Monday 4 December 2017

DT attacks the FBI

It's neither presidential, nor judicial, nor sensible for the president of the United States to attack the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Donald Trump did it when James Comey was FBI director - then sacked him - and now he has done it again in a series of devastating Tweets, basically calling the FBI a failed organisation. If anything is going to make Robert Mueller hunt even further for evidence of White House malpractice over the Russia Affair, that Trump blast is surely IT. The FBI's reputation is now at stake, especially after the gift presented to the president when Mueller announced he had had to remove one of his top agents from the investigation when it emerged he had tweeted negatively about Trump during the election campaign. Ho ho, I bet a lot of people did, inside and outside the FBI. The CIA must be swimming with angry emails in the archives after Trump's denunciation of the US intelligence community during the campaign. Nothing surprises us anymore about Trump, but surely his latest Tweets against the FBI are out of order. He remains so bitter about Comey - even though the sacked FBI director indirectly helped him win the presidency when he announced a new email investigation into Hillary only ten days before the vote - that he clearly believes the FBI is out to get him. After his latest Tweets, he might just be right. In the history of the FBI there have been many tussles betweeen the White House and the law enforcement agency, but nothing as crudely inflammatory as this. Of course, the biggest tussle of all was when J Edgar Hoover was the director, but that was because it was known that he had huge files on all top people, including the president of the day, and could thus blackmail them if required. The fact that he remained director for 48 years, establishing a power base none of his successor has ever managed to emulate is the clearest evidence that no president ever dared to stand up to him, let alone fire him. Even Trump would have hesitated. Hoover would have made it his sacred duty to uncover Trump's tax history. We don't know what, if anything, the current FBI knows about Trump's tax liabilities over the years, and that may still be the president's undoing if his tax history were to be leaked. Meanwhile, Mueller and his team will weather the Tweet storm and pursue clues that could eventually lead to Trump being prosecuted for obstruction of justice or worse. No wonder Trump gets so angry every time the acronym, FBI, is mentioned in his company. But he would be wise to keep his thoughts to himself. Tweeting against the FBI does him no good and provides Mueller with more ammunition. If there is direct evidence of collusion with Moscow that implicates Trump, no amount of "I'm innocent" tweeting will help his cause. If it turns out there was no collusion involving Trump himself, then he should keep quiet until Mueller informs the world that Trump is innocent ok! Right now most of us don't know who to believe.

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