The perp raids the prosecution’s evidence
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.
In the middle of a probe in which he has a personal interest, the president has just ordered the public release of “all text messages relating to the Russia investigation, without redaction, of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bruce Ohr.” pic.twitter.com/4FeJqxL32f
— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) September 17, 2018
Trump has directed DOJ & DNI to declassify materials related to the Carter Page FISA & Bruce Ohr & to release unredacted emails from former FBI personnel. Trump will sacrifice national security for whatever small personal gain he hopes to achieve. https://t.co/2dFafsgXZ8
— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) September 17, 2018
Schiff says he was “previously informed by the FBI and Justice Department that they would consider their release a red line that must not be crossed” pic.twitter.com/Z0RAkGdPnZ
— Michael Del Moro (@MikeDelMoro) September 17, 2018
So that sounds like a constitutional crisis then.
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).
Watch the Republican’s fold and do his bidding. Anything to maintain power at this point.
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*
“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.
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