RUTHFULLY YOURS

President Donald Trump’s missteps have intensified the scandal that is consuming his administration.

One is tempted to put scandal in scare quotes. Trump is somehow enmeshed in a scandal based on actions that a president is fully entitled to take — such as dismissing the FBI director and weighing in on the merits of continuing an investigation of his former national-security adviser. It is, in addition, a scandal born of Trump’s desperation to publicize information that is true and that a president is fully entitled to publicize — such as the facts that the president had been assured by the FBI director on multiple occasions that he is not a criminal suspect, that the FBI director made the same representation to members of Congress, and that a months-long investigation had turned up no evidence of “collusion” between his campaign and the Kremlin.

Yet, a scandal it is: A specter of impropriety is undermining Trump’s administration, tanking his favorability ratings, and stalling his agenda. True, his media-Democrat enemies cast every story in the worst possible light. But there’s always a story, isn’t there?

That is largely Trump’s doing. The tweet-tirades about phantom wiretaps (which undermined his credibility to raise what may be a real Obama-administration abuse of foreign-intelligence powers). The decision to fire FBI director James Comey, not timed to occur when Trump justifiably dismissed dozens of Obama Justice Department appointees at the start of the administration (the new broom that sweeps clean), but triggered by a fit of pique over Comey’s selective public commentary on the “Russia investigation” — thus fueling the “obstruction” narrative. The multiple conflicting explanations for Comey’s removal. The bizarre decision to meet Russian diplomats the day after Comey’s dismissal and, shamefully, to berate the former director in their presence. And, of course, more tweets, such as the self-destructive suggestion of a Watergate-resonant White House taping system (that almost certainly does not exist).

But if Trump is his own worst enemy, his Justice Department is not far behind.

Four key decisions, three of them made after the president was inaugurated and the Justice Department came under his control, at least nominally, have done immense damage to his administration — in conjunction with Trump’s belief that fires are best doused with gasoline.

To understand why, I will reiterate my two-part working theory for why we have a mess, albeit one that, as a matter of law rather than appearances, falls woefully short of obstruction. First, Trump lobbied for the investigation of Michael Flynn to be dropped — something he could lawfully have ordered to be done — because he (a) was feeling remorse over Flynn’s humiliating removal as national-security adviser and (b) thought further investigation and potential prosecution would be overkill. Second, Trump’s decision to fire Comey — something he was lawfully entitled to do — was not an endeavor to influence the FBI’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign; it was the result of exasperation over Comey’s skewed public statements about the investigation, which created the misimpression that Trump was a criminal suspect.

On the latter score, I am not saying that Comey intended to mislead the public, although I imagine Trump probably believes he did. For what it’s worth, I accept the former director’s explanation: After his (self-induced) nightmare over the Hillary Clinton e-mails investigation, Comey was reluctant to announce that Trump was not a suspect; he feared that if Trump’s status later changed, he would have to correct his announcement, thus making matters worse for Trump (as his similar flip-flop did for Clinton).

If that was his fear, though, Comey should have refrained from any public comments at all — which is what law enforcement is supposed to do. Instead, during congressional testimony, he made an unnecessary announcement about the Russia investigation that led the media to report, and much of the public to believe, that Trump was a suspect in possible crimes. Once he did that, it was unreasonable to refuse to correct this misimpression by publicly acknowledging that Trump was not a suspect. It is all well and good to agitate over a “duty to correct,” but Comey glides past the more basic duty not to make gratuitous prejudicial statements in the first place. Trump fired the FBI director because he was being badly hurt by that testimony. He wanted it publicly known that he was not a suspect (which Comey had privately assured him, multiple times).

Trump saw Comey as the obstacle to that disclosure. Whether too uninformed or too paralyzed, the president did not grasp that he was entitled to order Comey to make the disclosure, or to do it himself (as he eventually did, only upon firing the FBI director).

“We relate all this because it shows how Mr. Mueller let his prosecutorial willfulness interfere with proper constitutional and executive-branch procedure. This showed bad judgment. He shares this habit with Mr. Comey.”

That didn’t take long. Barely a week after James Comey admitted leaking a memo to tee up a special counsel against Donald Trump, multiple news reports based on leaks confirm that special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating the President for obstruction of justice. You don’t have to be a Trump partisan to have concerns about where all of this headed.

President Trump has reportedly stepped back this week from his temptation to fire Mr. Mueller, and that’s the right decision. The chief executive has the constitutional power to fire a special counsel through the chain of command at the Justice Department, but doing so would be a political debacle by suggesting he has something to hide.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mr. Mueller, would surely resign, and other officials might resign as well until someone at Justice fulfilled Mr. Trump’s orders. The President’s opponents would think it’s Christmas. The dismissal would put the President’s political allies in a terrible spot and further distract from what are make-or-break months for his agenda on Capitol Hill. His tweets attacking the probe are also counterproductive, but by now we know he won’t stop.
There are nonetheless good reasons to raise questions about Mr. Mueller’s investigation, and those concerns are growing as we learn more about his close ties to Mr. Comey, some of his previous behavior, and the people he has hired for his special counsel staff. The country needs a fair investigation of the facts, not a vendetta to take down Mr. Trump or vindicate the tribe of career prosecutors and FBI agents to which Messrs. Mueller and Comey belong.

Start with the fact that Mr. Comey told the Senate last week that he asked a buddy to leak his memo about Mr. Trump specifically “because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.” Did Mr. Comey then suggest Mr. Mueller’s name to Mr. Rosenstein? He certainly praised Mr. Mueller to the skies at his Senate hearing.

The two former FBI directors are long-time friends who share a similar personal righteousness. Mr. Mueller, then running the FBI, joined Mr. Comey, then Deputy Attorney General, in threatening to resign in 2004 over George W. Bush’s antiterror wiretaps.

Less well known is how Mr. Mueller resisted direction from the White House in 2006 after he sent agents with a warrant to search then Democratic Rep. William Jefferson’s congressional office on a Saturday night without seeking legislative-branch permission. The unprecedented raid failed to distinguish between documents relevant to corruption and those that were part of legislative deliberation. GOP Speaker Dennis Hastert rightly objected to this as an executive violation of the separation of powers and took his concerns to Mr. Bush.

The President asked his chief of staff, Joshua Bolten, to ask Mr. Mueller to return the Jefferson documents that he could seek again through regular channels, but the FBI chief refused. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was also unable to move the FBI director. When Mr. Bolten asked again, Mr. Mueller said he wouldn’t tolerate political interference in a criminal probe, as if the Republican Mr. Bush was trying to protect a corrupt Democrat. Mr. Mueller threatened to resign, and the dispute was settled only after Mr. Bush ordered the seized documents sealed for 45 days until Congress and Mr. Mueller could work out a compromise.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals later ruled that the FBI raid had violated the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause and Mr. Jefferson’s “non-disclosure privilege” as a Member of Congress, though the court let Justice keep the documents citing Supreme Court precedent on the exclusionary rule for collecting evidence.

By Natalie Andrews and Kristina Peterson
https://www.wsj.com/articles/scalise-remains-in-critical-condition-but-prognosis-has-improved-1497645790

WASHINGTON—Rep. Steve Scalise (R., La.) remained in critical condition on Friday but his prognosis has improved, a hospital official said, two days after a gunman shot the third-ranking House Republican at a baseball practice.

Jack Sava, the director of the surgery team at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, told reporters Friday that Mr. Scalise had been near death after he was shot in the hip Wednesday, as the bullet caused extensive damage and bleeding.

Dr. Sava said that the lawmaker arrived at the hospital unconscious and “in critical condition with an imminent risk of death,” but that his condition has improved significantly in the past 36 hours.
Mr. Scalise has undergone numerous surgeries and is expected to continue recovering, with the length of his hospital stay unknown. “My understanding is that he will be able to walk and hopefully run,” Dr. Sava told reporters in a briefing on Friday afternoon.

Everybody over 56 years old likely remembers the 18 ½ minute gap in Richard Nixon’s White House Watergate tapes after Nixon had ordered erasures to hide things he said concerning Watergate. In the current Comey craze of testimony, there’s a 105 ½ hour gap in James Comey’s testimony that proves that critical parts of Comey’s testimony is at best materially false, and, at worst, highly perjurious with the intent of committing crimes against the United States.

That 105 ½ hour gap is the time between when President Trump on Friday morning “tweeted” that “James Comey better hope that there are no “tapes” of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” and when Comey alleged in his recent Senate Intelligence Committee testimony that he “woke up in the middle of the night on Monday night, because it didn’t dawn on me originally that there might be corroboration for our conversation.”

Between 9:32 Friday morning and let’s guess 3 am that next Monday night, there are approximately 105 and ½ hours. In short, Comey’s Senate testimony states that it took James B. Comey, Former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for the United States of America, 105 ½ hours after President Trump’s “tapes” tweet to realize “that there might be corroboration” of his memos. This is so ludicrous that it exposes his entire testimony as a web of perjury.

As a preface, this essay is not going to vet the already reported grave chronology inconsistency in Comey’s “memo” testimony.

Instead, first, let’s examine the exact documentary record regarding this 105 ½ hour gap.

President Trump’s tweet at 8:26 AM on 12 May 2017 read:

“James Comey better hope that there are no “tapes” of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”

Next, James B. Comey, Jr.’s Senate Intelligence Committee testimony under Republican Senator Susan Collins read as follows:

“COLLINS: And finally, did you show copies of your memos to anyone outside of the Department of Justice?

COMEY: Yes.

COLLINS: And to whom did you show copies?

COMEY: I asked – the president tweeted on Friday, after I got fired, that I better hope there’s no tapes. I woke up in the middle of the night on Monday night, because it didn’t dawn on me originally that there might be corroboration for our conversation. There might be a tape.

And my judgment was, I needed to get that out into the public square. And so I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter. Didn’t do it myself, for a variety of reasons. But I asked him to, because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel. And so I asked a close friend of mine to do it.

COLLINS: And was that Mr. Wittes?

COMEY: No, no.

COLLINS: Who was that?

COMEY: A good friend of mine who’s a professor at Columbia Law School.

US President Donald Trump and former FBI Director James Comey: Did Trump fire Comey because he showed insufficient zeal in uncovering the pattern of press leaks. Photo: Reuters file

The distinguished political scientist Angelo Codevilla coined the ominous term “cold civil war” to describe America’s precarious condition, adding, “Statesmanship’s first task is to prevent it from turning hot.” The attempted massacre June this week June 14 of Republican Congressmen and their staff by a deranged partisan of Sen. Bernie Sanders turned up the heat a notch, but it would be mistaken to attribute much importance to this dreadful outburst of left-wing rage. The augury of American fracture will not be street violence, but a constitutional crisis implicating virtually the whole of America’s governing caste. The shock troops in the cold civil war are not gunmen but lawyers.

A considerable portion of America’s permanent bureaucracy, including elements of its intelligence community, is engaged in an illegal and unconstitutional mutiny against the elected commander-in-chief, President Donald Trump. Most of the Democratic Party and a fair sampling of the Republican Establishment wants to force Trump out of office, and to this end undertook an entrapment scheme to entice the president and his staff into actions which might be construed after the fact as obstruction of justice. By means yet undisclosed, the mutineers forced Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn from office and now seek to bring down the president for allegedly obstructing an investigation of Gen. Flynn that arose in the first place from the entrapment scheme.

One of the Republican Party’s most distinguished statesmen recently told a closed gathering that a “cold coup” is underway against the president. I do not know and have not sought to learn the substance of the allegations; Gen. Flynn has no choice as a matter of self-preservation but to hold his peace and presently cannot defend himself in public.

By no coincidence is Gen. Flynn the central character in this scenario. As I wrote in February, the CIA really is out to get him:

Flynn’s Defense Intelligence Agency produced a now-notorious 2012 report warning that chaos in Syria’s civil war enabled the rise of a new Caliphate movement, namely ISIS. For full background, see Brad Hoff’s July 2016 essay in Foreign Policy Journal: Flynn humiliated the bungling CIA and exposed the incompetence and deception of the Obama administration, and got fired for it. If anyone doubts the depth of CIA incompetence in Syria, I recommend an account that appeared this month in the London Financial Times.

As soon as details about the shooting spree at a baseball field in Virginia on Wednesday morning began to emerge, social media lit up with political arguments.

Before it was established that 66-year-old James T. Hodgkinson had arrived at the venue with the intention to kill members of the Republican Party, the heated debate focused on the assault rifle and pistol used in the attack, and the pros and cons of gun control. When the identity and motive of the perpetrator became clear, the fights took a turn for the worse.

Conservatives experienced a touch of schadenfreude at the realization that the perpetrator was a left-wing activist — a supporter of Bernie Sanders, the candidate in the Democratic Party’s primaries defeated by Hillary Clinton — with boundless hatred for U.S. President Donald Trump. Until now, the Right in America has been put on the defensive, accused of everything from racism to wanton disregard for the environment. That Hodgkinson was a member of the “enlightened” camp, which not only purports to have a monopoly on goodness, but considers gun ownership a crime in and of itself, was a source of deep embarrassment.

Sanders promptly and properly denounced the violence and distanced himself from the culprit.

Trump and members of Congress, many of whom were present during the shootings, also have been acting responsibly. House Speaker Paul Ryan announced, “We are united in our shock. We are united in our anguish. An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.”

Facebook and Twitter users have been less noble, with Trump supporters attributing the truly vile atmosphere created by disgruntled voters, particularly prominent celebrities, to Hodgkinson’s rampage. They have been highlighting statements such as the one made by movie star Robert De Niro, who said in a pre-presidential election video that he’d “like to punch Trump in the face,” and the disgusting shenanigans of comedian Kathy Griffin, recently disgraced for parodying an Islamic State-like beheading of the president.

Though these critics are justifiably appalled at the escalating viciousness of anti-Trump rhetoric — which is aimed not only at the president himself, but at anyone who defends him — they need to be very careful when it comes to castigating an entire political camp for the actions of a deranged man with a history of physical abuse.

One key principle that sets conservatives apart from liberals is individualism. This is why we tend to support a free market, free speech and school choice, while rejecting the notion that fast-food chains cause obesity or that guns commit murder. This is not to say that we ignore the power of culture on society. On the contrary, it is the source of much of our angst and the cause of many of our ideological battles.

However, as a right-winger in Israel whose political position was held accountable for the climate that led to the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on Nov. 4, 1995, I cannot in good conscience join the choir of my current American compatriots doing to the other side what was done to mine.

According to CBS Baltimore, the city is nearing 160 homicides and already before halfway through 2017. Shockingly, six people were murdered in the span of just 24 hours.

Because of the increase in violent crimes, Baltimore officers have been given mandatory 12-hour shifts where they will go door-to-door, canvassing the neighborhoods where most of the violence is taking place.

Baltimore has been troubled since the Black Lives Matter riots over the death of Freddie Gray who died in police custody. Then-Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was criticized for bowing to the rioters who injured police officers, giving those “who wished to destroy” the space to do so.

Inheriting that mess is Democratic Mayor Catherine Pugh, who said illegal guns are the city’s biggest problem now.

“It should at least be a felony to carry an illegal gun,” Pugh said. “There’s too many illegal guns on streets of our city.”

Pugh is working to ensure criminals with violent backgrounds stay in jail and can’t get their hands on firearms.

Among the nearly 160 dead is 27-year-old Sebastian Dvorak, who was robbed and gunned down while out with his friends. His killer is still on the run.

Then there was the 37-year-old mother of eight children, Charmaine Wilson, who was murdered after a fight between a group of boys over a bike that belonged to one of her sons. Her killer hasn’t been found, either.

Baltimore police spokesman T.J. Smith said, “There is a murderer among us who is an absolutely monstrous human being. This is something that should outrage the entire community, entire city, because there are cowards walking around that took this mother, killed a woman over a dispute.”

Police are asking for tips or video to help in locating these suspects.

The father of Otto Warmbier, an American college student imprisoned in North Korea until this week, speaks about his experience working with the Trump administration to free his son. He delivered a short press conference at his local high school in Wyoming, OH Thursday morning.

FRED WARMBIER: When Otto was first taken, we were advised by the past administration to take a low profile while they worked to obtain his release. We did so without result. Earlier this year, Cindy and I decided the time for strategic patience was over.

We made a few media appearances and traveled to Washington to meet with [Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Korea and Japan] Ambassador Joe Yun at the State Department.

It is my understanding that Ambassador Yun and his team, at the direction of the president aggressively pursued resolution of the situation.

They have our thanks for bringing him home.

Alexandria, Virginia shooter James T. Hodgkinson was certainly angry about the direction of the country, but his vision of America was prosaic and predictable—ripped from the pages of the Huffington Post. Branding himself a member of the “99 percent,” he advocated higher taxes on the rich, according to letters he sent to a local newspaper. He opposed the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, wanted Democrats to filibuster the nomination of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, and supported the proposed Presidential Accountability Act, which extends conflict-of-interest laws for federal officials to the president and vice president, who are currently exempt. In other words, his was not the religious fervor of the jihadist seeking a caliphate, nor did he envision the sweeping historical dialectic of Das Kapital. His ideas weren’t even as dramatic as the cultural revolution imagined by the 1960s’ Yippie manifesto. Yet Hodgkinson was apparently willing to kill for higher marginal tax rates, stricter conflict-of-interest laws, and Obamacare. His was a terrorism constructed out of the narcissism of small differences.

Hodgkinson’s act only seems astonishing if you haven’t been paying attention to politics lately. When Donald Trump entered the Oval Office, he faced an opposition that ranged from virtually all Democrats to a generous collection of Republicans and conservatives. Many of us had already leveled a fair amount of criticism at him for his political ideas (or lack of them) and his temperament. Still, the early Trump presidency has been striking for the hyperbolic rhetoric that has accompanied almost any policy associated with his administration, including mundane ideas that he adopted from others after taking office. Republican efforts to replace the ACA—President Obama’s signature piece of domestic legislation, which is failing—with a modest bill that doesn’t go nearly as far as some wish has been branded by politicians and columnists as an “act of cruelty” likely to cost millions of lives. Those assertions have little grounding in the truth. Meanwhile, even the most modest cuts in Trump’s first budget have sparked comparisons with Ebenezer Scrooge. When, for instance, Trump’s budget director proposed eliminating a decades-old “anti-poverty” program that has never been shown to alleviate poverty, dishes out millions to wealthy communities to build amenities, and shrunk to a mere $3 billion annually under President Obama, critics called the move “devastating” and “an utter disaster,” sure to provoke “a crisis” in communities. That was mild stuff compared to what greeted the confirmation of charter school advocate Betsy DeVos as education secretary, including a tweet from a Vanity Fair editor who claimed her “policies will kill children.”

Hodgkinson apparently took much of this to heart. Though he displayed fits of anger and intolerance in the past, what apparently drove him into a murderous rage late in life was his fear that Trump was undermining progressive gains. To him, that amounted to Trump being a “traitor,” someone the resistance needed to “destroy.” His was an extreme version of the absolutism that has gripped the opposition, which must describe every idea associated with the Trump administration and every individual working in it in apocalyptic terms. This ignores the political reality that Trump’s most radical proposals have little chance of succeeding because of Republican opposition, and that his biggest accomplishments are almost certain to be the kinds of ideological course corrections that occur whenever the president of one party is succeeded by one from the other party.

Hodgkinson’s rage over Trump is even more troubling than the jihadist’s fervor or the anarchist’s nihilism because radicals are in pursuit of something far more transformational and unlikely than what Hodgkinson envisions. To many conservatives, including those who opposed Trump, the message in all of this is that the forces of resistance seem to be aimed not at Trump alone but at every idea that doesn’t fit their narrow agenda. No wonder that even centrist Democrats worry that their party is becoming as extreme—and narcissistic—as some Trumpian elements of the GOP.

Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III is expanding his investigation into the Left’s Russian electoral collusion conspiracy theory by examining whether President Trump tried to obstruct justice in the probe, according to the hyper-partisan leak-stenographers at the Washington Post.

It is all nonsense.

Democrats and Never Trump Republicans are setting up perjury traps just as Democrats did during Watergate and countless other investigations. But Donald Trump is no Richard Nixon. There is no evidence Trump covered up a crime, or even that there was an underlying crime to be covered up. But the longer the investigation goes on, the greater the likelihood that someone will innocently contradict himself in a deposition, giving evidence that doesn’t mesh with what was originally said to an FBI investigator. And voila! Someone who wasn’t a criminal goes to prison without forming any bad intent.

The obstruction allegation stems from statements made by former FBI Director James B. Comey who claims President Trump ordered him to end an investigation into former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn’s ties to Russia. Trump denies it even though he has the authority under the Constitution to fire Comey for any reason or no reason at all. Comey himself admitted he served at the pleasure of the president.

If the news report is accurate, it means that the president is under investigation now even though he apparently wasn’t as of May 9, the day he fired Comey, who has since outed himself as a leaker of information about Trump. The notes he took during discussions with Trump are considered his work product and therefore property of the U.S. government that he has a duty to surrender to investigators. Additionally, Comey have committed a crime when he leaked the notes.

“The FBI leak of information regarding the president is outrageous, inexcusable and illegal,” said Mark Corallo, on behalf of Marc Kasowitz, Trump’s personal attorney.

Now that the likelihood of Trump or any of his associates being found to have colluded with Russia to rig the last election has dropped to approximately zero for want of evidence, this Deep State-sponsored political theater is moving on to the next best thing: obstruction of justice, a perennial crowd pleaser in the snake pit that is Washington.

And the Left now has an added incentive to push the obstruction narrative because they don’t want to talk about how one of their own, unemployed Trump-hating Bernie Sanders supporter James T. Hodgkinson, late of a white cargo van parked on the streets of Alexandria, Va., came close to assassinating House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) at a baseball practice on Wednesday morning.

President Trump, who turned 71 Wednesday, called out the Washington establishment for the all-too-convenient narrative shift.

“They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story. Nice[,]” Trump tweeted yesterday at 6:55 a.m.

An hour later he followed up with: “You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history – led by some very bad and conflicted people! #MAGA[.]”

This move toward possible obstruction charges by Mueller “marks a major turning point in the nearly year-old FBI investigation, which until recently focused on Russian meddling during the presidential campaign and on whether there was any coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin,” wrote reporters at the Post. “Investigators have also been looking for any evidence of possible financial crimes among Trump associates, officials said.”