I appreciate David’s response to my column on the FBI counterintelligence investigation of Trump, but unfortunately don’t find it persuasive.
David emphasizes how the regulations governing a counterintelligence investigation focus on the activity of the foreign power. Yeah, sure. But that’s why the Times story was so explosive. It reported on a counterintelligence investigation of Trump himself, who is obviously not a foreigner, but the duly elected president of the United States.
The Times story says that the FBI feared Trump might have been a witting or unwitting agent of the Russians. I’ll come back to witting, but what does an unwitting asset of Russia even mean? It sounds to me like someone who is foolishly giving cover to Vladimir Putin and inclined — even if he doesn’t usually follow through — to favor policies congenial to Russia’s interests. This is all bad and I oppose it (while welcoming all the measures Trump has taken that aren’t congenial to Russia’s interests). But what is this, at bottom, other than having flawed instincts toward Russia, which is Trump’s perfect right? I’m guessing I agree with Lisa Page’s basic view of Russia more than Trump’s, and I believe she should get a chance to act on those views just as soon as she, too, is elected president of the United States.
The proximate cause of the FBI investigation, if the Times reporting is correct, wasn’t any new information about Russia’s activity. It was Trump acting entirely within his powers to fire his FBI director. This might be the first time that a FBI counterintelligence investigation was triggered by a lawful domestic action. This is crazy. Perhaps you believe that Trump’s firing of Comey was ill-intentioned and abusive. That’s a reasonable view, but it is Congress’s job to take this up, not the job of a subordinate law-enforcement agency within the executive branch. The regulations David cites say nothing about the FBI starting a counterintelligence investigation of a president acting pursuant to his legitimate powers.
Now, perhaps something truly monstrous is going on. This brings us back to the scenario of Trump being a witting agent of foreign power. What if the FBI had evidence of that? What should it do then? Well, I believe in that extreme scenario that Trump’s fundamental transgression wouldn’t be violating whatever criminal statute might be implicated; instead, he would have committed an offense against our republic, a political offense that should be dealt with by our political leaders, not by the FBI.
So, in that extreme scenario, the FBI officials should have taken their evidence to Congress or resigned and revealed it publicly. This would allow a political offense to be taken up by other politically accountable players, namely Congress, which could further investigate the offense as appropriate and impeach the president if warranted.
If Trump is guilty of something less than this, which seems the much likelier scenario (although I expect more unpleasant surprises in the Mueller report), the case is even stronger that the question should be left to Congress to handle.
It’s worth considering, by the way, the disproportion between what we know of Trump’s conduct and the guidelines David cites to justify the FBI’s action: a “threat to national security,” David notes, is defined to include “espionage and other intelligence activities, sabotage, and assassination, conducted by, for, or on behalf of foreign powers.”
If Trump is acting in concert with the Russians to assassinate people, yes, all bets should be off, obviously. But, per the Times, one justification for the FBI probe was Trump’s Lester Holt interview, which even if you accept the conventional interpretation of it, was hardly a confession of working with the Russians to sabotage the United States or spy on us, let alone carry out assassinations.
November 11 2016, when the progressive statists lost a fixed election. Before that it was pretty free wheeling the seat was occupied by those that held the constitution in contempt. It began with Woodrow Wilson and other than some bumps in the road it has been a endless shredding of the founding documents.
It must be hard to find those that even rudimentary ethics are repugnant, and get them into powerful positions. They did it and only 12 have been fired or retired/quit, everyone of them should have been perp walked to a prison and held until trial for Sedition and treason.
If left unchecked it would be routine for those that didnt walk the line to be taken out and summarily shot. Yes the lowest form of banana republic where we would vote for slavery for a little while, then even that quaint antiquity would pass away.
Rules and convention do not matter in the Trump world. The existence of PRESIDENT Trump requires extraordinary measures. Trump is an existential threat.
But, threat to whom or what? The country? The country has hardly ever done better than under Trump. True, all growth and vitality was retarded under Obama by his anti-growth and anti-vitality agenda, but a lot of unthinkables are happening. Manufacturing jobs coming back, formerly perpetually poverty-stricken segments of society are thriving (if they want to), long ignored and accepted trade imbalances and inequities are being addressed and resolved. This is a threat? Threat to whom?
Trump looks at things and asks “why” or why not”. When the answer is, “Well, that’s just how it’s always been done”, he looks for a better way. That’s what curious people who want to fix things do. Of course, some times “that’s how it’s always been done” in politics often means, “this is how we get rich”. This gets smack in the way of the good of the country. So, is Trump a threat? Threat to whom?
He’s a threat. A threat like Washington has never seen. He’s a threat to the establishment. He’s a threat to the oblivious nature that doesn’t notice the slow erosion of our Republic by socialist intrusion. Trump threatens to convert America back into America and the left has been working against that for a long, long time. He’s made powerful enemies.
The moment the possibility arose that the President and/or people close to him might be subject to undo influence exercised by an adversarial foreign power that appears to have committed illegal acts on their behalf.
@Greg: Bullsh!7 there was no evidence to begin an investigation, they had already spied him on and the campaign and came up with zero. They all need to be given trials and jailed for sedition. Those that organized this need to be in tried high treason. Way past time to clean out the infestation that has taken root over decades of corruption.
I don’t believe that has been the guiding principle behind the endless investigations conducted by republicans of democrats. They’ve been known to investigate the same thing repeatedly, even when they keep coming up empty.
@Greg: Finding a laptop in the possession of a pervert with classified and government emails, ya no crime there, we listed the statutes endless times.
Is there a single statute with evidence, that you can cite involving the President??
BTW Gowdy is a fool, had the State Dept handed the requested information over in a timely manner that would not have been such an drawn out ordeal.
@Greg:
That’s fine, except that there never was any such moment. All there was was some political dirt Hillary bought, shopped to the FBI who shopped it around to a few media sources and, as soon as they got pinged back with this information from those sources they FED the information to, felt justified to conduct surveillance on citizens and an “investigation”.
This garbage is going to force Trump to release the unredacted documents. Of course, instead of addressing the revelations of the illegal surveillance and false accusations and concentrate of Trump releasing the documents, it will clearly show the level of deceit it took to initiate the coup.
the fbi has always exhibited an incestual relationship with the demoratic party. this incest began with hoover and roosevelt . the cronyism runs deep. the best thing that Trump could do is fire the first and second layer of top management in this POS operation. oh, the fbi likes to make up stories and conspiracy theories, otherwise, they would have nothing to do. recall that the first job the old fbi has was checking for underaged teen prostitutes in Vagus.
@Deplorable Me, #7:
Initially Trump insisted no one had colluded with the Russians. Now Giuliani is saying what Trump meant all along was that he himself didn’t collude with the Russians.
If nothing is there for Mueller to find, why the sudden shift?
@Greg:
Trump has said he never colluded with anyone. This is true; no matter how hard or how long you look, you can’t find any collusion. He has said his campaign never colluded with Russians. To the best of his knowledge, no one has, which only reveals that no one tried to influence Trump in a Russian direction.
The only thing delaying Mueller releasing his report is he is trying to figure out how to get as far away as possible when it comes out. Liberals like yourself, clinging by your fingernails to the desperate hope of “collusion” removing Trump from office are going to be out for his hide when he has to report they couldn’t find any of that tons of obvious evidence all over the ground showing Trump was working with the Russians.
Getting $150 million to approve a uranium sale to Russians is collusion. It is also treachery. You won’t find anything like that around Trump. He actually CARES about his country, unlike Obama and Hillary.
@Greg: See we dont have to play your game Greg Dems voted for a wall numerous times, now its different but everything Trump says is written in Stone..GTFO.
On what grounds verified evidence was the investigation started? What law was broken?
Take your banana republic politics and tout them to progressives even more clueless than yourself.