The perp raids the prosecution’s evidence

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

Trump ups his obstruction of justice game:

President Trump on Monday ordered the Justice Department to declassify significant materials from the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, including portions of a secret court order to surveil one of his former campaign advisers and the text messages of several former high-level FBI officials, including former FBI director James B. Comey and deputy director Andrew McCabe.

The White House said in a statement the move came at the request of “a number of committees of Congress, and for reasons of transparency.” Conservative lawmakers critical of the Russia probe had been agitating for the materials to be made public.

He’s interfering with investigations that he has a direct personal stake in. That’s abuse of power, and corrupt, and authoritarian, and not how any of this works, and wrong.

Specifically, the president ordered the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify sections of the secret court order to surveil former campaign adviser Carter Page, along with FBI reports and interviews of him.

Trump also ordered the department to declassify interviews with Justice Department official Bruce G. Ohr, who worked in the deputy attorney general’s office and had conversations with the author of a controversial dossier alleging ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.

This is what happens when you elect a criminal president.

So that sounds like a constitutional crisis then.

Comments

4 responses to “The perp raids the prosecution’s evidence”

  1. iknklast Avatar
    iknklast

    not how any of this works

    Come on, Ophelia, that’s so 2016. Get with the picture. That’s how this works now, it’s how it will probably work from now on because precedent has been set and no future president will feel the need to follow any law they find irksome or inconvenient. Great, ain’t it? America is definitely great again, I can feel it all the way to the core of my being (if great means getting rather elaborately apeshit tyrant).

  2. Rob Avatar
    Rob

    Watch the Republican’s fold and do his bidding. Anything to maintain power at this point.

  3. Claire Avatar
    Claire

    I fear this might seem like inside baseball to folks who aren’t political junkies. But this is seriously terrible, in a way that will hurt the US and global fights on organized crime and terrorism for decades to come. Under any other circumstances, this would be presidency-breaking stuff. These days we call it Monday. *sigh*

  4. Omar Avatar
    Omar

    “Make America great again” was Trump’s election mantra. It struck a chord with enough voters in enough strategic locations for the electoral college system to get him into the White House, even though Clinton got a greater mass vote.

    An indication of Clinton’s low standing among rightwingers is shown in Texas. There, the Republican-controlled board of education has recently voted to remove Clinton’s name from the schools’ social studies curriculum as the first woman to win the presidential nomination of a major US political party.

    This is a move (by a board of education for Chrissake) for a Stalin-style rewriting of history, and to make, in one small step for Trump, Clinton into an Orwellian unperson.

    It was its defeat in the Vietnam War that made America ‘ungreat’ and ended its thirty years of ascendancy (1945-75) as THE dominant world power. That little bit of history will be harder for Trump’s minions to rewrite. But a start has been made.

    OB is quite right on this IMHO. It is nothing short of a constitutional crisis for the US. Trump has far too much power, especially given his outstanding qualifications as a narcissist and ignoramus.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/17/hillary-clinton-trump-essay-what-happened-afterword

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