Trump Once Again Displays His Nixonian Side
A new report indicates that President Trump wanted to use the Justice Department to target political enemies. The last time that happened, it led to Articles of Impeachment.
Late yesterday, The New York Times reported that President Trump wanted to order the Justice Department to investigate Hillary Clinton and James Comey and that he was only thwarted by the advice and actions of his former White House Counsel:
WASHINGTON — President Trump told the White House counsel in the spring that he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute two of his political adversaries: his 2016 challenger, Hillary Clinton, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, according to two people familiar with the conversation.
The lawyer, Donald F. McGahn II, rebuffed the president, saying that he had no authority to order a prosecution. Mr. McGahn said that while he could request an investigation, that too could prompt accusations of abuse of power. To underscore his point, Mr. McGahn had White House lawyers write a memo for Mr. Trump warning that if he asked law enforcement to investigate his rivals, he could face a range of consequences, including possible impeachment.
The encounter was one of the most blatant examples yet of how Mr. Trump views the typically independent Justice Department as a tool to be wielded against his political enemies. It took on additional significance in recent weeks when Mr. McGahn left the White House and Mr. Trump appointed a relatively inexperienced political loyalist, Matthew G. Whitaker, as the acting attorney general.
It is unclear whether Mr. Trump read Mr. McGahn’s memo or whether he pursued the prosecutions further. But the president has continued to privately discuss the matter, including the possible appointment of a second special counsel to investigate both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Comey, according to two people who have spoken to Mr. Trump about the issue. He has also repeatedly expressed disappointment in the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, for failing to more aggressively investigate Mrs. Clinton, calling him weak, one of the people said.
A White House spokesman declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the F.B.I. declined to comment on the president’s criticism of Mr. Wray, whom he appointed last year after firing Mr. Comey.
“Mr. McGahn will not comment on his legal advice to the president,” said Mr. McGahn’s lawyer, William A. Burck. “Like any client, the president is entitled to confidentiality. Mr. McGahn would point out, though, that the president never, to his knowledge, ordered that anyone prosecute Hillary Clinton or James Comey.”
It is not clear which accusations Mr. Trump wanted prosecutors to pursue. He has accused Mr. Comey, without evidence, of illegally having classified information shared with The New York Times in a memo that Mr. Comey wrote about his interactions with the president. The document contained no classified information.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers also privately asked the Justice Department last year to investigate Mr. Comey for mishandling sensitive government information and for his role in the Clinton email investigation. Law enforcement officials declined their requests. Mr. Comey is a witness against the president in the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.
Mr. Trump has grown frustrated with Mr. Wray for what the president sees as his failure to investigate Mrs. Clinton’s role in the Obama administration’s decision to allow the Russian nuclear agency to buy a uranium mining company. Conservatives have long pointed to donations to the Clinton family foundation by people associated with the company, Uranium One, as proof of corruption. But no evidence has emerged that those donations influenced the American approval of the deal.
Mr. Trump repeatedly pressed Justice Department officials about the status of Clinton-related investigations, including Mr. Whitaker when he was the chief of staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversations. CNN first reported those discussions.
In his conversation with Mr. McGahn, the president asked what stopped him from ordering the Justice Department to investigate Mr. Comey and Mrs. Clinton, the two people familiar with the conversation said. He did have the authority to ask the Justice Department to investigate, Mr. McGahn said, but warned that making such a request could create a series of problems.
Mr. McGahn promised to write a memo outlining the president’s authorities. In the days that followed, lawyers in the White House Counsel’s Office wrote a several-page document in which they strongly cautioned Mr. Trump against asking the Justice Department to investigate anyone.
The lawyers laid out a series of consequences. For starters, Justice Department lawyers could refuse to follow Mr. Trump’s orders even before an investigation began, setting off another political firestorm.
If charges were brought, judges could dismiss them. And Congress, they added, could investigate the president’s role in a prosecution and begin impeachment proceedings.
Ultimately, the lawyers warned, Mr. Trump could be voted out of office if voters believed he had abused his power.
It’s difficult to overstate the meaning of this report, even if the investigations that Trump wanted never took place. Essentially, if The New York Times is to be believed, the President of the United States attempted to use the Justice Department to not only investigate but prosecute his political enemies. While some would argue that this is hardly surprising given the fact that Trump himself telegraphed that he would do precisely this during the course of the campaign, including during one of the three debates with Clinton herself during which he told her to her face that he wanted to put her in jail, and that he would do so if and when he became President.The idea of investigating and prosecuting Clinton and Comey even though there’s no evidence that either one of them did anything illegal is also something that Trump has repeatedly referred to in the campaign-style speeches he continues to give as President.
It’s no exaggeration to say that this, using the tools of law enforcement against political enemies, is a fairly serious matter. So serious that it was the subject of the second Article of Impeachment that was approved by the House Judiciary Committee against President Nixon just days before he resigned from office. While Trump, unlike Nixon, was ultimately talked out of taking the course of action he wanted to take, but that doesn’t make the story any less significant, nor does it make this President any less dangerous to the Rule of Law.
Whether or not this all ultimately leads to impeachment remains to be seen, but Matt Naham at Law & Crime makes a persuasive argument for the proposition that a report like this arguably helps to strengthen any case that Robert Mueller may be putting together against the President:
William A. Burck told the Times that McGahn was not going to comment on the legal advice he’s given to the president. Still, Burck said, “the president never, to his knowledge, ordered that anyone prosecute Hillary Clinton or James Comey.”
The interesting thing about this comment is that it’s quite blatantly a non-denial denial. The Times reported that Trump wanted to order a prosecution. McGahn said that Trump never, to his knowledge, ordered a politically-motivated prosecution. The distinction is important.
As has been reported previously, Mueller has reportedly looked into Trump’s tweets and other public statements targeting former FBI director Comey, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, and former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. In August, one tweet from Trump said that Sessions, who famously recused himself from the Russia investigation, “should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further.”
Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti argued at the time that this kind of tweet demonstrated “corrupt intent,” and was “among the many reasons why Mueller will conclude Trump obstructed justice.” Mariotti would add that Mueller and his prosecutors would have looked at that tweet and thought, “They think this is more evidence of corrupt intent. … adding more tabs to their exhibit binder.”
Now, Jeff Sessions is out of the picture and has been replaced by acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, whose public statements on CNN in various forms indicated that Whitaker was more than a mere skeptic of the Mueller Probe. He said that Mueller may have gone “too far” and even used the president’s own words (“witch hunt”) to describe it.
As this Whitaker controversy is still brewing, the New York Times is providing information that could, in the same way as the aforementioned tweet, be seen as demonstrative proof of “corrupt intent.” A prosecutor could persuasively argue that if Trump would suggest prosecuting Comey for his handling of the Clinton email probe, it stands to reason that Trump would fire Comey because of the Russia investigation.
(…)
18 U.S.C. § 1503 defines obstruction of justice as: “an act that ‘corruptly or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication, influences, obstructs, or impedes, or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede, the due administration of justice.'”
How else is one to interpret the desire to order the prosecution of political opponents, one of whom was the director of the FBI and asking questions about Russia and the Steele Dossier?
Without commenting too deeply on whether or not Naham is correct about the extent to which this report could strengthen an obstruction case against the President, it most certainly demonstrates yet again the extent to which he refuses to respect the political and legal norms that have restrained previous Presidents. Additionally, it’s an apt demonstration of the contempt that this President has shown for the Rule of Law, something I’ve written about several times before here, here, here, and here. Unlike any President before him with the exception of Nixon, Trump clearly views the Justice Department not as the chief law enforcement agency in the United States, but as an institution that ought to exist to protect him and punish his political enemies. The only thing that has restrained him in that regard, it seems, has been the urging of people like former White House Counsel Don McGhan. That’s a little too close for comfort if you ask me.
I think we’re going to find out, over time, that there are a lot of awful things Trump wanted to do that his staff, cabinet and bureaucracy have prevented. He has no sense of the limits of power, has an open admiration for murderous dictators and couldn’t identify three Amendments from the Bill of Right on a bet. I’ve been thinking that the “system” has been proven to be very flimsy by Trump. But I wonder, in the end, if it will have been proven to be quite robust.
SSDD.
@Hal_10000:
You mispelled “deep state.”
And yes, I suspect that (though his supporters will never admit it), the reality is that the deep state has probably saved his butt more than they’ve stimied him.
Just to pre-empt the inevitable trumpistas:
McGhan talked to Mueller’s tean for IIRC 30 hours. This is old news to Mueller. He likely wrapped up the obstruction part of the investigation months ago, except for giving Trump every opportunity to offer exculpatory information, which Trump reportedly refused to do in his answers submitted yesterday.And I bet Mueller is pissed every time Trump forces him to reopen the huge obstruction folder, now with Whitaker.
And please, let’s not make McGhan out to be some sort of hero. Like Sessions he’s just trying to avoid an obstruction charge against himself.
Wait…Nixon was afraid of the rain???
@Hal_10000:
I think it is absolutely critical that in 2020 we begin to strengthen our institutions. In 2016 the people failed in their duty as citizens, and all that has saved us from becoming a banana republic is our institutions – and of course Trump’s imbecility. If Trump were not an incompetent buffoon we would be in even worse trouble than we are, but we cannot rely on voters to elect only the most incompetent wanna-be fascists, they might accidentally elect a fascist who can read and form coherent thoughts, and then we’d really be screwed.
We need a thorough house-cleaning and re-furbishing. We need new ethics laws that do not rely on shame or the threat of exposure, but that have real teeth. We’ve assumed we could leave much of this to voters but clearly that is a false hope, so we need law. Hard, unyielding, go-to-jail law. Take money from a foreign government = go to jail. Suppress voting = go to jail. Rig voter rolls = go to jail. Interfere with investigations = go to jail. Use government to wheedle favors for your idiot son-in-law = go to jail. Not this bullshit country club, get out six months early jail, either, I mean jail jail. Prison. Steel bars. Baloney sandwiches. Cavity searches. With all the other bad people.
We need a press prepared to deal with politicians who cannot be shamed and are indifferent to exposure. We need reporters who can stand up in a press conference and say, ‘with all due respect, Mr. President, you are lying.’ We need news organizations to avoid being manipulated. And we should have a law that codifies and strengthens the media’s access to public officials and public records and protects reporters from retaliation.
Above all we need to rein in the presidency and find a way to force Congress to take some actual responsibility. I don’t know how you can use law to impose a minimal level of courage on natural-born toadies, but surely there must be something we can do to avoid future Lindsey Grahams and Devin Nuneses.
@Michael Reynolds:
Agreed 100%. The challenge is ensuring this happens when your preferred party controls both Congress and the Presidency. So far neither party has signaled any willingness to do this.
@mattbernius:
Someone on TV this morning said their biggest fear is a Trump that can read.
I’m concerned about having a banana republic with a massive nuclear arsenal.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Not disclosed was that Fernandez was already working for the Clinton campaign, meaning his statement to the effect she had no role in the Uranium One deal is hardly neutral.
That Nixon had a dark and paranoid streak is well-documented, but I will say this
…. at least Nixon was intelligent and informed when it came to public policy issues.
@al Ameda:
This.
We have failed as a culture when the benchmark for a president is “a guy that I’d like to have a beer with”.
We elected a president that has no experience in politics, nor any knowledge of history. (… not even US history!)
This was a grand experiment: “Can business be government?”
Trump has answered this for us.
No. It cannot. Business cannot run government. Government is not a business. It is not here to deliver quarterly results, and it is not here to create a profit. It is here to provide a mutually necessary service.
@Michael Reynolds:
No, we need to stop looking to the press to be the heroes of our democracy. Period. They are not “the enemy of the people,” but they’re in the business of selling ad space and subscriptions, which means they are not your friends.
@James Pearce:
Inspipid, per usual.
Tell me Pearce…who IS going to be the hero of Democracy? Dolts, like you, that complain but offer and do nothing?
Thanks – I’d rather look to a click-baiting press.
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1N9SO8TQxuY/W_TfNSx5bEI/AAAAAAAAAPM/Ig746g5ImsMj7qm4lddJTwxNxR3S7ENuwCLcBGAs/s1600/Nix.png
@James Pearce:
Superficial twaddle, as usual. Anyone who gets into the news business for money is going to be disappointed. Do you think Jeff Bezos bought the WaPo because he needed a bit more spending money? Do you think tens of thousands of young people are in J school because reporting will make them rich? Don’t you think the NYT could make more money if they spent less on investigative journalism and more on pictures of hot babes?
The Reynolds Rule: Motive is always plural. There is no single-bullet theory of human behavior.
No one in the history of the human race has ever done anything for one, single, discrete motive, that’s not the way humans work, it’s just the way intellectual lightweights think. Do media businesses want money? Sure. Is that their only raison d’être? No. Duh.
I am in media. Do I do it for money? Yes! Do I do it only for money? No! If money was my only consideration, I’d be earning a lot more. Every time I sit down to think of a project I weigh the market (money) and see a clear path to that money and yet every time I take a different path because while I do love money, I also want to do something significant, I want to teach, I want to learn new skills, I want to test myself, I want to have fun, I want to be original. I want to create something that did not exist before and which no one else on earth can duplicate.
Reporters want to find a fact before anyone else does. Can that mean money? Sure. Does it generally mean money? No. Do reporters understand this? Yes. Do they nevertheless pursue the scoop? Yep. Because why? Because no one ever does anything for one single reason. Motive: even without an ‘s’ it is plural.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
Your quote elides the pertinent part of Pearce’s comment – “but they’re in the business of selling ad space and subscriptions” – and credit is due that he’s put his finger on cause even though he’s off on the effect.
We won’t get the press we need (the one that Michael describes) by calling on reporters and news organizations to behave “heroically.” As consumers, we need to use the market to punish the press when they lie (see Boycott Ingraham) and change the incentives for the press.
mattbernius, you say this like these are alternatives.
FTFY
With regard to the OP:
The flaw here, Doug, is that the FBI in general, and Comey as its head, did investigate Clinton and concluded that there was no prosecutable offense. That’s the FBI’s job. The FBI did its job.
I give the press a B+. Have they been perfect? No. They’ve been very slow to adapt to an unprecedented reality: a president who simply lies without any concern for exposure. In general people and institutions have trouble with psychopaths because, by definition, a psychopath cannot be shamed and we rely more on shame than people realize. There is no defense against a psychopath shooting up a school or a club, there is no defense against a psychopath teaching his children to hate, there is no defense against a psychopath lying. That’s what it is to be a psychopath: none of the softer defense mechanisms work on you because you reject all norms a priori.
So yes, the press has been slow to adapt in some ways. But they are doing incredible investigative work, tedious, detailed, time-consuming, unglamorous work which will not make them rich. I have been very impressed by WaPo and NYT, NBC news, the Daily Beast, the New Yorker and others. They are the heroes. They are the champions of democracy. Not all of them, but a hell of a lot of them.
@Scott F.:
Granted…and that’s why I referred to a “click-baiting press”.
To Michael’s point…I’m not in love with today’s press…and I’ve taken that position, on this site, repeatedly.
Unfortunately, with a Supine Congress and the SCOTUS bought and paid for, the 4th estate may be democracy’s last bulkhead.
LOL. What next, using the IRS? Oh, wait……
@Ben Wolf:
Not having any actual evidence with which to cast doubt on his statement you hang your accusation on the thinnest possible reed. In case you haven’t noticed, appointees to gov’t leadership positions have nearly always worked for somebody’s campaign. That’s how they got the job to begin with.
Idiotic nonsense like the uranium deal are going to be a thing of the past once the new House starts getting trump people under the spotlight. If Trump were smart he’d resign now.
But he’s not smart, so it’s popcorn time.
@mattbernius @michael reynolds: I agree that we need this, but I don’t think we can have it because the only way not to elect Lindsey Grahams and Devin Nuneses is to have better voters. I don’t know how to get better people to play in what has become a game where for me to win, I have to take from you.
In The Wheel of Time series (one of the only one of this genre that I have ever read) there is a child’s game (the name of which I have forgotten) that children learn, but don’t play after they know the rules. The reason is because they realize that it’s built into the game’s rules and processes is that you can only win by cheating. It may well be a metaphor (unintended certainly) for American politics. I hope not, but see the potential just the same.
A Trump that can read and doesn’t has no advantage over a Trump that can’t read.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
It’s a democracy. There are only participants, no heroes. That set-up with the hero goes by a different name…
@Michael Reynolds:
Bezos bought the WaPo so he can put a newspaper on my Kindle, so in a way…yeah, it is about more spending money.
I just don’t think the media is going to be all that helpful in taking down Trump. They were instrumental in installing him where he is now, and they have no interest in tamping down the circus. It’s been good for them too.
@Liberal Capitalist:
You’re being to genorous and optimistic — Trump doesn’t drink.
The benchmark for President is “Guy I’d like to have a beer with”, and we can’t even get that right.
Also, George W. Bush didn’t drink.
I’m ready for the reincarnation of Ulysses S. Grant.
@Guarneri:
Again with the faux conspiracy theories?
If your opinion is based upon nonsense…then your opinion is nonsense.
@James Pearce:
Well…that comment ignores about 240 years of history.
@al Ameda: I’m not sure an intelligent Trump would be a good thing. Same motive, instincts and actions, just better at organizing, concealing and executing those ideas. With a far more compliant party.
So far the only thing really holding Trump back is incompetence. Sometimes the courts as well, I guess. But that ties into incompetence.
@Guarneri:
Oh you mean like Nixon?
Oh wait? Do you mean Obama and the targeting accusations that President Trump’s own justice department found to be nonpartisan in nature, dating back to 2004, and with no connection to the White House?
So yeah, completely the same as the president asking for direct prosecution and his lawyers being concerned enough to go on record with a memo…
But I just assume that your lame one-liner and immediate ghosting is evidence that you already knew those facts but wanted to score some points on libs regardless of the truth.
What’s it like being smart enough to realize that you’re backing a the antithesis of everything you claimed to care about, but not being able to admit any issues on your side?
It kinda has to suck.
I really feel sorry for you.
It’s going to be even worse, btw, when the Presidential library is available and all of those memos get released to the public as part of the archive.
@mattbernius: oops, I said Justice when the report was produced by the Treasury. On the plus side, I don’t think the President has yet to declare Treasury enemies of the state. So thier report might be considered less deep state-ie.
Nixonian, surpassed.
Trump has authorized US Troops to use deadly force on the border, which is against the laws of the US.
(additional details: https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pol-border-troops-20181121-story.html )
… just wow.
Holy s#it !
I thought THAT was bad, now he’s getting into a row with the Supreme Court over Judicial Independence!
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/21/politics/supreme-court-john-roberts-trump/
Trump, Trump Uber Alles, eh?
@James Pearce: “Bezos bought the WaPo so he can put a newspaper on my Kindle, so in a way…yeah, it is about more spending money.”
Well, then, he’s pretty stupid, because I already got the NY Times on my Kindle and he didn’t have to pay for that.
But feel free to keep digging…
@wr: You have a Kindle? You seem more like an Apple kind of guy…
@James Pearce: Not sure what that’s supposed to mean. Used to have an actual Kindle, now use the Kindle software on an iPad. I guess you think that defines me in some bizarre way, using the same consumer product as tens of millions of people around the world…
@Liberal Capitalist: However, Nixon supercharged the drug war, specifically to hurt liberals and blacks, so he did decades of destruction to americans and their families.
@wr: I’ve read dozens of books on ‘Kindle’. Downloaded some Philip K. Dick stories in three different formats here just this very morning. Never owned Kindle hardware though.
@wr:
And yet, you understood it anyway…
Did you buy your Kindle to try it out? Or because it fit your budget?
@Teve: You’re probably not going to be reading the Washington Post on your Kindle app anyway. The Post has its own app.
The Washington Post comes with a Prime subscription, not the Kindle.