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.”
