No surprise Trump’s obstruction goes on

The New York Times on Wednesday reconfirmed that President Donald Trump actively attempted to obstruct justice starting early in his presidency. He still is. The story outlines new details of ‘‘a president who has attacked the law enforcement apparatus of his own government like no other president’’.

Americans should never get used to it, nor to Trump’s Republican enablers in Congress continuing to shrug off his outrageous and potentially criminal behaviour. The obstruction started with his firing of FBI Director James Comey in 2017, which Trump acknowledged on television was prompted by ‘‘this Russia thing’’. No-one, not even the president, may interfere with an FBI probe. Trump admitted firing the person in charge of one because of the investigation.

He spent months publicly berating attorneygeneral Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the probe. After forcing him out, he appointed probe critic Matthew Whitaker and, the Times reports, tried to get him to put Trump ally Geoffrey S Berman in charge of the investigation of hushmoney payments to women who claim to have had affairs with Trump.

Legal scholars can debate whether a sitting president should face criminal prosecution, but what isn’t debatable is that no president should use his power to impede official investigations into his conduct and those around him.