Disgraceful behavior

President should pipe down about Mueller, probe

INWA DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE t may be that Donald Trump is so fixated on what he considers “fake news” because he’s the world’s foremost expert at producing it.

On Monday, the president used his overheated Twitter account to press his attacks on the law enforcement investigation into Russian interference in American elections. Lawyers working for special counsel Robert Mueller are “thugs,” the president says, and he accused them of trying to affect this year’s election.

Finally, the president understands someone is trying in underhanded fashion to influence U.S. elections. He’s just blaming the wrong culprit. The real one is about 4,900 miles away.

But Trump is behaving like a man operating out of fear and desperation. In tweets Monday, he called Mueller “disgraced and discredited.” That’s a figment of the president’s imagination. He called Mueller’s prosecutors a “national disgrace.” That’s Trump’s fantasy.

The Justice Department appointed Mueller, a former FBI director (appointed by George W. Bush) and federal prosecutor. In doing so, the agency selected a man who has a substantial record of professionalism and service to his nation. He’s a Marine veteran of Vietnam who earned a Purple Heart and was decorated for heroism. He signed up for the service after a friend was killed in the war.

All of that has nothing to do with whether he will find any evidence damaging to the president, but when Donald Trump wants to weigh in to say Mueller is “disgraced,” it seems to us Mueller has earned a little respect. He’s done more for the country than the sitting president to earn that kind of respect.

Mueller was appointed to look into any links between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign to elect Trump. As a special prosecutor, he can also examine any other matters that “may arise directly from the investigation,” according to the order appointing him.

Let’s assume for a moment the president had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with any Russian interference and is entirely free of any legal wrongdoing related to anything Mueller is charged with looking into. It’s conceivable that he has committed no crime in either the campaign or in his conduct as president. It’s absolutely certain that neither Mueller or anyone else has shown evidence that the president did anything illegal. But the president is wrong to suggest this investigation has no significance.

Goodness knows the president protests Mueller’s investigation a lot. It would behoove the president to stop behaving as though he’s a guilty party. So far, his own behaviors are the ones that make him appear he’s got something to hide.

Of course, the other possibility is that Trump believes — and maybe he has good reason to — a good number of his supporters will hear his unsubstantiated claims and let them serve as all the confirmation they need to consider Trump a victim of a “witch hunt,” as he likes to call it.

How does any patriotic American sit back and believe that Russian interference in U.S. election deserves anything less than a full investigation?

Sure, all’s fair in politics, right? But it’s critical to understand that Trump’s bloviating is just that, politics. It’s not substance. The investigation resulted Tuesday in Paul Manafort’s conviction on eight federal counts of bank and tax fraud. He was Donald Trump’s former campaign manager.

Is that proof of collusion with Russians? Not at all, but the convictions did relate to Manafort’s failure to pay taxes on some $60 million paid to him over 10 years by a Russian-backed political party in Ukraine.

Also Tuesday, word spread that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors over fraud charges, including possible campaign finance violations related to so-called hush-money paid to women to keep them quiet about sexual encounters with Trump.

The only way the Mueller investigation is a witch hunt is if Manafort, Cohen and others so far indicted — including 13 Russians — spend their spare time riding on brooms. It’s already fairly evident they’ve been engaged in various forms of double, double toil and trouble.

Trump isn’t the only president in history affected by special investigations. Investigations were launched in the relatively recent past into activities related to both President Bushes, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and, of course, Richard Nixon.

We don’t expect the president to like it. But the biggest step he could take to ensure he will forever be viewed as an obstructor of justice is to inject himself further into the law enforcement investigation over Russian interference.

Some who hate the president hope Mueller will find the proverbial smoking gun that will demonstrate Trump is guilty of some illegal act, thus making his continuation in office untenable. We don’t long for any U.S. president to have been involved in criminal activity and we hope there are no dots to connect that lead to the Oval Office. But the questions deserve to be answered, and President Trump can shout and squirm all day long if he wants. But he should stop trying to use the office of the president in thug-like fashion to berate the investigation and the special counsel.

For the president to describe Robert Mueller as disgraced is a disgrace to the president.

As usual, someone should get the president as far away from Twitter as possible.