Not for seeking to obstruct the Russian Federation probe, mind you (he didn’t), but in connection with Trump’s expressed hope that Comey could “let go” of a tertiary investigation into Michael Flynn.
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A few minutes before that tweet, Trump spoke about the witch hunt, saying “Despite the phony Witch Hunt going on in America, the economic & jobs numbers are great”.
Earler this month, Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Trump’s tweets were official statements and that “the President is the most effective messenger on his agenda”. President Donald Trump, whose combative instincts are to lash out and not retreat, has given his legal team a clear direction: fight, fight, fight.
In another tweet earlier Friday, Trump writes, “After 7 months of investigations & committee hearings about my ‘collusion with the Russians, ‘ nobody has been able to show any proof”.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, one of Trump’s staunchest supporters, said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that the president’s “compulsion to counterattack” doesn’t serve him well.
Gingrich, the former House speaker whose wife is seeking Senate approval to become the US ambassador to the Vatican, continued to defend Trump Thursday morning.
“Trump has a compulsion to counter-attack and is very pugnacious”. Let President Trump do his job; let Republicans and Democrats in Congress do theirs; and, if any law has been broken in connection with Russian meddling or obstruction of justice, let the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the special counsel investigate and act accordingly.
But legal scholars say there is a strong case for obstruction of justice charges against the president, based on Trump’s statement during an interview that he fired Comey because of the FBI’s branch of the investigation and memos Comey wrote indicating the president pressured him to drop part of the investigation. Public perception aside, being the subject of an investigation is also debilitating because of the time it takes to defend oneself, the financial burden of retaining lawyers (and, for a public official, retaining press agents who can deal with the media frenzy), and the anxiety that makes it hard to focus on one’s job and other responsibilities. “But let’s face it, the president speaks to 107 million people through his social media platforms”.
THE FACTS: The president once again shows a lack of understanding of how law-enforcement investigations work, or a willingness to misrepresent the process. He said he was untroubled by claims Trump tried to persuade Comey to back off the investigation, saying those revelations only emerged after Comey was sacked and wanted to defend himself.
If the Post story turns out to be real news, what we will have is an investigation of an impossible crime being conducted by a special counsel who is burdened by severe conflicts and supervised by another conflicted official.
“It looks like we have got a simmering tea kettle here, and the President seems to be testing the waters about whether he ought to go ahead and fire Robert Mueller”, said Richard Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate prosecutor who is now a CNN legal analyst. They have tried to highlight the positive reviews he received Wednesday when he made a statesman-like appearance in the White House to address the nation after Rep. Steve Scalise was shot during a congressional baseball practice. The attorney also maintained that there could not be any investigation into Trump’s firing of James Comey as FBI director because the president had full constitutional authority to oust the agency head.
“If I had nothing to hide and someone wanted to investigate, I would say, ‘Go ahead, do your thing, I don’t care, because you won’t find anything, ‘” said Younger, a Democrat who imports jewelry supplies.
Comey made the existence of this investigation public in a March hearing before the House intelligence committee.
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The White House spent the day clarifying that the President was not confirming whether he was indeed under investigation, but rather was simply responding to the report.
