Trump, Attorney General Jeff Session, and FBI Director Christopher Wray. AP Photo/Evan Vucci
The president is attacking one of the government's most conservative institutions—and the Republicans have his back. By Jeet Heer February 3, 2018
In announcing the release of a declassified four-page memo prepared by the House Intelligence Committee, which he chairs, Representative Devin Nunes said, “The committee has discovered serious violations of the public trust, and the American people have a right to know when officials in crucial institutions are abusing their authority for political purposes. Our intelligence and law enforcement agencies exist to defend the American people, not to be exploited to target one group on behalf of another.”
As The New Republic’s Matt Ford explains, the memo does not support Nunes’s allegations, let alone justify the hype that preceded it from Fox News and other right-wing outlets. But its release on Friday is still an important event: the latest skirmish in the war that Trump and his allies in Congress are waging against the FBI.
FBI Director Christopher Wray had told the White House he opposed making the memo public, and the FBI released a statement saying it has “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.” But Trump had other ideas. Early Friday morning, he tweeted an attack on the FBI and the Department of Justice:
- Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans - something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Rank & File are great people! 10:33 PM - Feb 2, 2018 -
Hours later, Trump revealed that he had approved the memo’s release, saying, “I think it’s a disgrace what’s going on in this country.”
[Wrong on the FBI, but, on it's own, Donald, right on the quote just above. Your venal attacks on all institutions which have been paramount in creating American greatness, before you, are a disgrace. Your incivility to anyone who disagrees with you is a disgrace.Your dishonesty is a disgrace. Your attack on the integrity of long-term and widely respected career F,B.I. people is more of your generally disgraceful behavior.]
[...]
Trump claims the FBI has “politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans,” but historically, the FBI has been a very conservative, and often reactionary, institution. The first and longest-serving head of the agency, J. Edgar Hoover, was notorious for his right-wing politics, often using the agency to target Civil Rights leaders like Martin Luther King and other political radicals. The FBI reformed itself, but remains conservative in orientation. Every non-interim director of the agency has been a Republican, even those appointed by Democratic presidents.
As the HuffPost notes, “The key law enforcement figures in what President Donald Trump and his allies have characterized as a ‘deep state’ conspiracy against him are not lefties or even Democrats: They are Republicans. And Trump picked a number of them himself.” Special counsel Robert Mueller, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and current FBI head Christopher Wray are all Republicans. Former FBI Director James Comey was a Republican until a few years ago.
Make that a must watch due to Wolff's explanation of how it may be difficult for Mueller to prove intent. As Trump is willy-nilly saying he's gonna fire people continuously.
The Russia threat is real -- and it matters [Add excerpt here: "We never saw this during the Cold War. Back then, there were some rules, some decorum... Now, all decorum has been cast aside," Lavrov told Russian daily Kommersant in an interview published on January 21.] https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/26/europe/russia-threat-real-or-hysteria-intl/index.html
[Decorum and Trump don't exactly sit together well.]
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