Firing of FBI Director Comey makes an independent
investigation of Trump and Russia more important than ever.
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship for Common Dreams
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| Trump met with Russian Ambassador but only the Russian media was allowed in to cover it. |
So Donald Trump fired James Comey because the FBI director
mistreated Hillary Clinton last summer over her use of private emails.
Stop laughing.
Trump takes us for chumps. The Republic is nothing to him but a
crap game. And he loads the dice.
In this case, he signs the letter dismissing Comey and
hands it to his personal bodyguard to take over to the FBI office. But Comey
isn’t there. He’s in Los Angeles, where he will hear on television that he has
been dumped — and at first think it’s a practical joke. We are not making this
up.
Hardly 24 hours has passed since Sally Q. Yates, the former
acting attorney general who in late January also was fired by Trump, testified
before a Senate hearing that she had informed the White House that Trump’s duplicitous
national security adviser, retired Gen. Michael Flynn, had lied about his
contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the United States and was vulnerable to
Russian blackmail.
But it took Trump another 18 days to fire him and then only
after The Washington Post leaked what Yates had uncovered.
In her testimony Monday, Yates was such a straight arrow, the
iconic public servant, and so devastatingly credible that the White House had
to figure out how to blunt her testimony.
How to change the story? How to send the bloodhounds of the
press howling down another trail?
Fire Comey, and say you don’t like the way he handled the
Hillary Clinton email affair, although last year — gasp! — you lavished praise
on him for doing exactly what you now say he screwed up.
But clearly, something else is going on here. Could it be that
Comey’s investigation of Russia’s interference with our election was getting
closer and closer to Trump? Is that why the Trump gang pushed him out the
nearest window?
And what about this statement in Trump’s brief letter officially
dismissing Comey: “While I greatly appreciate you informing me on three
separate occasions that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless, concur
with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to
effectively lead the bureau.”
WHAT three occasions, and what did Comey say,
when did he say it, and why? Or is Trump lying about that, too?
Bottom line: Is the White House simply trying to cover up the
truth? That question answers itself.
And oh, let’s not forget Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, the
attorney general of the United States, who had to recuse himself from the
investigation of Russia because he, too, had been dishonest about contacts with
the Russian ambassador. Recused or not, he was directly involved in sacking
Comey. Does anyone around Trump keep his word?
Trump’s dismissal of Comey smacks of what the autocrats in
Turkey, Egypt, and the Philippines would do – each of them praised recently by
Trump, who clearly sees them as role models. It is also more than a little
reminiscent of Richard Nixon’s 1973 Saturday Night Massacre.
Nixon wanted to
fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox but his attorney general and
deputy attorney general refused to do his dirty work. They were fired, too. In
Sessions, Trump has a more compliant stooge.
The constant drip of evidence continues. There are reports that a federal grand jury has issued subpoenas to
associates of Michael Flynn. James Hohmann at The Washington Post noted
that at Monday’s Senate hearing, former director of national intelligence James
Clapper “was asked about a news report that Britain’s intelligence service
first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious interactions between Trump
advisers and Russian intelligence agents.
The same story also said multiple
European allies passed along information in the spring of 2016. Asked if that
is accurate, [Clapper] replied: ‘Yes, it is and it’s also quite sensitive… The
specifics are quite sensitive.’”
How does Trump react? He fires off more of his querulous,
defensive tweets, claiming the whole Russia story is “fake news.” That’s his
response to just about everything. What was it Joseph Addison, playwright
beloved by the Founders, said? Oh, yes: “Husband a lie, and trump it up in some
extraordinary emergency.” No pun intended.
Trump is hiding something. Something extraordinary. To keep it
hidden there is no end to the chaos he will stir at the highest level of
government. Every day he lies lustily, as reflexively as the rest of us
breathe, knowing some filth will stick. With each day he edges us closer to
autocracy.
With the news of Comey’s sacking, the need is clear and more absolute
than ever: We must have a special prosecutor to turn the stones over — or an
independent and bipartisan commission with subpoena power and public hearings,
like the 9/11 commission. Or both.
Trump’s presidency is deeply corrupted, our democracy is compromised,
and the system of checks and balances is failing us.
He’s attempting a coup. No joke. We need the truth. Now.
Bill Moyers is the managing editor of Moyers & Company and BillMoyers.com.
His previous shows on PBS included NOW with Bill Moyers and Bill Moyers
Journal. Over the past three decades he has become an icon of American
journalism and is the author of many books, including Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues, Moyers on Democracy, and Bill Moyers: On Faith & Reason. He
was one of the organizers of the Peace Corps, a special assistant for Lyndon B.
Johnson, a publisher of Newsday, senior correspondent for CBS News and a
producer of many groundbreaking series on public television. He is the winner
of more than 30 Emmys, nine Peabodys, three George Polk awards.
Michael
Winship,
senior writing fellow at Demos and president of the Writers Guild of
America-East, was senior writer for Moyers & Company and Bill Moyers’
Journal and is senior writer of BillMoyers.com.