It all stems from President Trump’s contempt for the rule of law.
.. in a quasi-normal political environment, would have led to an impeachment investigation.
.. Richard Nixon earned eternal disgrace for keeping a list of his political enemies, but he, at least, was ashamed enough of the practice to know that he had to keep it secret. Trump, in contrast, is openly calling for the Department of Justice, which he controls, to put his political opponents in jail.
This kind of behavior is a trademark of the authoritarians he admires, like Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
.. Trump sent Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, to urge Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General, not to recuse himself from supervising the investigation. Trump did so because he felt that Sessions should be protecting him. “Where’s my Roy Cohn?”
.. Trump asked for loyalty from James Comey, the F.B.I. director, who was supervising the investigation. When Comey equivocated, Trump fired him, then put out a false story for why he did so
.. Trump’s contempt for the rule of law infects his entire Administration
.. Sessions has installed acting U.S. Attorneys in much of the country—including in such high-profile locations as Manhattan and Los Angeles—and senators can’t exert any oversight of them.
.. This gesture of contempt for the Senate’s role in confirmations
.. Trump has nominated many fewer officials to Senate-confirmed positions than his predecessors; instead, Cabinet secretaries have filled these crucial positions with acting or temporary officials who avoid scrutiny
The Grand Obstructionist Party
The Republican establishment is running tighter cover for Trump over historically scandalous and likely criminal actions than the man who stood by Trump, and later Roy Moore, after learning they were sexual predators. Party leaders view allegations of legal wrongdoing against Trump not as a potential problem for their party and the country, but as a kind of betrayal of Trump himself. If and when full documentation of his crimes emerges, they will go to great lengths to make sure he faces no repercussions.
Wednesday’s bombshells were more clarifying than revolutionary, particularly for discerning news consumers.
.. When the rest of the right wing was advancing the notion that the Russia investigation was phony and rigged, some anonymous figure “close to the administration” called the investigation “a classic Gambino-style roll-up,” that will “reach everyone in this administration.”
.. Perhaps for fear that Bannon is right, Republicans have tried to discredit Mueller and end his probe. Two particularly Bannnonesque Republicans, Mark Meadows, and Jim Jordan, published an op-ed on Thursday putting forth a flimsy pretext for firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions, so that he can be replaced with a new Attorney General who will fire Mueller.
.. With Paul Ryan’s blessing, the House Intelligence Committee is now fully dedicated to running counter-ops against Mueller and the FBI, and has breached their investigation
.. not a single Republican, including himself, has put anything like the same kind of effort into stopping Trump’s unprecedented corruption, or defend the integrity of the Russia investigation. At this point, if any of them tried, they’d stand a good chance of being driven out of the party for venturing “off the reservation” in much the same way Bannon was.
Obstruction Inquiry Shows Trump’s Struggle to Keep Grip on Russia Investigation
.. the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, carried out the president’s orders and lobbied Mr. Sessions to remain in charge of the inquiry
.. Mr. McGahn was unsuccessful, and the president erupted in anger in front of numerous White House officials, saying he needed his attorney general to protect him. Mr. Trump said he had expected his top law enforcement official to safeguard him the way he believed Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney general, had done for his brother John F. Kennedy and Eric H. Holder Jr. had for Barack Obama.
..Mr. Trump then asked, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” He was referring to his former personal lawyer and fixer
.. The president’s determination to fire Mr. Comey even led one White House lawyer to take the extraordinary step of misleading Mr. Trump about whether he had the authority to remove him.
.. a false statement that the president dictated on Air Force One in July in response to an article in The Times about a meeting that Trump campaign officials had with Russians in 2016. A new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” by Michael Wolff, says that the president’s lawyers believed that the statement was “an explicit attempt to throw sand into the investigation’s gears,” and that it led one of Mr. Trump’s spokesmen to quit because he believed it was obstruction of justice.
.. Some experts said the case would be stronger if there was evidence that the president had told witnesses to lie under oath.
.. Regardless of whether Mr. Mueller believes there is enough evidence to make a case against the president, Mr. Trump’s belief that his attorney general should protect him provides an important window into how he governs. Presidents have had close relationships with their attorneys general, but Mr. Trump’s obsession with loyalty is particularly unusual
.. Mr. Sessions told Mr. McGahn that career Justice Department officials had said he should step aside, Mr. McGahn said he understood and backed down.
.. The lawyer, Uttam Dhillon, was convinced that if Mr. Comey was fired, the Trump presidency could be imperiled, because it would force the Justice Department to open an investigation into whether Mr. Trump was trying to derail the Russia investigation.
.. Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas School of Law, called the episode “extraordinary,” adding that he could not think of a similar one that occurred in past administrations.
“This shows that the president’s lawyers don’t trust giving him all the facts because they fear he will make a decision that is not best suited for him,” Mr. Vladeck said.
.. Mr. Trump unloaded on Mr. Sessions, who was at the White House that day. He criticized him for recusing himself from the Russia investigation, questioned his loyalty, and said he wanted to get rid of Mr. Comey. He repeated the refrain that the attorneys general for Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Obama had protected the White House.
.. In an interview with The Times last month, Mr. Trump said he believed that Mr. Holder had protected Mr. Obama.
.. Holder protected the president. And I have great respect for that, I’ll be honest.”
.. The attorney general wanted one negative article a day in the news media about Mr. Comey, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting.
.. White House officials have said the letter contained no references to Russia or the F.B.I.’s investigation. According to two people who have read it, however, the letter’s first sentence said the Russia investigation had been “fabricated and politically motivated.”
.. the president said the attorney general had been disloyal for recusing himself from the Russia investigation, and he told Mr. Sessions to resign.
Mr. Sessions sent his resignation letter to the president the following day. But Mr. Trump rejected it, sending it back with a handwritten note at the top.
“Not accepted,” the note said.
Trump Humiliated Jeff Sessions After Mueller Appointment
The president attributed the appointment of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, to Mr. Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from the Justice Department’s Russia investigation — a move Mr. Trump believes was the moment his administration effectively lost control over the inquiry. Accusing Mr. Sessions of “disloyalty,” Mr. Trump unleashed a string of insults on his attorney general.
.. Ashen and emotional, Mr. Sessions told the president he would quit and sent a resignation letter to the White House, according to four people who were told details of the meeting. Mr. Sessions would later tell associates that the demeaning way the president addressed him was the most humiliating experience in decades of public life.
.. Mr. Trump ended up rejecting Mr. Sessions’s May resignation letter after senior members of his administration argued that dismissing the attorney general would only create more problems for a president
.. the attorney general has stayed in the job because he sees a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity as the nation’s top law enforcement official to toughen the country’s immigration policies.
.. In the middle of the meeting, Mr. McGahn received a phone call from Rod J. Rosenstein
.. In the telephone call to Mr. McGahn, Mr. Rosenstein said he had decided to appoint Mr. Mueller to be a special counsel for the investigation.
.. When the phone call ended, Mr. McGahn relayed the news to the president and his aides. Almost immediately, Mr. Trump lobbed a volley of insults at Mr. Sessions, telling the attorney general it was his fault they were in the current situation. Mr. Trump told Mr. Sessions that choosing him to be attorney general was one of the worst decisions he had made, called him an “idiot,” and said that he should resign.
.. An emotional Mr. Sessions told the president he would resign and left the Oval Office.
.. In the hours after the Oval Office meeting, however, Mr. Trump’s top advisers intervened to save Mr. Sessions’s job. Mr. Pence; Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist at the time; and Reince Priebus, his chief of staff, all advised that accepting Mr. Sessions’s resignation would only sow more chaos inside the administration and rally Republicans in Congress against the president.
.. For Mr. Sessions, the aggressiveness with which Mr. Trump has sought his removal was a blow.
.. But Mr. Trump continued his public attacks in the days that followed, including taking to Twitter to call him “weak” — a word that is among the harshest criticisms in Mr. Trump’s arsenal.