In Trump vs. the F.B.I., Trump Will Lose

Outside of Fox News viewers and Daily Stormer readers - both groups live in a delusional alternate universe where racism and hatred of others are the primary motivation - a majority of Americans seem to be figuring out the truth about the Trump/Nunes effort to wage war against the FBI and Justice Department in the hope of stopping the Russiagate investigation that increasingly appears on the verge of revealing serious crimes by Trump and most of the circle of liars and sycophants  with whom he has surrounded himself.  Indeed, a vast majority of Americans (71%) want Trump to be questioned under oath by Robert Mueller.  Many hope and believe that before it is all over, other senior Republicans - think Mitch McConnell - might also be exposed as having aided and abetted in the cover up of Trump/Pence collusion with Russia.  Obstruction of justice in short hand parlance. Tim Weiner, an author of historical works and a former national security correspondent for The New York Times has a column in the New York Times that lays out in simple terms what lies behind the Trump/Nunes/GOP war against the FBI and why, if America proves lucky, Trump will lose and will deservedly be remembered as one of America's worst and most dishonest occupants of the White House.  Here are column highlights:

Trump entered office last year as a singular figure. But he has come to resemble two of his predecessors in one crucial respect. Though he’s more paranoid than Richard Nixon and more mendacious than Bill Clinton, he seems bent on following them down a road to hell: a confrontation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Like them, he’ll lose.

He might win the battle with the bureau over the pending release of a scurrilous memo concocted by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, a cudgel created to attack everyone who’s been in charge of the federal investigation of Team Trump. He may try to fire them all. But he won’t win the war.

We have a good idea what’s in the poison-pen four-page memo. . . . . It argues, essentially, that the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, and F.B.I. leaders deceived the federal judge who approved the wiretap warrant and extended it in 2017.

The bureau called the memo materially false and misleading in an extraordinary unsigned statement on Wednesday afternoon. Christopher Wray, whom Mr. Trump installed after defenestrating James Comey, has personally emphasized the danger of releasing the memo.

[Trump] clearly sees the memo as a weapon of political warfare — a way to rid himself of Mr. Rosenstein, who oversees both the F.B.I. and the special prosecutor investigating the White House, Robert Mueller. Mr. Rosenstein has made it clear that he will not fire Mr. Mueller at the president’s whim — which, to the president, means he needs to go.

If he ousts Mr. Rosenstein, he might conceivably find a replacement somewhere in the bowels of the Justice Department. He’d want a stooge, a willing executioner, more loyal to him than to the Constitution . . . .

Mr. Trump has been transparent in his antagonism. It is not a disinterested belief that the bureau is corrupt and in need of reform.  He’d been in office for only six days when F.B.I. agents came to the White House to interview the national security adviser, Mike Flynn, who’d engaged in skulduggery with Russia. Mr. Flynn lied to the F.B.I.

In that moment, the counterintelligence case became a criminal case focusing on the White House. Ever since, the president has done nearly everything in his power to subvert and sabotage the investigators.

He now stands on the verge of re-enacting the Saturday Night Massacre, when Nixon forced out his own attorney general and the next man in line in order to sack the special prosecutor investigating Watergate. Nixon’s willing executioner back in the October 1973 was the No. 3 man at Justice, the solicitor general Robert Bork. At the end of that fateful night, Nixon promised him the next seat on the Supreme Court. It worked out badly for all concerned . . . .

[A]s Nixon learned, the president can’t fire his way out of this crisis. Despite the degradations and depredations that this president has inflicted on the executive branch, there remains a phalanx of honorable people at the Justice Department and the F.B.I. more beholden to principle than politics, prepared to fall on their swords rather than suborn high crimes. Mr. Wray is one.

When he was sworn in four months ago, he told an audience of F.B.I. agents that he was going to uphold the Constitution and follow the rule of law.

The framers of the Constitution contemplated there would be times like this. Though they failed to foresee a leader quite like Donald Trump — a man more akin to the mad King George of England than to Madison and Jefferson — they knew not every president would be enlightened. But they did not dream any would be so benighted, so blind as to place personal loyalty above the rule of law.

The president has measured Mr. Mueller for the guillotine for months. As the bloodhounds close in on the Oval Office, he may sharpen his blade and place the prosecutor’s head on a pike. If so, he’ll have to confront the Constitution. And he’ll lose again.

Of course, if the Elector College electors had performed their duty as designed by the Founding Fathers, Trump would never have been certified and  America's domestic and international degradation could have been avoided.  Going forward, the Electoral College needs to either be abolished or consist of electors with spines who put their constitutional duty to safeguard the nation ahead of partisanship.