As the FBI Hits Back At GOP/Trump Improprieties, a Constitutional Crisis Looms

Frighteningly, House Republicans continue to be hell bent to release a memo concocked by Rep. Devin Nunes, an apparent Trump/Putin minion, that the FBI and Justice Department state will create a national security danger to America.  Their sole motivation seems to be protect Der  Trumpenführer who is increasingly desperate to undermine the Mueller investigation.  As former RNC chairman Michael Steele noted last evening, some one innocent does not got to such extreme lengths to kill or discredit an investigation.  Steele's conclusion?  Trump has something very bad that he is seeking to hide.  As for Houser republicans and others who are trashing the FBI and Justice Department, his prediction is that the ultimate fall out will be extremely damaging to the Republican Party. Meanwhile, the FBI -including Trump's handpick director - and Justice Department took the unusually step of warning that the release of Nunes' concocked memo will cause serious national security to the nation.  I truly do not remember a time in my life time - Watergate included - when one political party has put partisanship and protecting an extremely foul occupant of the White Hose ahead of the national interest.  A piece in The Atlantic at the headlong plunge toward a constitutional crisis.  Here are excerpts:

For more than two weeks, the Trump White House has engaged in an unprecedented assault on the president’s own Justice Department, and in particular on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and the the FBI. On Wednesday, the targets of that assault started firing back.

The apparent catalyst is a memo, prepared at the behest of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, that is said to allege inappropriate use of a dossier, compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, in securing a warrant to surveil former Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser Carter Page. On Monday, the committee voted along partisan lines to release the memo, and the White House now has a chance to review the release.

The DOJ and FBI have both strenuously argued in private that the memo is factually wrong, because it leaves out key points; that it is misleading, because it is decoupled from the intelligence that feeds it; and that it would recklessly reveal classified information. On Monday, according to The Washington Post, Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray went to the White House to campaign against release. On Wednesday, the FBI went farther, releasing a highly unusual, unsigned public statement arguing against release. Saying that the FBI takes cooperation with congressional overseers seriously, it nonetheless laid down its flat opposition to releasing the memo. “The FBI was provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it,” the statement said. “As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”

In publicly making this blunt statement, the FBI places itself on a collision course with the White House. The president, hoping the memo will vindicate him or at least undermine the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia, seems disposed to release it. . . . . Wednesday’s statement looks like a last-ditch effort to convince the White House, but if it doesn’t work, the rift will be clear. Wray risks making himself the second FBI director Trump fires.

Later on Wednesday, CNN reported that in December, as the Justice Department tried to push back on demands for documents from Nunes, Rosenstein visited the White House to ask Trump’s assistance. . . . . Rosenstein was also preparing for important testimony at the Capitol. Nunes, meanwhile, was a member of the Trump transition team and previously colluded with White House aides. . . . According to CNN, citing “sources familiar with the meeting,” Trump asked Rosenstein if he was “on my team.”

Trump has a history of asking questions of aides that seem to demand personal loyalty, even of those charged with upholding laws. Fired FBI Director James Comey testified under oath that Trump asked him for loyalty in January 2017. At a May meeting, Trump reportedly asked Comey’s deputy, Andrew McCabe, who became acting director of the FBI, who he had voted for in the 2016 election.

Then CNN dropped another big story about FBI agent Peter Strzok, who has been accused of conspiring to hurt Trump’s campaign; . . . . Emails obtained by CNN indicate Strzok wrote the first draft of a letter that Comey sent to Congress on October 28, 2016, informing members that the FBI was reopening an investigation into Clinton based on emails newly found on Anthony Weiner’s computer. Strzok “also supported reopening the Clinton investigation once the emails were discovered on disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner's laptop, according to a source familiar with Strzok’s thinking,” CNN said. The revelation further undermines the story of Strzok leading some sort of resistance cell to Trump inside the FBI . . . .

[A]s my colleague David Frum put it on Twitter, “Never start a leak war against the FBI.” . . . . people in the bureaucracy have used leaks to get back at those who cross them.

A man who campaigned for president as the candidate of “law and order” is sprinting headlong into releasing a memo that the head of the FBI—Trump’s own hand-picked director—and the deputy attorney general, another Trump pick, believe could mislead the public and damage law enforcement. Meanwhile, there’s a real possibility that Trump’s attacks on the FBI and Justice Department have inspired retaliatory leaks, meaning that the president would have effectively elicited just the deep-state conspiracy against him that he alleged in the first place.

The White House’s assault on Justice and the FBI has long been premised on being able to an asymmetric war: Trump and his allies can make claims or even release the memo, but DOJ, bound by concerns about classified information, is hobbled from rebutting the memo. But many of the claims laid out by Trump champions make little or no sense.

In an increasingly energetic attempt to discredit the investigations that are targeting him, especially the Mueller probe, Trump is not discriminating about his targets.  The question is less whether Rosenstein or any other individual views himself as on the president’s team, but whether the president sees them as members of the opposing team.