Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Run For Cover

I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for this.

Trump asked two of the nation’s top intelligence officials in March to help him push back against an FBI investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and the Russian government, according to current and former officials.

Trump made separate appeals to the director of national intelligence, Daniel Coats, and to Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, urging them to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion during the 2016 election.

Coats and Rogers refused to comply with the requests, which they both deemed to be inappropriate, according to two current and two former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private communications with the president.

[…]

White House officials say Comey’s testimony about the scope of the FBI investigation upset Trump, who has dismissed the FBI and congressional investigations as a “witch hunt.” The president has repeatedly said there was no collusion.

Current and former senior intelligence officials viewed Trump’s requests as an attempt by the president to tarnish the credibility of the agency leading the Russia investigation.

A senior intelligence official said Trump’s goal was to “muddy the waters” about the scope of the FBI probe at a time when Democrats were ramping up their calls for the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel, a step announced last week.

If you’re over fifty and were paying attention back during Watergate, this all sounds familiar: the president trying to keep the investigators off the case by discrediting them and telling anyone who would listen that the “important work” of the country is being ignored and that only his enemies care about such things as obstruction of justice.

Like most people caught up in something like this, they either don’t know much about history — a cover-up never works — or they’re so wrapped up in their own ego that they think that they’ll never get caught.  Trump excels at both.