From the day he took office, and even before, Donald Trump has been looking for a way to discourage, demean, and diminish the FBI. And he finally found it. Trump didn’t take down the FBI by tweeting about James Comey or humming the Deep State theme song, he did it by setting the agency up. By giving them instructions to conduct an investigation in which their every action was so constrained as to be pointless. By seeing that even people who walked through the FBI’s door and tried to give evidence in a case critical to the nation … found a deaf ear. The FBI is, after all, an executive branch agency. This week, Donald Trump weaponized his control of the FBI, and demonstrated conclusively that it could be not simply neutered, but wielded against his opponents, with nothing more than a single sheet of paper … that no one is allowed to see.
It’s not just Trump’s instructions to the FBI that remain hidden. The report produced from their radically restricted investigation was literally taken directly by Trump, sealed in a box, then locked in a vault. Until that lid is lifted—briefly—to allow Senators a brief glimpse, no one knows what is in the FBI report. Even when they do, no one is allowed to repeat the contents, or even characterize the words they read. Consider all of this a preview for the end of the Russia Investigation.
Republican senators, the same Republican senators now hurrying to give Brett Kavanaugh a seat on the Court no matter what’s in the box, have already given Trump the thumbs-up to replace attorney general Jefferson Sessions the moment the election is over. With a new person in charge, it’s not necessary to end the Russia investigation directly. Not when Trump has just seen how effective it can be to turn an investigation to his own ends. Orders could be issued to Robert Mueller that require him to limit the scope of his enquiry to a very few areas, particularly those where Trump feels confident that there is no issue. Trump’s money-laundering, bank fraud, tax fraud, and … hotel activities, could be safely filed away. So could any real evidence of conspiracy.
If there’s any thought that deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein might be an obstacle, think back though the mists of time to … the beginning of last week, when it seemed that Rosenstein had been dismissed in an instant. That day of confusion and crossing announcements showed clearly that Rosenstein can be ridden down as quickly as any of the dozens of others who have come and gone under Trump. But it also showed something else. Something worse.
The events of the last two weeks show that Donald Trump and his White House have weaponized their control of both the Justice System and the media. Trump isn’t weakening. He’s clamping down.
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