The Purge continues apace
by digby
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| Always projection. Always. |
Congressman Ted Lieu:
As a Member of the House Judiciary Committee, I read the partisan, classified Nunes House Intel memo. I can’t talk about it. However, here’s an analogy.
Remember Geraldo Rivera and the infamous Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults? It’s like that, but Geraldo Rivera has more integrity.
They are setting up the firing of Rosenstein as part of their “purge.” They will probably get away with it. The question will be if the people they replace them with are Trump gangsters or honest citizens.
A secret, highly contentious Republican memo reveals that Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein approved an application to extend surveillance of a former Trump campaign associate shortly after taking office last spring, according to three people familiar with it.
The renewal shows that the Justice Department under President Trump saw reason to believe that the associate, Carter Page, was acting as a Russian agent. But the reference to Mr. Rosenstein’s actions in the memo — a much-disputed document that paints the investigation into Russian election meddling as tainted from the start — indicates that Republicans may be moving to seize on his role as they seek to undermine the inquiry.
The memo’s primary contention is that F.B.I. and Justice Department officials failed to adequately explain to an intelligence court judge in initially seeking a warrant for surveillance of Mr. Page that they were relying in part on research by an investigator, Christopher Steele, that had been financed by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Democrats who have read the document say Republicans have cherry-picked facts to create a misleading and dangerous narrative. But in their efforts to discredit the inquiry, Republicans could potentially use Mr. Rosenstein’s decision to approve the renewal to suggest that he failed to properly vet a highly sensitive application for a warrant to spy on Mr. Page, who served as a Trump foreign policy adviser until September 2016.
A handful of senior Justice Department officials can approve an application to the secret surveillance court, but in practice that responsibility often falls to the deputy attorney general. No information has publicly emerged that the Justice Department or the F.B.I. did anything improper while seeking the surveillance warrant involving Mr. Page.
Mr. Trump has long been mistrustful of Mr. Rosenstein, the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, who appointed the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and now oversees his investigation into Mr. Trump’s campaign and possible obstruction of justice by the president. Mr. Trump considered firing Mr. Rosenstein last summer. Instead, he ordered Mr. Mueller to be fired, then backed down after the White House counsel refused to carry out the order, The New York Times reported last week.
Mr. Trump is now again telling associates that he is frustrated with Mr. Rosenstein, according to one official familiar with the conversations.
Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, who is close to Mr. Trump and House Republicans, signaled interest in Mr. Rosenstein this month as news of the memo’s existence first circulated, asking on air if Mr. Rosenstein had played a role in extending the surveillance. “I’m very interested about Rod Rosenstein in all of this,” he said.
I think it’s obvious what’s going on. But I would just remind people of what happened after Nixon fired Cox and hired a hard right Texas prosecutor named Leon Jaworski who by all accounts went into it thinking the president was being railroaded. I wrote about how that went in this column for Salon a month or so ago. Here’s the relevant piece of it:
Nixon ended up having to appoint another special prosecutor and picked a conservative Texan, Leon Jaworski, who was predisposed to give the president the benefit of the doubt. But after refusing to appeal the case to the Supreme Court, Nixon finally gave up the tapes. When Jaworski heard him talking to John Dean, he said, “can you believe the president of the United States coaching a witness on how to evade the truth?”
That’s when the prosecutors got their indictments of the presidents’ men and delivered their case to the House committee considering impeachment.
Watching Trump and knowing how often he lies, it seems inevitable that there have been more than a few such moments for Mueller in reading some of those emails and listening to testimony from people around the president. The difference is that Nixon had an understanding of the necessity of maintaining stability in the system, even as he abused it terribly. Trump doesn’t even know what the system is and his lawyers don’t seem to have much of a grasp of it either. So far, Republicans in Congress are completely unwilling to do their duty.
I don’t know what the replacements for Rosenstein, McCabe and the rest of the “purged” members of the DOJ might think of the evidence when they see it. But it’s always possible that whoever it is might just respect the constitution and the rule of law and recognize this Geraldo Rivera put-up job for what it is. Or not. But the way it’s going it appears we’re going to find out.
Trump is purging the department of anyone who worked on the Clinton email case so that he can instruct his henchmen to lock her up. Nothing will thrill his base more than deporting Mexicans, building a wall — and putting that woman in her place at long last. It is the essence of his re-election strategy.
The other part of the purge is to get rid of Mueller however he can. Since firing him outright would upset some Republicans, they are going about it in a more roundabout way. They want to replace his boss with someone who can rein in the investigation and also, hopefully, keep the White House apprised of all developments so they can get ahead of the cover up.
Trump wants his Roy Cohn and he’s going to keep firing people until he gets him.
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