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Saturday January 06, 2018
Contempt
Would you buy a used car from this man?
From Jeffrey Toobin, or Toobs as my friend Adam calls him, in a piece called, “Donald Trump and the Rule of Law,” via The New Yorker website. This is the sum-up graf:
The Times' revelation [that Trump sent White House counsel Donald F. McGahn to ask AG Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from the Russian investigaiton] makes an obstruction case stronger. Trump asked for loyalty from James Comey, the F.B.I. director, who was supervising the investigation. When Comey equivocated, Trump fired him, then put out a false story for why he did so, which he promptly undermined by admitting the real reason. And when e-mails emerged over the summer showing that Donald Trump, Jr., had met during the campaign with a Russian lawyer offering dirt on Hillary Clinton, the President participated in concocting a bogus story to explain them. (An especially incriminating version of Trump's role in the e-mail cover story appears in “Fire and Fury,” Michael Wolff's explosive new book.)
I'm reading the book right now, btw, about 1/4 of the way through. Much of it is what we always thought (Trump knows next-to-nothing about government, let alone governance, and doesn't care to know), or suspected (he didn't expect or want to win the presidency, but then felt it was his destiny). He is the joke we assumed he was, but, as Randy Rainbow sang, the joke's on us. That so many could‘ve been suckered in makes one worry about the future of democratic government.
Toobs’ piece is not only about Trump's contempt for the rule of law but about the gaps he's left, and the loyalty he's won, from traditional lawpeople, such as U.S. attorneys. “There are positions for 93 U.S. Attorneys,” Toobs writes, “but Trump has nominated people to fill only 58 of them, and the Senate has confirmed just 46.” The rest are acting U.S. attorneys, accountable only to Sessions and Trump. And, one hopes, to history, and to the rule of law. But that's just a hope.
Fasten your seatbelts.