Comey memoir pushback inceases
As the cleanup continues at a burned-out apartment in Trump Tower, another, metaphoric fire rages at the White House.
After FBI raids on the home and offices of Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and long-time consigliere, reports have reached a fever pitch that Trump is raging at the raft of investigations swirling like smoke around him.
With the president railing against investigators whom he says ‘‘broke in’’ to Cohen’s apartment (they knocked and entered with a search warrant), it is apparent that this perceived violence to Trump’s inner circle may hasten his reportedly long-held plans to slow or stop the Russia investigation.
Two options appear to be on the table: firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who leads the investigation, or firing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is supervising Mueller in the wake of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal from the probe.
It may feel rather Watergateesque to hear that a sitting US president, ensnared by a threatening personal investigation, may be on the cusp of taking out that investigation’s leadership. And you’d be right. Richard Nixon had to go through his attorney general and his deputy attorney general (who both refused, and resigned) before the third-most senior Department of Justice lawyer, Robert Bork, fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox.
Everyone appears to have an opinion on this, so here’s mine: the president can fire Rosenstein for no cause, or for good cause. He can probably, technically, remove Mueller. But to get rid of either man in order to slow or stop the Russia investigation would be political suicide at best, and obstruction of justice at worst.
It would also be devastating to the Republican Party, and to an already divided American public, half of whom see Trump as a victim of the ‘‘deep state’’, and half of whom shudder at his contempt for the rule of law.
The president is the head of the Executive Branch. What that means in shorthand is that he is in charge of all prosecutors in the country, and can theoretically fire any of them, including everyone in the Department of Justice (including Rosenstein), and every United States Attorney in every state.
The president has variously called Rosenstein ‘‘weak’’ and a ‘‘threat’’. This week, in a new line of attack, the White House is suggesting that Rosenstein is ‘‘friends’’ with former FBI director James Comey, and that the Russia investigation is all just retribution for Comey’s firing.
The truth is that Comey and Rosenstein are not friends. Rosenstein wrote a critical memo, recommending Comey’s firing, that Trump partly relied on when terminating the then-FBI director.
The president has also criticised Rosenstein as ‘‘conflicted’’, in order to make the case for his removal.
Trump does have a point here. Rosenstein was involved in Comey’s firing, so is a potential witness. He’s also supervising an investigation that is reportedly considering whether the Comey firing constituted obstruction of justice. You can’t ethically be a both witness and a prosecutor.
As for Mueller, Trump could repeal the regulations that govern the special counsel and fire him.
Mueller would likely fight this, and everyone could end up before the Supreme Court. Under the special counsel regulations, because Rosenstein appointed Mueller, only Rosenstein can fire Mueller. It must be for cause, either bad conduct or a conflict of interest, and it must be in writing.
Understanding that ‘‘conflict’’ is one of the levers that could be used to remove Mueller, Trump has been slamming Mueller since the investigation began, as an Obama-Clinton crony and a Democrat. Mueller is neither.
In June last year, Trump reportedly asked White House Counsel Don McGahn to get Rosenstein to fire Mueller, on account of one alleged conflict – Mueller had been involved in a dispute at a Trump golf club a decade before. Clearly, this isn’t a conflict that seems particularly concerning to the average person. And it smacks of pretext. McGahn refused, properly, and Trump let it go.
In addition to the legal quagmire that firing either of these men presents, it would run counter to the will of the American public.
Ina Washington Post-ABC poll this week, 69 per cent of the respondents said they supported Mueller’s investigation, 64 per cent supported related investigations into Trump’s business activities, and 58 per cent supported related investigations into possible hush money paid to women claiming they had affairs with Trump.
Just because Trump can get in the way of the investigation by firing Rosenstein and Mueller, it doesn’t mean he should. Even though he shouldn’t take those steps, it doesn’t mean he won’t. But to do so would be an attack on the rule of law, and would leave Americans wondering if the president believes he is above it.
They then will have to decide whether, as Archibald Cox famously said after Robert Bork fired him, ‘‘whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men’’. US President Donald Trump has laid into James Comey as an ‘‘untruthful slimeball’’ as the White House and the national Republican Party mount a withering counterattack against the former FBI director and his stinging new memoir.
Comey is embarking on a publicity rollout of his book, A Higher Loyalty, which offers his version of the highly controversial events surrounding his firing by Trump and the Russia and Hillary Clinton email investigations.
In the book, Comey compares Trump to a mob boss demanding loyalty, suggests he is unfit to lead, and mocks his appearance.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders yesterday called Comey ‘‘a liar and a leaker’’ whose loyalty is ‘‘only to himself’’, adding that Comey would ‘‘be forever known as a disgraced partisan hack’’.
‘‘This is nothing more than a poorly executed PR stunt by Comey to desperately rehabilitate his tattered reputation and enrich his own bank account by peddling a book that belongs on the bargain bin of the fiction section.’’
Unlike Michael Wolff’s Fire & Fury, which caught the White House unawares when it was published in January, the administration had weeks to polish its rebuttal rhetoric for Comey’s book.
Officials responded to the Wolff book by belatedly pointing out factual inaccuracies. In responding to Comey, the White House is choosing not to engage on specific claims, which have been reviewed by lawyers for accuracy, instead launching a broadside effort to undermine Comey’s credibility.
Sanders accused Comey of leaking classified information and breaking his ‘‘sacred trust with the president of the United States, the dedicated agents of the FBI and the American people’’.
The Republican National Committee helped with the pushback effort against Comey by launching a website and supplying surrogates with talking points that question his credibility.