Trump Threatens Country’s Top Lawmen
D. S. Mitchell
The New York Times evening edition for 7/19/2017 bi-lined by Peter Baker, Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haherman published an angry, rambling, nonsensical interview with President Donald Trump. The President does not seem to fully understand how serious the investigation in to the Russian activity during the 2016 election had become.
Trump told the interviewers that he would never have hired Sessions for the job of Attorney General if he had known that Sessions would recuse himself from the Russian investigation. Ignoring the fact that Sessions had a perceived conflict of interest and as such, was basically forced by law and tradition to recuse himself.
Sessions was deeply involved in the Trump campaign. How could he not recuse himself when there was such obvious conflict of interest? The rule of law? Does the president even understand the role of his appointees? Does he understand that these people are supposed to be working for the people of the United States, not Donald Trump personally.
I’m beginning to wonder if Trump has any concept of the law, or the restraint that the law imposes on government officials, not just disregard the law, but even understand it’s basic constraints.
The Russia inquiry has in Trump’s words,” cast a dark cloud” over his floundering administration, calling Session’s recusal “very unfair to the president”. Oddly, Trump speaking of the Presidency in the third person. “The president” feels it was Sessions decision to recuse himself that led directly to the appointment of a special counsel, “that never should have happened.”
Wow.
From then on the President sent volley after volley aimed at the top law enforcement officials in the country. First it was his own chosen Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, then he attacked the Deputy AG, Rod Rosenstein. Trump wasn’t finished however. In a wandering interview he took potshots at the acting FBI Director, Andrew McCabe and then before moving on to other topics, Trump slammed Robert Mueller and warned that he would be stopped in his tracks if Trump felt the investigation was moving away from anything that wasn’t directly Russian related, telling the Times reporters there “was a red line.”
Apparently he blamed Rod Rosenstein for appointing Mueller as special counsel, furthermore he seemed to blame Rosenstein for recommending the dismissal of then FBI Director, James Comey, although Trump has previously said the recommendation from Rosenstein was unimportant because he had already decided to fire Comey because of the ongoing Russian investigation. And, in fact told then Russian Ambassabor Kisylak in an unprecedented Oval Office meeting , that he thought that firing Comey would shut down the investigation, or at least reduce the heat.
That is why, Mr. President they are looking at you for obstruction of justice. Mr. President, we have audio and video of this stuff. We can fact check you. Jesus, man, not everyone is so in love with your ass that we ignore what you say.
I seriously wonder if this president has any memory of what he said 30 minutes ago. The most recent press blurb indicated you have been documented making 836 separate public lies and misleading statements just since taking office.
On the subject of Comey, the President extended his complaints, insisting that Comey had perjured himself during the congressional hearings, stating again, “I never asked him for a loyalty oath.” Furthermore, Trump further claims he never asked Comey to end the investigation into former NSA, General Michael Flynn.
He further bullied the now private citizen, Comey, indicating he felt Comey had attempted to leverage FBI information detrimental to the President to hold on to his job.
Trump said that Comey had taken him aside and described a secret dossier containing multiple salacious allegations against the president, including sexual escapades in Moscow. Trump called the dossier a bunch of “junk–a phony deal.”
Trump continued, stating he believes that Comey told him about the negative information and his intention, according to Trump, was to hold it over his head. Previously Comey has stated he told Trump of the dossier’s existence to warn him of the potential fall out if the information was published.
Reporters summarized Trump’s attack against Mueller for, “running an office rife with conflicts of interest and warned investigators against delving into matters too far afield from Russia.”
When asked to outline circumstances which he might order the DOJ to fire Mueller, he did not specifically do so. His anger over the growing noise about the Russian-Trump conspiracy was evident in many of his statements.
When questioned further, Trump indicated that there was a perceived red line that if crossed Trump would react. “I would say, yes.
When probed Trump seemed to indicate that a probe into his family’s finances beyond any relationship to Russia could possibly become that “red line.”
Despite Mueller reportedly looking at whether the president obstructed justice by firing James Comey, during the NY Times interview Trump said, as far as he knew, he was “not personally under investigation”.
“I don’t think we’re under investigation,” he said. “I’m not under investigation. For what? I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Shifting gears, Trump was questioned about the newly discovered second meeting he had with Putin at the G-20 summit in Germany. The second meeting was unknown until comments by other world leaders were published, questioning the “private dinner” they shared. Trump defended the action, saying it took place in a room full of people.
Trump said they had talked mostly, “pleasantries”. The president further acknowledged Putin and he had talked “about adoption”. “Adoption” seems to be the new code word for Russian sanctions.
Putin halted adoption of disabled Russian children to Americans families in 2012 in reaction to sanctions placed on Russia by the United States in reaction to human rights abuses. The Magnitsky sanctions and other sanctions against Russia by the Obama Administration are a major irritant between the two countries and Putin is determined to have them lifted.
Trump noted that it was “interesting” that adoptions have been the subject of several recent meetings. Trump was referencing the recently acknowledged meeting in June of 2016 that involved several Russians, including a lobbyist, a suspected money launderer and a “Russian government lawyer”. Initially, Donald Trump, Jr., described the meeting to be about “adoptions.”
Trump once again repeated that he did not know about Donald Jr’s., meeting at the time and in fact only learned about it shortly before Junior released the chain of emails. This claim of course is total bullshit. It is known that the Trump campaign ponied up $50,000 to get Don Jr., an attorney at least a month before the release of the emails. Junior’s changing statements related to the meeting and the individuals in attendance, make any statements made by anybody with the name Trump suspect.
President Trump added that he didn’t need the Ruskies to profile damaging information on HRC. “There wasn’t much I could say about Hillary Clinton that are worse than what I was already saying,” he said matter-of-factly, “Unless somebody said she shot somebody in the back, there wasn’t much I could add to my repertoire.”
The comments against Sessions and Rosenstein made many observers believe that by this morning we would be seeing letters of resignation flying toward the White House. However, that did not happen. Both Rosenstein and Sessions said publicly how much they loved their jobs and intended to stay on and serve the American people. I didn’t hear any comment from Andy McCabe as yet.
Also, tonight rumors are flying that the Trump team of lawyers is looking into ways to undermine and discredit the Mueller Russian investigation. At the same time reports are emerging that Trump is considering firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller. To get at Mueller, Donald Trump knows he must eliminate Jeff Sessions at the Justice Department. Sessions, because of his recusal has been removed from the chain of firing, and as such he is an impediment to Mueller’s removal. Trump seems to want to get rid of Sessions and I think he may have hoped after being blasted in the press, Sessions would have submitted his resignation. This is, in my mind, again feeling like an obstruction of justice effort by the president.
Lastly, I guess DJT is asking his attorneys about his right to pardon staff, family and of course, himself.
WOO WEE!
Calamity Politics is a progressive blog addressing U.S. political topics in a hopefully relevant and engaging manner. Join me mostly daily in my autopsy of the headline news.
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