annihilate the Carthaginians instead led to the Carthaginians annihilating the Romans at the Battle of Cannae.^[7] Bateman argued that Hanson was wrong about Western armies' common preferences in seeking out a battle of annihilation, arguing that the Romans only defeated the Carthaginians via the Fabian Strategy of keeping their armies in being and not engaging Hannibal in battle.^[7] In his first response, Hanson argued that Bateman was engaged in a 'puerile, politically correct' attack on him, and of being motivated by current left-wing politics rather a genuine interest in history.^[8] In a second response, Hanson called Bateman's use of personal, adolescent invectives such as 'pervert', 'feces', and 'devil', as unprofessional and 'unhinged', and had no role in scholarly disagreements, accusing Bateman of being poorly informed of history and geography, as well as engaging in conduct unbecoming a U.S. Army officer.^[9] Hanson declared that Bateman was incorrect about the Battle of Yarmouk arguing that the Golan Heights were at the edge of the Eastern Roman Empire, instead of being in the center as Bateman argued, and claimed that the Romans lost because of divided leadership rather than as a result of superior Islamic generalship as Bateman had contended.^[9]

United States education and classical studies[edit]

Hanson co-authored the book Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom with John Heath. The book explores the issue of how classical education has declined in the US and what might be done to restore it to its former prominence. This is important, according to Hanson and Heath, because knowledge of the classical Greeks and Romans is necessary to fully understand Western culture. To begin a discussion along these lines the authors state, 'The answer to why the world is becoming Westernized goes all the way back to the wisdom of the Greeks—reason enough why we must not abandon the study of our heritage'.^[10]

Political scientist Francis Fukuyama, reviewing Who Killed Homer? favorably in Foreign Affairs, noted,

Classicists Victoria Cech and Joy Connolly have found Who Killed Homer? to have considerable pitfalls. Reviews of the book have noted several problems with the authors' perception of classical culture:

Per Cech, Director of Grants & Program Development,^[12]

Per Connolly, Professor of Classics at New York University,^[14]

Political views[edit]

Hanson is a conservative who voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 and 2004 elections.^[16] He defended George W. Bush and his policies,^[17] especially the Iraq War.^[18] He vocally supported Bush's Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, describing him as 'a rare sort of secretary of the caliber of George Marshall' and a 'proud and honest-speaking visionary' whose 'hard work and insight are bringing us ever closer to victory'.^[19]

Hanson is a supporter of Donald Trump, authoring a 2019 book The Case for Trump.^[20] Trump praised the book.^[20] In the book, Hanson defends Trump's insults and vile language as 'uncouth authenticity', and praises Trump for 'an uncanny ability to troll and create hysteria among his media and political critics.'^[20] According to Washington Post book critic Carlos Lozada, the book 'focuses less on the case for Trump than on the case against everyone else,' in particular attacking Hillary Clinton.^[20] According to Lozada, Hanson indulges 'in casual sexism, criticizing Clinton’s “shrill” voice and her “signature off-putting laugh,” and inexplicably suggesting that while “Trump’s bulk fueled a monstrous energy; Hillary’s girth sapped her strength.”'^[20] Hanson praises the Trump administration for its 'inspired' and 'impressive' Cabinet members.^[20] In the book, Hanson blamed Barack Obama for 'deliberately [whipping up]' 'much of the current division in the country' while not covering at all Trump's birtherism or attacks on Muslims.^[20] The book likens Trump to a hero of ancient literature, sacrificing himself for the greater good.^[20] Hanson expressed support for Trump's proposed border wall on the Southern border, saying that walls around houses deter criminals.^[20]

Neoconservative views[edit]

He has been described as a neoconservative by some commentators, for his views on the Iraq War,^[21][22] and has stated, 'I came to support neocon approaches first in the wars against the Taliban and Saddam, largely because I saw little alternative.'^[23] Hanson's 2002 volume An Autumn of War called for going to war 'hard, long, without guilt, apology or respite until our enemies are no more.'^[24] In the context of the Iraq War, Hanson wrote, 'In an era of the greatest affluence and security in the history of civilization, the real question before us remains whether the United States— indeed any Western democracy—still possesses the moral clarity to identify evil as evil, and then the uncontested will to marshal every available resource to fight and eradicate it.'^[25]

Race relations[edit]

In July 2013, then-Attorney General Eric Holder gave a speech where he mentioned that as a black man the need to deliver 'the Talk' to his son, instructing him how to interact with police as a young black man. In response to Holder's speech, Hanson wrote a column titled 'Facing Facts about Race' where he offered up his own version of 'the Talk', namely the need to inform his children to be careful of young black men when venturing into the inner city, who Hanson argued were statistically more likely to commit violent crimes than young men of other races, and that therefore it was understandable for the police to focus on them.^[26][27]Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic described Hanson's column as 'stupid advice': 'in any other context we would automatically recognize this 'talk' as stupid advice. If I were to tell you that I only employ Asian-Americans to do my taxes because 'Asian-Americans do better on the Math SAT', you would not simply question my sensitivity, but my mental faculties. That is because you would understand that in making an individual decision, employing an ancestral class of millions is not very intelligent. Moreover, were I to tell you I wanted my son to marry a Jewish woman because 'Jews are really successful', you would understand that statement for the stupidity which it is ... There is no difference between my argument above and the notion that black boys should be avoided because they are overrepresented in the violent crime stats. But one of the effects of racism is its tendency to justify stupidity.'^[28]

British-born American journalist Andrew Sullivan called Hanson's column 'spectacularly stupid', writing: 'Treating random strangers as inherently dangerous because of their age, gender and skin color is a choice to champion fear over reason, a decision to embrace easy racism over any attempt to overcome it'.^[29] American journalist Arthur Stern called 'Facing Facts About Race' an 'inflammatory' column based upon crime statistics that Hanson never cited, writing: 'His presentation of this controversial opinion as undeniable fact without exhaustive statistical proof is undeniably racist.'^[30] Anglo-American journalist Kelefa Sanneh, in response to 'Facing Facts About Race', wrote 'It's strange, then, to read Hanson writing as if the fear of violent crime were mainly a 'white or Asian' problem, about which African-Americans might be uninformed, or unconcerned—as if African-American parents weren't already giving their children more detailed and nuanced versions of Hanson's 'sermon,' sharing his earnest and absurd hope that the right words might keep trouble at bay.'^[31] Hanson, in response to Sanneh's essay, accused him of a 'McCarthyite character assassination' and 'infantile, if not racialist, logic'.^[32]

Obama criticism[edit]

Hanson was a critic of Obama.^[33] Hanson criticized the Obama administration for engaging in 'appeasement' of Iran,^[34] and 'appeasement' of Russia. Hanson blamed Obama for the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in 2014.^{[35][36][37][38]} Hanson has argued Obama failed to maintain a credible threat of deterrence, and put the world on the precipice of another war comparable to the Second World War.^[39]

Works[edit]

• Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece. University of California Press, 1983. ISBN0-520-21025-5. Rev. ed. 1998. online edition
• The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece. Alfred A. Knopf, 1989. 2nd. ed. 2000. ISBN0-394-57188-6online edition
• Hoplites: The Classical Greek Battle Experience, editor, Routledge, 1991. ISBN0-415-04148-1online edition
• The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization, Free Press, 1995. ISBN0-02-913751-9
• Fields Without Dreams: Defending the Agrarian Idea, Free Press, 1996. ISBN0-684-82299-7online edition
• Who Killed Homer?: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom, with John Heath, Encounter Books, 1998. ISBN1-893554-26-0online edition
• The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny, Free Press, 1999. ISBN0-684-84502-4online edition
• The Wars of the Ancient Greeks: And the Invention of Western Military Culture, Cassell, 1999. ISBN0-304-35222-5online edition
• The Land Was Everything: Letters from an American Farmer, Free Press, 2000. ISBN0-684-84501-6online edition
• Bonfire of the Humanities: Rescuing the Classics in an Impoverished Age, with John Heath and Bruce S. Thornton, ISI Books, 2001. ISBN1-882926-54-4online edition
• Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power, Doubleday, 2001. ISBN0-385-50052-1online edition

  Published in the UK as Why the West Has Won: Carnage and Culture from Salamis to Vietnam, Faber, 2001. ISBN0-571-20417-1

• An Autumn of War: What America Learned from September 11 and the War on Terrorism, Anchor Books, 2002. ISBN1-4000-3113-3 A collection of essays, mostly from National Review, covering events occurring between September 11, 2001 and January 2002 online edition
• Mexifornia: A State of Becoming, Encounter Books, 2003. ISBN1-893554-73-2online edition
• Ripples of Battle: How Wars Fought Long Ago Still Determine How We Fight, How We Live, and How We Think, Doubleday, 2003. ISBN0-385-50400-4online edition
• Between War and Peace: Lessons from Afghanistan and Iraq, Random House, 2004. ISBN0-8129-7273-2. A collection of essays, mostly from National Review, covering events occurring between January 2002 and July 2003 online edition
• A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War, Random House, 2005. ISBN1-4000-6095-8^[40]online edition
• The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern, Bloomsbury Press, 2010. ISBN978-1-60819-165-9online edition
• The End of Sparta: A Novel, Bloomsbury Press, 2011. ISBN978-1-60819-164-2online edition
• The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost – From Ancient Greece to Iraq, Bloomsbury Press, 2013. ISBN978-1-6081-9163-5online edition
• The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, Basic Books, 2017. ISBN978-0465066988
• The Case for Trump, Basic Books, 2019. ISBN978-1541673540

References[edit]

1. ^'VDH Private Papers' Hanson is married to Jennifer Heyne (married November 2013).Archived January 25, 2013, at the Wayback Machine Victor Davis Hanson website, accessed August 8, 2010
2. ^'Do We Want Mexifornia?', Victor Davis Hanson, City Journal, Spring 2002
3. ^ ^abc'Classical Studies Program'. Retrieved September 4, 2016.
4. ^'Victor Davis Hanson articles'. Tribune Content Agency. Retrieved October 9, 2018.
5. ^Hanson, Victor Davis (June 29, 2003). 'Commentary: 'Mexifornia' is a Tragedy in the Making'. Los Angeles Times – via ProQuest.
6. ^Victor Davis HansonDecline And Fall: A review of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, National Review Magazine, May 20, 2005
7. ^ ^abBateman, Robert (October 29, 2007). 'Bateman on Hanson, Round 1: Cannae, 2 August 216 B.C.' Media Matters. Retrieved August 24, 2016.
8. ^Hanson, Victor Davis (November 5, 2007). 'Squaring Off: Part II'. Victor Davis Hanson's Private Papers. Retrieved August 24, 2016.
9. ^ ^abHanson, Victor Davis (November 22, 2007). 'Bateman Encore'. Victor Davis Hanson's Private Papers. Retrieved August 24, 2016.
10. ^Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath, Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2001), p. 28.
11. ^'Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom'. Foreign Affairs.
12. ^'MHA...An Association of Montana Health Care Providers'. Archived from the original on September 4, 2016. Retrieved September 4, 2016.
13. ^'Who Killed Homer?'. The Montana Professor.
14. ^'NYU> Classics> Joy Connolly'. Retrieved September 4, 2016.
15. ^'Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath, Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom'. Bryn Mawr Classical Review.
16. ^Interview, Proceedings, March 2003.
17. ^On Loathing Bush – It's not about what he does, Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, August 13, 2004 Archived July 24, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
18. ^Myth or Reality – Will Iraq work? That's up to us, Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, April 23, 2004Archived July 24, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
19. ^Leave Rumsfeld Be – He is not to blame for our difficultiesArchived July 13, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, December 23, 2004.
20. ^ ^abcdefghiLozada, Carlos (2019). 'Thinking for Trump: Other presidents had a brain trust. But the intellectuals backing this White House are a bust'. The Washington Post.
21. ^Bush pulls neocons out of the shadowsLos Angeles Times, January 22, 2005
22. ^The end of the neo-cons?BBC News, February 9, 2009
23. ^The Neocon SlurArchived February 13, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, Victor Davis Hanson, July 12, 2008 (originally posted at Hanson's Works and Days blog)
24. ^Kakutani, Michiko (April 5, 2003). 'CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK; How Books Have Shaped U.S. Policy'. The New York Times. ISSN0362-4331. Retrieved March 17, 2019.
25. ^Schmidt, Brian C.; Williams, Michael C. (May 22, 2008). 'The Bush Doctrine and the Iraq War: Neoconservatives Versus Realists'. Security Studies. 17 (2): 191–220. doi:10.1080/09636410802098990. ISSN0963-6412.
26. ^Sanneh, Kelefa (July 24, 2013). 'A Sermon on Race from National Review'. ISSN0028-792X. Retrieved May 18, 2019.
27. ^Victor Davis Hanson (July 23, 2013). 'Facing Facts About Race'. National Review Online.
28. ^Te-Nehisi Coates (July 23, 2013). 'It's the Racism, Stupid!'. The Atlantic.
29. ^Andrew Sullivan (July 23, 2013). 'It's Not Racist …'. The Daily Dish.
30. ^Arthur Stern (July 25, 2013). 'A Millennial Takedown Of Victor Davis Hanson's 'Facts About Race''. News.Mic.
31. ^Kelefa Sanneh (July 24, 2013). 'A Sermon on Race from National Review'. The New Yorker.
32. ^'Untruth at the New Yorker'. Victor Davis Hanson's Private Papers. July 29, 2013.
33. ^Drezner, Daniel W. 'Meet the revisionist George W. Bush -- pretty much the same as the old George W. Bush'. Foreign Policy. Retrieved March 17, 2019.
34. ^Victor Davis Hanson (November 4, 2014). 'Sizing America Up'. Victor Davis Hanson's Private Papers.
35. ^Victor Davis Hanson (October 13, 2015). 'The Road to Middle East Perdition'. Victor Davis Hanson's Private Papers.
36. ^Victor Davis Hanson (February 11, 2014). 'The Value of Putin'. Victor Davis Hanson's Private Papers.
37. ^Victor Davis Hanson (June 19, 2015). 'The New World Map'. Victor Davis Hanson's Private Papers.
38. ^Victor Davis Hanson (July 30, 2014). 'Our Russia Experts'. Victor Davis Hanson's Private Papers.
39. ^Victor Davis Hanson (May 19, 2016). 'How Barack Obama's Foreign Policy De-Stabilized the World'. Victor Davis Hanson's Private Papers.
40. ^Fredric Smoler^{[permanent dead link]} 'Study of the War on Terrorism: The View from 400 B.C.,' American Heritage, Nov./Dec. 2006.

External links[edit]

• Victor Davis Hanson's Private Papers – Hanson's website; carries columns and essays by Hanson and colleagues
• Hanson's National Review articles – archive at National Review Online
• Appearances on C-SPAN

No, President Trump insisted, he knew nothing about a $130,000 hush-money payment to a porn star who claims she had an extramarital sexual encounter with him over a decade ago. Reporters in the impromptu Air Force One gaggle persisted: Why, then, would Trump’s private lawyer and self-described “fixer,” Michael Cohen, make such an extraordinary payment on the eve of the 2016 election?

“You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen,” replied the president.

Less than a week later, the FBI executed court-authorized warrants at Cohen’s New York City office and residences. Among other things, the Bureau and federal prosecutors in New York are investigating the circumstances of Cohen’s money transfer to Stephanie Clifford (the adult-film, er, performer known as Stormy Daniels). Enraged, Trump and Cohen now contend that the attorney–client privilege should bar investigators from perusing the seized files. But on what basis? Trump has denied that he had any knowledge of the matter; and, just as rashly and implausibly, Cohen maintains that he paid Clifford on his own, without informing Trump. Thus did they eviscerate any claim that there could be attorney–client communications. The FBI will comb through every document.

Politically, Donald Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip style plays well in an era of populist revulsion at fork-tongued Washington. Legally, it is suicidal.

Not without reason is the president confident in his knack for navigating through crises, often self-inflicted, and often dodged by instigating new crises. But while politics can be tricky, law-enforcement investigations pose real jeopardy. Trump, a Roy Cohn client from the cutthroat arena of New York real estate, may think he knows litigation. But this is different. He needs a well-conceived legal strategy.

Mind you, this is not a suggestion that Trump fabricate a story to meet the evidence. Lying, or at least talking without thinking, is what gets people in trouble. The survival of Trump’s presidency may depend on a skill alien to his nature: strategic silence.

Investigators are scrutinizing ambiguous acts: Trump’s tongue-in-cheek hope that the Russians hacked Hillary Clinton’s emails, his pressuring the FBI to drop the Michael Flynn investigation, his firing of FBI director James Comey, and so on. Liability for such inchoate crimes as conspiracy and attempts to obstruct justice may hinge on whether prosecutors can convincingly portray his intentions as corrupt. Trump’s doth-protest-too-much resort to overkill in response to trivial slights and innuendo often makes him look guilty even when he probably isn’t. The very able prosecutors on special counsel Robert Mueller’s staff and in New York do not need the help. Can the Trump we know refrain from minute-by-minute recitations of what Trump was thinking about what Trump was doing — recitations that tend, shall we say, to evolve?

The president faces danger on three fronts.

The good news for Trump is that the most egregious allegation, treasonous “collusion” with Russia, poses the least peril. The very fact that the Democrats and their media echo chamber made “collusion” the buzzword of their narrative is revealing: Collusion is not a crime per se; it is merely concerted activity and can even be benign, despite the word’s current dark connotation. What prosecutors care about is conspiracy — a collaboration aimed at violating the criminal law (e.g., hacking, or what the intel community calls “cyberespionage”). Notwithstanding a torrent of leaks by Trump’s detractors in the spy agencies, and James Comey’s decidedly underwhelming anti-Trump memoir, conspiracy evidence has not materialized.

Mueller has charged several people connected to Trump’s campaign but leveled no allegations of complicity in Russia’s election meddling. In fact, in an indictment charging numerous Russian nationals and businesses with amateurish cyber-schemes to interfere in the campaign, Mueller asserts that Russian outreach to the Trump campaign was pretextual, not coordinated, and that the Russians actually demonstrated against Trump. Putin’s objective, it appears, was to sow discord in our society regardless of who won the presidency, not to engineer one candidate’s victory over the other — something manifestly beyond the Kremlin’s capabilities.

Bear in mind that the Russia investigation was already ongoing for a year when Mueller was appointed in May 2017. If there were a collusion case, we would know it by now. As a proxy for proof, there has been an assiduous media-Democratic effort to goad the irascible Trump into firing the special counsel, and to report at fever pitch any inkling that Trump may fire both Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller (because Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recused himself from the investigation — another ever-thrumming cause of Trump tantrums). There appearing to be no proof of actionable collusion, the specter of Mueller’s dismissal, like the actual dismissal of Comey, which spurred Mueller’s appointment, fuels the narrative that Trump is conscious of his guilt and fears the investigator is closing in. Trump must keep his cool. Every Twitter tirade about the “witch hunt,” every offhand comment about Mueller’s status, provides the investigative rationale to keep digging.

The second front involves claims that Trump committed felony obstruction, on which Mueller’s sights have been trained as the prospect of proving collusion has faded. Yet the president has strong defenses. Legally, it is very unlikely that allegedly corrupt intent can convert a lawful exercise of presidential power — e.g., firing the FBI director or pardoning a potential witness Mueller is trying to squeeze — into a crime. Such executive prerogatives are judicially unreviewable. The Watergate and Clinton precedents instruct that illegal acts by a president intended to subvert an investigation — e.g., bribing witnesses or suborning perjury — may constitute obstruction. Thus far, there is no hint of that.

The factual underpinnings of the obstruction claims have always been a stretch, and they seemed to crumble with the recent release of Comey’s memos-to-self about conversations with Trump (just days after his memoir was published). The former FBI director, who certainly did not act like someone who thought he’d been obstructed when Trump expressed hope that he’d leave Flynn alone, has coyly said he believes he was “fired because of the Russia investigation.” Well yes, but only in the sense that Trump wanted the public to know what Comey was privately assuring him, namely: He was not a suspect in the Russia investigation. Trump never tried to stop the investigation. In fact, he said it would be good to find out if any of his underlings acted corruptly, and he encouraged Comey to run down the so-called Steele dossier’s salacious allegations about prostitutes in Moscow, confident that he would be vindicated.

Trump continues to seethe over being under a cloud of suspicion. But if he can resist thoughtless outbursts and rash firings, the obstruction claim should collapse of its own weightlessness.

The third front for Trump, the investigation of Cohen, is the wild card. Mueller referred it to federal prosecutors in New York, which he surely would not have done if Cohen were thought potentially helpful to the Russia probe or any related case against Trump. Rosenstein, moreover, has reportedly advised Trump that he is not a target of the Cohen probe. It would be a mistake to read too much into that assurance; if Trump is a subject of the investigation, he could quickly become a target — a term of art for a suspect likely to be charged — depending on what evidence turns up. Still, prosecutors have advised the court that their case focuses on Cohen’s activities, only some of which involve either Trump or the practice of law.

The best-known work Cohen has done on Trump’s behalf is unsavory: non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to conceal extramarital sexual encounters. But NDAs are not illegal per se; to establish a crime, prosecutors must show they were induced by fraud or extortion. Right now, that seems like a reach. Lavish payments for an NDA on the eve of an election could conceivably be deemed in-kind contributions in excess of campaign-finance limits. But such transgressions are almost always handled administratively by the Federal Election Commission, not prosecuted by the Justice Department.

Nevertheless, the FBI did seize a large volume of paper and electronic files from Cohen, and they had been monitoring his emails for months (there are, investigators say, no email exchanges with the president). While Trump is apparently not the focus of the case, the investigation is ongoing, and only Trump and Cohen know what the “fixer” has been asked to fix.

The president is a difficult client, and his legal team is in constant flux. In mid April he retained his longtime friend Rudy Giuliani to take the helm. It is a smart move: Giuliani (who hired me as a prosecutor many moons ago) is a legendary former prosecutor and legal strategist, as well as a former mayor of New York. He and Mueller know and respect each other, and as U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, Giuliani left an indelible mark on the office that is now running the Cohen probe. His objective is to bring the Trump aspect of Mueller’s investigation to a prompt end. Mueller still wants to interview the president. Even if Giuliani deftly negotiates limits on the questioning, such a session would be fraught with peril: Trump is prone to contradictory assertions, and Mueller has already convicted four subjects in the probe of lying during voluntary interviews.

From this former prosecutor’s vantage point, silence is golden. But as @realDonaldTrump’s 51 million Twitter followers will tell you, don’t bank on it.