A remarkable rebuke of a sitting president
I tolja this was serious biz. I tolja he’d get in trouble. He’s getting in trouble.
The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, asked the Justice Department this weekend to publicly reject President Trump’s assertion that President Barack Obama ordered the tapping of Mr. Trump’s phones, senior American officials said on Sunday. Mr. Comey has argued that the highly charged claim is false and must be corrected, they said, but the department has not released any such statement.
Mr. Comey, who made the request on Saturday after Mr. Trump leveled his allegation on Twitter, has been working to get the Justice Department to knock down the claim because it falsely insinuates that the F.B.I. broke the law, the officials said.
Not because it’s an obvious lie about Obama, but whatever.
Mr. Comey’s request is a remarkable rebuke of a sitting president, putting the nation’s top law enforcement official in the position of questioning Mr. Trump’s truthfulness. The confrontation between the two is the most serious consequence of Mr. Trump’s weekend Twitter outburst, and it underscores the dangers of what the president and his aides have unleashed by accusing the former president of a conspiracy to undermine Mr. Trump’s young administration.
Too bad Comey helped him get elected then isn’t it.
The White House showed no indication that it would back down from Mr. Trump’s claims. On Sunday, the president demanded a congressional inquiry into whether Mr. Obama had abused the power of federal law enforcement agencies before the 2016 presidential election. In a statement from his spokesman, Mr. Trump called “reports” about the wiretapping “very troubling” and said that Congress should examine them as part of its investigations into Russia’s meddling in the election.
Yeah, Donnie, and while you’re at it tell them to look into Obama’s birth certificate, and also that DNA evidence that exonerated the Central Park 5.
Mr. Comey’s behind-the-scenes maneuvering is certain to invite contrasts to his actions last year, when he spoke publicly about the Hillary Clinton email case and disregarded Justice Department entreaties not to.
Well yes. I do wonder about those contrasts.
The claims about wiretapping appear similar in some ways to the unfounded voter fraud charges that Mr. Trump made during his first days in the Oval Office. Just after Inauguration Day, he reiterated in a series of Twitter posts his belief that millions of voters had cast ballots illegally — claims that also appeared to be based on conspiracy theories from right-wing websites.
As with his demand for a wiretapping inquiry, Mr. Trump also called for a “major investigation” into voter fraud, saying on Twitter that “depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!” No investigation has been started.
I know what the resemblance is. It’s that in both cases he’s making shit up. It’s that in both cases he’s completely reckless about making large claims that could have huge impacts without due diligence. It’s that in both cases he seems to have no clue whatsoever how to go about questioning or testing or investigating claims; he seems to have no clue that that’s even necessary.
He’s hopelessly dense and hopelessly unwilling to learn.
https://www.facebook.com/144310995587370/photos/a.271728576178944.71555.144310995587370/1461625057189284/?type=3&theater
I find it incredible the way Trump’s spokes people have developed to deal with this kind of blurt from Trump. The wording is a very precise “He believes this based on reports he has seen, if these reports are true they are very troubling.” At no time do the staff identify the reports or attest to the veracity of the reports or the reasonableness of the belief. The art of appearing to support your boss, while actually stepping sideways.
Rob, ‘…if these reports…’
As my dear old Grandad used to say, “If my auntie had a penis she’d be my uncle”.
Grandad died long before trans-politics became a thing.
“He believes this based on reports he has seen, if these reports are true they are very troubling.”
I wonder which comes first, the beliefs or the reports. In other words, to paraphrase the Downing Street memo, are “the intelligence and facts being fixed around the policy?” With Bannon around it shouldn’t be too difficult to gin up a bit of fake news to justify a Trump tweetstorm, which then is followed by a demand for a congressional inquiry.
AoS, that timing is to all our loss. I suspect your Grandad would have had something pithy, entertaining and possibly a little horrifying to say.
@Sam Day
In this case it seems the reports came first. Trump seems to be responding to some Breitbart bullpucky which was based on conspiratorial allegations a conservative talk radio host pulled out of his rectum which were based on mainstream news reports that did not say anything like what.
You can follow the probable “reasoning” so-called, and compare it with the real story here:
https://www.justsecurity.org/38347/tapping-trump/
Rob, he was a veteren of WW1, injured on the Somme when shrapnel tore him open from hip to chest. He used to say that he left two things behind when he was shipped home, “…most of my large intestine and any belief I once had in God, and by God I miss my intestine”
He had a lifelong hatred of authoritarians*, so yes, I would dearly love the chance to hear his views on today’s world.
Unlike many of his generation he bore no ill-will towards foreigners of any stripe, preferring ‘not to judge a person by their colour, their sex, or their nationality, but by their words and actions alone”.
*A trait I’m glad to say I inherited.
Sounds like one hell of an interesting person AoS.
You make me wish I knew the veiws of my own WWI veteran great grampa; the perspective of people from such a different era can be very informative. Or horrifying. Perhaps it is better he died while I was a child so that I never got to find out the possibility of his views being repugnant, who knows.
Either way, that 85 year gae difference proved a little hard to bridge so I guess I have no real idea.
I know that during WWI my grandfather (who was on the frontlines on the German side) had to clean up the stables and during inspection everything had to be spotless, which meant that if a horse suddenly had to do something during the inspection, my grandfather had to hold out his helmet and catch it before it hit the floor.
He was a good man, Rob, died in ’72 and I still miss him. One more story (sorry for the meandering, Ophelia); He played the guitar and had a love of jazz. During WWII there were US troops stationed near to his house, and a POW camp literally just down the road. The camp allowed trusted prisoners to work in the community voluntarily, and Grandad had a German named Karl regularly help with his garden. Anyway, one day the two of them were having a break, Grandad playing jazz on his guitar and Karl drumming an old tea chest, when Grandad noticed two black GIs stood behind a hedge listening in so invited them to come in and have a seat (and a bottle or two of his lethal home brew).
Long story short, the two American lads also played, one guitar and the other was a trumpeteer, so Grandad borrowed instruments for them from a workmate who was in the Salvation Army, and until the GIs were posted overseas, the neighbours were regularly treated to ad-hoc afternoon concerts by this most unlikely of jazz quartets.
All survived the war and maintained contact for the rest of their lives.
Yep, a good man.
Thanks Ophelia for giving us the leeway to have this side discussion. And thanks AoS for sharing the memories of your Grandad. I’ve certainly valued them and didn’t want to leave your last post hanging. Even my hard-arsed, cynical and slightly non-pc partner nodded in an approving manner at your comments.