Category: Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere, MLK jr

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has come so close to firing FBI Director Christopher Wray in recent months that the White House counsel’s office has warned him not to do so because it could put him in potential legal jeopardy, according to a senior administration official with direct knowledge of the discussion and a U.S. official familiar with the discussion.

White House lawyers “strongly” advised Trump against firing another FBI director out of concern that doing so would risk creating the perception that a “loyalty test” was being imposed on a position that traditionally has maintained independence from the White House, according to the senior administration official.

The lawyers, led by White House counsel Pat Cipollone, specifically said that firing Wray could spark legal issues similar to those raised after Trump ousted James Comey as FBI director in 2017 in the midst of the Russia investigation, the officials said.

Their concern was that firing Wray could be seen as retaliation because the president has publicly pressured him to take specific actions on certain investigations — such as announcing a probe into President-elect Joe Biden’s son — and then expressed frustration that Wray has not followed his suggestions.

Trump’s firing of Comey, whom he’d asked to drop an investigation into his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, became a key part of the special counsel’s probe into whether he had obstructed justice.

As a result, the president’s legal team advised him against firing Wray, the officials said.

While Trump’s frustrations with Attorney General Bill Barr boiled over in recent days, and Barr resigned on Monday, the president’s advisers hope he’s been persuaded against ousting Wray. Multiple current and former senior administration officials said firing Wray does not appear imminent, but they also point out that the president could make such a decision on a whim at any time. Indeed officials said they are prepared for Trump to go on a firing spree before leaving office next month.

“I wouldn’t take anything off the table in coming weeks,” the senior administration official said of personnel changes, as well as presidential pardons. The official said to expect “some more fairly significant terminations in the national security or intelligence community.”

It’s unclear how Trump’s complaints that Wray hasn’t done anything to investigate Biden’s son Hunter might affect his job given the announcement last week that the FBI has already been conducting such an investigation since 2018. Trump had criticized Barr for not publicly disclosing the investigation before the election.

Trump also recently threatened to fire acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, according to two senior administration officials. The president blamed Wolf for the public statements from Christopher Krebs, the former head of the agency in charge of election security at the Homeland Security Department. Krebs has called the 2020 election “the most secure in American history.”

But some of the president’s advisers convinced him to leave Wolf in his job, and they believe — or at least hope — he won’t be fired.

The White House declined to comment on the president’s current thinking about firing members of his administration. “If the president doesn’t have confidence in someone he will let you know,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement. “We have no personnel announcements at this time.”

The likelihood of Trump firing top officials he’s been frustrated with or feels betrayed by is expected to increase over the holidays, the current and former officials said.

CIA Director Gina Haspel was so convinced she might be fired that she was seen cleaning personal items out of her office at CIA headquarters last month after Trump ousted Defense Secretary Mark Esper, according to three former and current administration officials familiar with the matter.

Haspel’s job has been rumored to be in doubt in the weeks after the election, in part because of her reluctance to release classified documents related to Russian interference in the 2016 election, even when other intelligence community leaders like John Ratcliffe have pushed to release the information. But her position may now be more secure than it was even a few weeks ago, officials said, given that several Senate Republicans conveyed their support for her to the White House.

Still, officials said Trump could decide to fire Haspel anyway. “That hasn’t been put to rest,” one former senior administration official said.

When asked about Haspel packing up her personal items in her office, a CIA spokesperson said, “I stopped by Director Haspel’s office, and right there on her conference room table was one of her favorite mementos, a bowl with the London skyline.”

Never mind his latest Twitter storm of complaints and threats. Or do mind them, because their very desperation proves that it’s dawning on the Undapper Don that his chances of staying in the White House much longer are, as the mayor of Munchkin City put it, morally, ethically, spiritually, physically, positively, absolutely, undeniably, and reliably dead. He’ll see for what will probably be the first time in his life that there’s no judge he can buy (including the one he assumed he was buying, who has at least shown herself to be above mob-style corruption; hey, we’ll take it), no fixer he can bribe, no idiot cousin he can put on the payroll to fix things.

For the first known time in 74 years, Trump morality has met normal morality, and normal morality has won.

Which raises the question: With his legal options all but exhausted (we’re waiting on this Texas case, which seems more insane than most of them), what will Trump do next? Perhaps more concerningly, what will his followers do? Until this week, Trump and they could keep entertaining the fiction that some brave soul would step forward and, within the parameters of “the system,” somehow fix this and save him.

Rubbing Trump’s Face in His Loss Isn’t Just Fun—It’s Important

I’ve been writing lately that Trump foes should see him as a figure of derision and take joy in mocking him, and I believe that. That kind of moral cleansing is mentally healthy and necessary, after what he’s done to our brains for four years. But in saying that I don’t mean to make light of the threat Trump and his backers pose. That threat is still terrifying, both over the next 40-plus days and further into the American future than I’d care to admit. We’d better be ready.

When they start writing histories of the Trump era, I think the one-line summary will be something like this: While some portion of his appeal was based on legitimate grievances of working-class people against elites, he awakened an authoritarian impulse among the citizenry that was far larger and more rabid, and more easily triggered, than most of us ever imagined.

That is, if you’d asked me back in, oh, 2013, when Donald Trump was still just the foolish corrupt narcissist most everybody knew he was, what portion of the American public would fall for neo-fascism, I’d have said 25 percent tops. But events have shown us that it’s more like 40. At least 35. That’s pretty frightening.

What do I mean by neo-fascism? It’s a fairly obvious set of criteria. Here are five essential ones, though there are others: blind loyalty to a leader who’s really more of a national father figure; belief that the leader is the state; belief that opposition to the leader is opposition to the state, and thus treason; conviction (instilled or ignited by the leader) that the source of the problems facing the good wholesome ethnic majority is some Other or collection of Others who must be ostracized if not banished; agreement that the rules and constraints of democratic order are sometimes useful and should be obeyed as long as one can obey them and win, because doing so confers a certain legitimacy, but if they have to be cast aside to hold power, then cast aside they must be. These principles animate every fascist regime in human history. They are at the heart of Trumpism, and they have drawn many more adherents than I’d have thought possible in this country.

Among advanced democracies, the United States is, if not unique in this regard, certainly more susceptible now than most. If a Trump came along in Denmark, say, would Denmark elect him? I doubt it. Ditto most European countries. Some would. Some have: Hungary, Poland, and Turkey. But I think most would not.

We, however, did. And now that that impulse has been awakened, putting it back to bed will be the work of a generation. Or two. The main thing that has to happen is that the system has to work well for enough working- and middle-class people again such that neo-fascism’s allures are diminished.

That means doing things that will help working-class people: a decent minimum wage, infrastructure, public investment in rural areas and small towns, and yes, the building of a greener economy that might be able to bring some new hope to places like my native West Virginia.

But the confounding irony of course is that the working-class people have been convinced that those things, or most of those things, are socialism, and so they don’t want them. Their voting patterns tell us they’d rather stay with a set of ideas and priorities that are frankly failing them. So the hope of changing this dynamic in the long term is slim. But we have to try.

And in the short term, by which I mean until Jan. 20? A lot of it depends on the father-leader. Given that we’ve already seen armed protesters surrounding a Michigan state official’s house, and the Arizona GOP suggest that its members should be ready to martyr themselves for Trump, it’s hard to say. One casual comment from the father-leader could set something off. Or he might not even have to say a thing. If people are willing to die for him, anything is possible.

Go back over my list above of the five criteria of neo-fascism with special focus on number five. That’s exactly where we are now.

Democratic trappings were of use to Trump as long as he was the winner as he was in 2016. But this time around, he lost. Then he tried everything he knew to try within the democratic system (the recounts); then he tried audacious and outrageous things that no one has ever tried before but still were not against any democratic law (pressuring Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, summoning those two Michigan legislators to the White House). None of it worked. So there are no more democratic options.

Which means other options might now be pursued. So yeah, be on your guard. And, uh, why did Trump replace all those people at the Pentagon anyway? Remember that? Could be nothing. But it could be… something. The one thing we know is that he has no conscience holding him back.