Many administrations have a news cycle, but the Trump regime has a news spiral, with matters ramping up and up—then up again. Tuesday night’s dash up the ramp was another of those moments when it seemed the whole thing has to be approaching a cliff.
On March 22, less than a week after being confirmed by the Senate, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats attended a briefing at the White House together with officials from several government agencies. As the briefing was wrapping up, Trump asked everyone to leave the room except for Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo.
The president then started complaining about the FBI investigation and Comey’s handling of it, said officials familiar with the account Coats gave to associates. Two days earlier, Comey had confirmed in a congressional hearing that the bureau was probing whether Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia during the 2016 race.
As James Comey prepares to testify on Thursday, the biggest item on the list of things people are holding their breath about is whether Comey will confirm that Donald Trump sent other people out of the room, then asked Comey to drop the investigation into Michael Flynn. But as it turns out, Comey’s situation wasn’t even close to unique. Trump did the same with both the DNI and the head of the CIA was there.
Your historical reminder for the morning the breaking point for Watergate, the point where those mythical Republicans of yore made their sad trudge to the White House to tell Nixon that it was all over, came on the news that Tricky Dick had tried to get the CIA to interfere in the FBI’s investigation. Just the CIA. As former DNI James Clapper noted early this morning:
“I have to say that, when you compare the two, that Watergate pales, really, in my view, compared to what we’re confronting now.”
Trump’s actions are obstruction taken to the scale of a Grand Guignol. He’s building a wall all right … across justice.
The most shocking aspect of the Coats, Pompeo attempt at suborning the investigation is that the public is only finding out about it now.
After the encounter, Coats discussed the conversation with other officials and decided that intervening with Comey as Trump had suggested would be inappropriate, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters.
Which is … something. Coats will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee today, so more information about this obstruction attempt should quickly become clear, assuming Coats hasn’t been instructed to hold his tongue by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Meanwhile, sitting in the dark with his rheumy eyes fixed on Fox News, unhappy that people talk about his failed attempts at arm-twisting, Donald Trump is prepared to take on James Comey’s testimony with his own stubby Twitter fingers.
Alone in the White House in recent days, President Trump — frustrated and defiant — has been spoiling for a fight, according to his confidants and associates.
Glued even more than usual to the cable news shows that blare from the televisions in his private living quarters, or from the 60-inch flat screen he had installed in his cramped study off the Oval Office, he has fumed about “fake news.” Trump has seethed as his agenda has stalled in Congress and the courts. He has chafed against the pleas for caution from his lawyers and political advisers, tweeting whatever he wants, whenever he wants.
And there’s just one man in his hunter-orange sights.
“He’s infuriated at a deep-gut, personal level that the elite media has tolerated [the Russia story] and praised Comey,” former House speaker Newt Gingrich said. “He’s not going to let some guy like that smear him without punching him as hard as he can.”
Yeah. Some guy like that. How could some media-loving glory-hound could get in the way of Donald Trump? It’s unthunkable. In Tuesday’s press conference, Sean Spicer pointedly refused to say that Trump was not going to be spending his Thursday hunched in front of the coverage, flecks of spittle splashing against the screen as he thumps out his Comey commentary. Spider instead insisted that Trump would have “a very, very busy day.” And likely a very, very angry day. Which seems to be the only kind Trump is having.
To this point, Republicans have shown a remarkable ability to tolerate anything, anything, anything in the blind march toward the holy grail of getting tax breaks for billionaires. But now the watchspring really is winding ever tighter.
Here's why the latest news is particularly bad for Trump: It erases any idea that the Comey request was just a one-off. We have now learned that Comey isn't the only top official whom Trump approached in an effort to free Flynn from his investigation.
Donald Trump repeatedly interfered with the investigation into Michael Flynn. Why Trump did so is an interesting question, one that deserves an answers. But why he did so shouldn’t matter to this—the institution of impeachment proceedings against Donald John Trump.