COWARDS ON THE POTOMAC

COWARDS ON THE POTOMAC

Donald Trump fired James Comey as FBI Director this week.

Trump did so because the FBI is investigating Trump's fall Presidential campaign and its connections, if any, to the Russian government's interference in the national election.

After receiving news of Comey's ouster, sources within the FBI reported that Trump had summoned Comey to a dinner meeting at the White House a week after the Inauguration and had demanded Comey's loyalty.  

Comey refused.

At a number of points this past week,  people speaking on Trump's behalf -- including his press secretary (Spicer), principal deputy press secretary (Huckabee-Sanders), counselor (Conway) and Vice-President (Pence) -- denied that the so-called "Russian investigation" had anything to do with the firing of Comey.  In denying that motive, they also claimed that the firing had been caused by a report given to Trump by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. That report criticized Comey for discussing -- last July and last October just before the election -- the agency's investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails.

We now know that all of those denials, as well as the claim that Rosenstein's report caused Comey's ouster, were false.  We know this because, in an interview with NBC's Lester Holt on Thursday, Trump admitted the Russian investigation was the reason he fired Comey. As Trump put it to Holt, "When I decided to just do it, I said, 'You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.'"  We know the Rosenstein report had nothing to do with the firing because, in that same interview with Holt, Trump said that "regardless of [Rosenstein's] recommendation, I was going to fire Comey."

For those of you scoring at home, that's Lies - 8, Truth - 0.

Trump has also denied, albeit implicitly,  that he attempted to exact any loyalty pledge from Comey at that White House dinner. He did that today when he tweeted that Comey "better hope there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!" The implication was that those "tapes" would rebut Comey's claims regarding the ostensible loyalty pledge.  The implication was also that "tapes" would support Trump's assertion that Comey told Trump, again at the dinner (but also on the phone on two other occasions), that Trump was not under investigation. 

Responding to the tapes tweet, Comey  is reported to have said he hopes there are "lots of" them. He has, however, not commented on whether he ever said Trump was not under investigation.   Nor has the Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe commented on this subject (though, in testimony on Thursday, McCabe did say it was not the sort of conversation the FBI usually had with anyone). McCabe also denied that agents or other employees at the FBI had lost confidence in Comey, which rebutted claims to the contrary made by the President and his seconds repeatedly over the last two days.

Trump is a pathological liar and lives in the gutter.   

The likelihood here is that there are no tapes. And certainly no complete or unaltered ones. 

Because . . .

If there were, and if they were complete and  unaltered, they no doubt would support Comey's claims, not Trump's. 

When asked at today's press briefing whether, in fact, the White House had tapes of any Trump-Comey communications, the press secretary, Spicer,  refused to comment.  He said, "The tweet speaks for itself. I'm moving on."

It certainly does.

Trump wants his veiled threat to just hang out there.

To intimidate Comey . . .  

Or anyone else who discloses what Comey told about his conversations with Trump months ago.

Were the FBI conducting a criminal investigation, Trumps' interview with Holt and his morning "tapes" tweet would result either in a letter from a prosecutor warning Trump to stop talking to witnesses or an indictment of Trump for having attempted to intimidate them. He'd also have received a subpoena for any tapes. And meanwhile, in a normal world,  the House of Representatives would be wondering about impeachment and everyone in Congress would be demanding an independent investigation by a special counsel.

But the FBI isn't conducting a criminal investigation. It's conducting a counter-intelligence investigation, ostensibly without criminal targets.

And the world we live in ceased to be normal long ago.

Apart from the usual handfull,  there has been no unified call for a special counsel from the GOP leadership or rank and file, and certainly no mention of the I-word.  They are waiting to see who Trump will appoint to replace Comey, apparently oblivious to the reality that any independent director will suffer the same fate as Comey and anyone else will simply do Trump's bidding.

I'm reminded of Churchill's view of the British government in the 1930s.

As their world was rocked then . . .

By what is  rocking ours now.

The un-sought, the un-expected.

The un-hinged.

"So they go on in strange paradox," said Churchill,  "decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent."

We have a word for this.  It's called . . .

Cowardice.