Trump tells a new tale
Suppress your guffaws, if you can, at the assertion of Donald Trump that being a “grandstander” and a “showboat” are firing offenses. Focus instead on the stunning admission, from the President’s own mouth, that the memo ordered up from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — the paper the White House has claimed as cause for Jim Comey’s termination — was utter and total pretext.
As was Trump’s letter to Comey dropping the ax, which cast the President as passively acceding to the “recommendation” of the deputy AG and his boss Jeff Sessions.
Since that lie couldn’t sell, Trump switched to the truth: He made the call, and would have cashiered Comey “regardless of the recommendation.”
But why? Here, the President is still being disingenuous at best, deviously dishonest at worst.
Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt he’d just had it with the way Comey had been behaving — emoting for the cameras and otherwise acting in a manner that the President deemed less than appropriate for a Top G-Man.
The notion that a long train of abuses and usurpations that nagged at the President for nearly four months started and ended with Comey’s oncamera style, and did not include a widening investigation that Trump has called a “witch hunt,” and “fake news,” and “a total hoax,” is laughable.
Especially at a time when Comey was reportedly asking for more resources to widen that probe. (Acting FBI chief Andrew McCabe told senators Thursday he was “not aware” of any request.)
And at a time when a federal grand jury was beginning to subpoena associates of ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn, who concealed his contacts with the Russians and was protected by Trump after doing so.
Amazingly, Trump revealed to Holt that Russia was the focus when he sacked Comey: “In fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, ‘this Russia thing, you know, with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.’ ”
Asked by Holt to elaborate on a very strange clause in Trump’s termination letter to Comey — “I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation” — the President made another admission that would be jaw-dropping if it didn’t come from Trump: that he had directly asked Comey whether he was in investigatory cross hairs. Comey, says Trump, at the time answered no. There is no kosher way for a President, who picks the FBI director, to ask that director whether he is being probed. Especially when the context of the conversation is whether the director will get canned. A question is a thumb on the scale.
Which is why the moment demands a genuinely independent investigation into potential Trump collusion with Russia. If the person in charge of a probe can in any way be intimidated by this President, this President will intimidate.