Comey memo triggers new Trump crisis

Donald Trump’s presidency faced its
gravest crisis yet with the allegation this
week that he asked then–FBI Director
James Comey to shut down the federal
investigation into Michael Flynn, his
former national security adviser. “He is
a good guy,” the president told Comey,
according to a leaked memo written by
the FBI director immediately after the
encounter. “I hope you can let this go.”
That request—which some legal experts
say could lead to obstruction of justice
charges and possible impeachment—
took place in the Oval Office on the day
after Flynn resigned for misleading the
administration about his contact with
Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. In his
memo, Comey wrote that Trump sent
Vice President Mike Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions out
of the room before urging the FBI director to drop the investigation.
White House officials said Comey’s memo was “not a truthful
or accurate portrayal of the conversation.”
But in response to growing political pressure, Deputy Attorney
General Rod Rosenstein named former FBI Director Robert
Mueller as a special prosecutor to take over the investigation into
whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia’s hacking of
the Clinton campaign. Rosenstein said “unique circumstances’’
required him to hand off the investigation to “a person who
exercises a degree of independence from the normal chain of command.’’
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the scandal was now of
a “Watergate size and scale,” while Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.)
said the allegations, if true, were grounds for impeachment. Senate
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said the country was
“being tested in unprecedented ways,” and warned his fellow senators
that “history is watching.”
Last week, Trump flatly contradicted his aides’ earlier claims that
he had fired Comey as the result of a recommendation the Justice
Department. The president told NBC News he was going to fire
Comey—whom he described as a “showboater”—regardless of the
recommendation, in part because he believed “this Russia thing”
was a “made-up story.” When sources close to Comey revealed that
Trump had asked for the FBI director’s
“loyalty” during a meeting in January,
the president tweeted that Comey “better
hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our
conversations.”

“When will Republicans in Congress
decide that enough is enough?” asked
The New York Times. Trump’s attempt
to quash a federal investigation into
Flynn—one that could still “reach into
the highest levels of his campaign and
administration”—constitutes a gross
abuse of executive power. It’s time for
congressional Republicans to finally
put country above party and stop
defending Trump.

Trump “needs to realize how close he
is” to losing congressional Republicans’
support, said The Wall Street Journal.
“Weeks of pointless melodrama” have
halted all the momentum on health-care
and tax-reform legislation, leaving lawmakers
exhausted and deeply frustrated.
If they decide that Trump “looks like a
liability” to their re-election chances in
2018, they’ll “drift away,” and his presidency
will “sink before his eyes.”

Comey’s memo isn’t a smoking gun—it’s
“a gun without powder,” said Gregg
Jarrett in FoxNews.com. If the attentionseeking
G-man really thought Trump
was trying to “obstruct justice,” he was
legally required to report it immediately.
He didn’t, because he knew Trump’s “vague” and “ambiguous”
language wasn’t specific enough to constitute obstruction of justice.
If the conversation was so innocent, said Ruth Marcus in The
Washington Post, why did Trump order everyone else out of the
Oval Office? His attempt to pressure the FBI director to drop an
investigation into a top aide became even more “sinister” when he
fired Comey himself over the broader investigation into his campaign.
“The lawyers can debate whether this satisfies the technical
elements of obstruction”—but it’s pretty clear to the rest of us.
Trump’s presidency is “on the verge of collapse,” said David Graham
in TheAtlantic.com. Legal scholars say that if Comey’s memo
is accurate, Trump committed obstruction of justice—one of the
charges in Bill Clinton’s 1998 impeachment, and the central charge
that forced Richard Nixon to resign in 1974. The threat to Trump’spresidency is grave: “Investigations, once begun, tend to snowball.”
The special prosecutor was a necessity, said Page Pate in CNN.com.
Now that Trump has evidently tampered with an investigation, fired
the FBI director, and pressured Justice Department officials to cover
for him, only a totally independent special prosecutor can provide
Americans with assurance the full truth will be revealed. “Careful
what you wish for,” said David Frum in TheAtlantic.com. Special
prosecutors set out to find evidence of crimes and often take years
to complete their secretive work. The most pressing question about
Russia’s meddling in our election—and
whether the Trump campaign colluded in
it—is: “What happened?” An independent
commission like the one that
investigated 9/11 would be better suited
to answer that question.
Trump’s loyal base won’t give up on
him because of the Comey memo, said
Jonathan Tobin in NationalReview.com.
As a result, congressional Republicans
will keep looking for excuses to defendTrump—but they cannot “go on like
this indefinitely.” If Republicans give up
any hope that “Trump can successfullygovern” and decide he’s an impediment
to their agenda—that’ll be the real “tipping
point.”

Congressional Republicans are now “digging in
for a long investigation of President Trump,” said
Erin Kelly and Eliza Collins in USA Today. The
leaders of intelligence, judiciary, and oversight
committees in both the House and the Senate
have demanded from the FBI and the White
House any records of conversations between
Trump and Comey; a meticulous record keeper,
Comey is believe to have written memos of
several “uncomfortable” conversations he had
with Trump. The Senate Intelligence Committee
asked for Comey’s cooperation and invited him
to testify “in both open and closed sessions.” A
Comey associate said he’s willing to testify, “but
wants it to be in public.”