Hopefully, Donald Trump's malignant narcissism will be his undoing. In firing James Comey to seemingly stop the FBI's Russiagate investigation, Trump may actually have set the stage for an intensifying of the investigation with any delay being short term at best. Perhaps more dangerously for Trump and his fellow conspirator, the move may make more true patriots in the FBI and intelligence agencies feel compelled to leak what they know to the media and accelerate things towards impeachment or better yet, prosecution for treason. Trump, of course is too impulsive and too easily enraged by anything or anyone who upsets his fragile ego. A column in the New York Times looks at Trump's possible undoing of himself. Another good piece is in New York Magazine. First excerpts from the Times piece:
Once again, Donald Trump has done something that no president before him dared to do. This time, he has fired an F.B.I. director engaged in an active and continuing investigation of his own campaign. The decision reflects President Trump’s most autocratic instincts, showcasing his contempt for the independence of federal investigators as well as for the basic search for truth.Given his frequent calls to prosecute Hillary Clinton for using a private email server, the anger he directed at the F.B.I. director, James Comey, for giving her a “free pass,” and reports that he directed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to find a reason to fire Mr. Comey, it’s hard to believe the president’s claim that he made his decision out of concern for Mr. Comey’s harsh treatment of Mrs. Clinton during the campaign.
But if Mr. Trump actually hopes to shut down or limit the F.B.I. investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia, he may well be disappointed. History suggests that his decision is likely to backfire, producing new leaks and heightened inquiries that will be more difficult to control than he imagines.
President Trump may think he has sent a stern warning to leakers and independent bureaucrats unwilling to toe the White House line. Instead, he may well have incited an internal rebellion.
That’s what happened in 1972, when President Richard Nixon suddenly found himself in a position to replace J. Edgar Hoover, the long-serving and infamous F.B.I. director. . . . . Hoover and Nixon came into conflict over the investigation of the Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg. Nixon discussed the possibility of firing Hoover, convinced that the director was too old and cautious — and too independent of White House influence. But Nixon worried that Hoover knew too much, and he recognized the political dangers inherent in firing an F.B.I. director.
Then Hoover died, of a heart attack, on May 2, 1972. The event made front-page news, and all three television networks carried Hoover’s funeral live. For Nixon, it appeared to be a moment of serendipity — a chance to do what he had long wanted to do. Instead, it turned out to be the beginning of a long national nightmare.
The F.B.I.’s Watergate investigation was not yet underway. But Nixon already believed that control of the F.B.I. would be critical for his political future. He hoped especially that a newly cooperative bureau would help to dam the fast-flowing stream of leaks from the executive branch. Instead, he inspired one of the great leakers of all time: the F.B.I. associate director W. Mark Felt.
In June 1972, when Washington police arrested five men connected to the Nixon campaign during a break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex, Felt recognized an opportunity. As the journalist Bob Woodward admitted more than a decade ago, Felt turned on Nixon in the summer of 1972, feeding information to The Washington Post as the legendary informer Deep Throat.
Felt’s leaks served in part to counter intense pressure from the White House, which sought to end the F.B.I. investigation. . . . The F.B.I. proceeded nonetheless, painstakingly digging into Nixon’s campaign and its ties to the Watergate burglars. Felt leaked some of those discoveries to the press, keeping the story alive at a moment when Republicans hoped it would simply disappear.
Many commentators have pointed to Cox’s dismissal as the closest precedent for Mr. Comey’s firing: the last time a president tried to use his executive power to stop an investigation — and failed to get what he wanted. The story of the F.B.I.’s succession crisis raises still more troubling prospects for Mr. Trump in the months ahead. Despite having political skills far superior to President Trump’s, Nixon never managed to “consolidate control of the F.B.I.” in 1972, at the peak of his popularity. To the contrary, his attempts to do so fatally undermined his presidency, setting in motion a political and bureaucratic backlash from which Nixon — indeed, the presidency itself — never fully recovered.
Trump, of course, knows little or no history, his focus always being on himself. The sycophants with which he has surrounded himself at the White House are little better.
The New York Magazine continues the theme. Here are highlights:
The axing of James Comey will not be the end of the Russia investigation. But it may be the beginning of the end of the Trump administration.
Let’s assume the worst immediate scenario for the moment. That the Vichy Republicans in D.C. — whether Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, or the big-bark-no-bite John McCain and Lindsey Graham — either block or pocket veto the Democrats’ calls for an independent prosecutor. And that somehow Trump and Jeff Sessions (who claims to have recused himself from all matters Russian, but clearly has not) ram one of their personal toadies through the Senate as the next FBI director: Rudy Giuliani perhaps, or Michael Mukasey, or, heaven knows, Jeanine Pirro.
Nonetheless, the new director’s attempts to further derail the ongoing investigation will be met with revolt by the career professionals within the organization — an unwinding that may already be happening. There will be chaos. There will be leaks. There will be resignations. There will be synergy, clandestine or otherwise, with the Senate and House investigations into Trump and Russia. There will be blood. After the news of the firing broke last night, McCain called the scandal “a centipede” and made an unassailable prediction: “I guarantee you there will be more shoes to drop, I can just guarantee it. There’s just too much information that we don’t have that will be coming out.”
Anyone in criminal jeopardy will be out to save his or her own butt, not to protect Donald J. Trump. This includes Michael Flynn — whom Trump is trying to hush up by continuing to sing his praises in public, presumably because Flynn knows enough to blackmail Trump (just as Russia knew enough to blackmail Flynn). My guess is that Flynn, who took such delight in calling for Hillary Clinton to be locked up, does not want to go to prison. Nor, I imagine, do the other White House hands who may be implicated in the 18-day gap that separated Sally Yates’s informing the White House counsel Don McGahn that Flynn was lying about his dealings with the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and Flynn’s exit.
Now that Trump, by his own actions, has shown that the Russia investigation is anything but the “total hoax” that his tweets have claimed — now that everyone knows he sees himself in criminal jeopardy — he’ll be engulfed in 24/7 whack-a-mole as the “fake news” rolls out one revelation after another. And those revelations won’t just be about Russia, but about the entire family enterprise
No comments:
Post a Comment