I’d say “just when you thought it couldn’t possibly get any worse,” but at this point, that’s actually not accurate.
Because when it comes to Donald Trump and obstruction of justice, you have every reason to think it can, and most likely will, get worse.
Which is why it isn’t at all surprising that on Monday night we got still more evidence that the White House sought to undermine the investigation into the administration’s ties to the Kremlin. Here’s WaPo:
President Trump asked two of the nation’s top intelligence officials in March to help him push back against an FBI investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and the Russian government, according to current and former officials.
Trump made separate appeals to the director of national intelligence, Daniel Coats, and to Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, urging them to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion during the 2016 election.
Coats and Rogers refused to comply with the requests, which they both deemed to be inappropriate, according to two current and two former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private communications with the president.
Trump sought the assistance of Coats and Rogers after FBI Director James B. Comey told the House Intelligence Committee on March 20 that the FBI was investigating “the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.”
Trump’s conversation with Rogers was documented contemporaneously in an internal memo written by a senior NSA official, according to the officials. It is unclear if a similar memo was prepared by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to document Trump’s conversation with Coats. Officials said such memos could be made available to both the special counsel now overseeing the Russia investigation and congressional investigators, who might explore whether Trump sought to impede the FBI’s work.
So now we have:
- Trump asking James Comey to go easy on Mike Flynn who is now set to plead the Fifth
- Trump firing Comey for no reason
- Trump trying to undermine the special counsel investigation by resorting to an obscure ethics rule in order to prevent former FBI Director Robert Mueller from looking at Jared Kushner
- and now Trump asking the director of national intelligence and the director of the National Security Agency to participate in what amounts to a criminal conspiracy to cover up another criminal conspiracy
And that’s just what we’ve learned over the past two weeks.
Of course the White House won’t discuss this because they don’t “confirm or deny unsubstantiated claims based on illegal leaks from anonymous individuals.”
Which is fine, because Trump himself will give us the White House’s official response on Twitter as soon as he takes a break from accidentally admitting to giving out classified Israeli intelligence to the Russians.
So get ready Daniel Coats and Michael Rogers, you’re about to be threatened on social media by the President of the United States who, correcting for the time difference, should be waking up in a couple of hours.
…give him enuf rope and he will hang himself…… perfect example.
– Murphy