I have previously criticized President Donald Trump for his continuing use of Twitter to comment on pending litigation and attack the Special Counsel investigation. This weekend, Trump unleashed a torrent of criticism on Mueller, McCabe, and others. Trump not only raised the political affiliation of the Mueller team members, but celebrated the firing of Andrew McCabe. I found the McCabe comments to be particularly objectionable. No matter how one feels about McCabe’s conduct (and we still have not read the Inspector General’s report), the man was just fired after a highly accomplished career as a public servant. The tweet felt more like a taunt against a man who just experienced a crushing loss.
On Friday night, Trump celebrated the firing while taking a swipe at “sanctimonious” former FBI Director James Comey.
Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI – A great day for Democracy. Sanctimonious James Comey was his boss and made McCabe look like a choirboy. He knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI!
While I believed that Sessions would fire McCabe given the unprecedented recommendation of career officials in the Office of Professional Responsibility, I do not view it as a “great day for Democracy.” It was a sad day to witness such a fall from grace.
President Trump also attacked James Comey. Again, I have been very local in my own criticism of Comey but the President should not be attacking (let alone name calling) individuals who are part of the investigation into his own conduct.
The most concerning tweets however came on Sunday when the President again attacked the Mueller investigation. He lashed out as the news story that McCabe kept memos on his meetings with Trump: “Spent very little time with Andrew McCabe, but he never took notes when he was with me. I don’t believe he made memos except to help his own agenda, probably at a later date. Same with lying James Comey. Can we call them Fake Memos?” Again, Trump is publicly discussing a matter under investigation and a matter that he may be asked to address in interviews with the Mueller team. If he ultimately declined to be interviewed and faces a subpoena, Mueller is likely to point the Court to the continuing discussion that he has had on these issues in public. It undermines his case to refuse an interview on the record.
Trump also attacked Mueller’s staff as biased. “Why does the Mueller team have 13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary supporters, and Zero Republicans? Another Dem recently added…does anyone think this is fair? And yet, there is NO COLLUSION!”
The political affiliation of these lawyers has not bearing on their integrity — any more than Mueller’s Republican association undermines his independence. I have previously written that I felt that Mueller was a poor choice by Rod Rosenstein. However, I support his completion of his investigation and I have never questioned his integrity in carrying out the investigation. Trump’s attack has led Republicans like Speaker Ryan to support Mueller.
As state before, these tweets are harming the President’s case and undermining legitimate objections to the conduct of some of these individuals.
What do you think?
Twitter is for twats.
Reblogged this on The Inquiring Mind and commented:
The deranged Trump continues to make his problems worse
Jonathan, you seem a little partisan with this article. Not to mention, criticizing ones free speech.
I’m hoping the outcome of this bizarre chapter in American electoral politics is to create a
Rapid Response Election Integrity Office, which would be run by the FEC, independently
lead, and staffed by lawyers and investigators dedicated to neutral policing of campaign
misconducts and controversies.
Each campaign would assign its own lawyer to liason with the RREIO. The mission of the Office
would be to rapidly respond to any allegations of misconduct during federal campaigns, including
making binding, rapid decisions on matters of interpretation of law.
If such an Office were to have existed in 2016, the Clinton campaign would have been obliged to
take the DNC hack and Wikileaks matter to the RREIC for immediate investigation and resolution.
The RREIC would have responded by meeting with the Trump campaign lawyer if the Clinton
Campaign wanted to have Russian corrupt influence investigated. The matter would have been settled
quite rapidly, the Russian operatives seeking corrupt influence would have rapidly isolated, and the
campaign left to proceed with the Russian-intended interference blunted.
Instead, the Clinton Campaign, not having any rapid referee to look into the matter, decided to mount its
own “offense”, centered upon pushing out a paranoid narrative of Trump collusion with Russian meddling into the election, and hiring a foreign ex-spy to further the narrative. Eventually the CIA (clandestinely) FBI was brought into the awkward situation. Structurally, the country was unprepared to handle the foreign election interference attempt. Thus, the Russian’s goal of sowing doubt and division succeeded.
Let’s think proactively, and structurally, so that we have the necessary countermeasures to rapidly
correct campaign misconduct or foreign interference in the future. Let’s consider forming a RREIO.
pbinga,…
– All good ideas, but it sounds like the efficiency that would your proposals could bring about would severely cut into the income of DC lawyers, and also deprive the media of years of headline stories that these drawn out investigations produce.😉
I mentioned in a comment here a few weeks ago that the role of the FEC seems to have been marginalized to the point that it appears to have become a withered relic.
I don’t know if there’s insuffient funding/ staffing/ jurisdiction etc., or if it’s a combination of these and other factors.
They are barely mentioned in the thousands of articles about the Mueller and Congressional investigations.
I was glad to see that someone else brought up the FEC and recommendations about its proper role.