Ex-Watergate prosecutor: Mueller might have a novel way to make Trump STFU
Bloviating old Uncle Dotard could not contain himself Friday.
Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn’t looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary & the Dems..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017
…New Donna B book says she paid for and stole the Dem Primary. What about the deleted E-mails, Uranium, Podesta, the Server, plus, plus…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017
….People are angry. At some point the Justice Department, and the FBI, must do what is right and proper. The American public deserves it!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017
Poor thing – he sounds just a tad triggered!
Jennifer Rubin, in her latest WaPo essay, “Trump’s latest impeachable actions,” wrote:
At the core of President Trump’s unfitness and his malfeasance in office is his interaction with the Justice Department and the courts. This goes from the merely verbal denigration of the courts — “a joke,” “a laughingstock,” “so-called judges” — to actual actions such as firing the FBI director, reportedly imploring the FBI director to lay off of former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, trying to meddle in the prosecution of Joe Arpaio (whom he subsequently pardoned for criminal contempt of court) and, now, directly encouraging the Justice Department to go after a political opponent for spurious, long-ago debunked claims.
… In remarks to reporters, he continued on in this vein. “I’m really not involved with the Justice Department. I’d like to let it run itself, but honestly, they should be looking at the Democrats. They should be looking at [John] Podesta and all of that dishonesty. They should be looking at a lot of things. And a lot of people are disappointed in the Justice Department, including me.”
There is no president in modern memory who has repeatedly and directly called on the Justice Department to investigate a political opponent in such a manner. A politician, one could imagine, upon new and actual evidence of wrongdoing, might say something like, “The appropriate authorities should look into this.” That’s not what Trump is doing here. He is both assuming guilt and applying pressure to go after an opponent based on scurrilous propaganda that he and his followers have generated. This is the conduct of a Third World dictator, and by any stretch of the imagination, an abuse of presidential power.
Late Friday, Politico ran a terrific and thorough article on the challenges facing the Justice Department when the guy in the Oval Office keeps acting like an ignorant, bullying pre-teen.
Buried in the story is this nugget: it turns out Mueller may have a way to stop the Trumper tantrums:
Trump capped off a week of complaints about the judicial system Friday by criticizing as “a complete and total disgrace” a military judge’s decision not to impose prison time on Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for walking away from his post in Afghanistan.
On their own, several of Trump’s remarks have raised alarm for the effect they could have on active legal proceedings. Bergdahl’s lead attorney said that the president’s previous remarks about the case could be used during the appeals process to get any sentence overturned. In the Papadopoulos case, former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman warned that the president had defamed a potential government witness who is likely to be called in a federal trial.
“This could be grounds for Mueller to obtain a gag order on Trump,” Akerman said. “It would be unprecedented, but he is interfering with the government’s right to a fair trial.”
On the other hand, Trump might well see any such move as grounds to have Mueller fired — but that is not likely to happen as long as Sessions remains “recused’ attorney general.
But there is not a lot he can do about readers who are Twitter users reporting each of the above tweets as a violation of Twitter rules governing bullying, tampering with the judicial process, and possible violation of US laws governing threats and intimidation directed at law enforcers and lawyers.
‘Nuff said…
