Trump pressed Whitaker

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

Well this is scandalous. CNN reports:

President Donald Trump has at least twice in the past few weeks vented to his acting attorney general, angered by federal prosecutors who referenced the President’s actions in crimes his former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

Trump was frustrated, the sources said, that prosecutors Matt Whitaker oversees filed charges that made Trump look bad. None of the sources suggested that the President directed Whitaker to stop the investigation, but rather lashed out at what he felt was an unfair situation.

The first known instance took place when Trump made his displeasure clear to acting attorney general Matt Whitaker after Cohen pleaded guilty November 29 to lying to Congress about a proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow. Whitaker had only been on the job a few weeks following Trump’s firing of Jeff Sessions.

Three weeks in fact; very few.

Over a week later, Trump again voiced his anger at Whitaker after prosecutors in Manhattan officially implicated the President in a hush-money scheme to buy the silence of women around the 2016 campaign — something Trump fiercely maintains isn’t an illegal campaign contribution. Pointing to articles he said supported his position, Trump pressed Whitaker on why more wasn’t being done to control prosecutors in New York who brought the charges in the first place, suggesting they were going rogue.

Nixon got bounced out of there for doing less than that.

Comments

2 responses to “Trump pressed Whitaker”

  1. Screechy Monkey Avatar
    Screechy Monkey

    When asked for comment,

    Susan Collins furrowed her brow, and said, “make sure you write down that I furrowed my brow. You see how furrowed I am?”

    Paul Ryan said “President who? Sorry, don’t know him.”

    Mitch McConnell shoved a handful of potato chips in his mouth and gave the “can’t talk, my mouth is full” gesture.

    Marco Rubio’s programming crashed and he began reciting names of Miami Dolphins linebackers.

  2. Omar Avatar
    Omar

    If you’re American, you might be glum at the state of a presidency that now resembles a cross between the last days of Richard Nixon and The Madness of King George. Thursday saw the departure of the last restraining hand on the increasingly unhinged Donald Trump, as defence secretary James Mattis resigned in disgust at his boss’s disregard of allies and his coddling of autocratic enemies. It was the steady, mature presence of Mattis that allowed many Americans to sleep at night. Now he is going, appalled at Trump’s impulse decision to do a big favour to Vladimir Putin, Bashar al-Assad and the regime in Tehran by pulling out of Syria, as well as by the president’s tendency to insult Berlin and London while bowing to the dictators of Moscow and Beijing.*

    Apart from that, have a merry Christmas.

    (*As in “Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”)

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/21/trump-brexit-climate-change-despair-windrush

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