Trump is demanding Sessions fire his perceived political enemies. Months ago he went nuts on Sessions and FBI Director Christopher Wray about why they hadn't fired Peter Strzok and Lisa Page from the FBI for disloyalty to the all high Trumpanzee, unable to distinguish between loyalty to America and loyalty to the Führer, who "pressed his attorney general and FBI director to work more aggressively to uncover derogatory information within the FBI’s files to turn over to congressional Republicans working to discredit the two FBI officials."
The effort to discredit Strzok and Page has been part of a broader effort by Trump and his allies to discredit and even fire FBI officials who they believe will be damaging witnesses against the president in Mueller’s obstruction of justice probe.Those attacks, in turn, are part of a broader push to denigrate Mueller himself and make it easier for Trump to publicly justify his potential firing. Those efforts have taken on new urgency as Mueller continues to rack up guilty pleas from former senior Trump officials like Michael Flynn and Rick Gates, and after the FBI, in conjunction with other federal prosecutors, raided the office, home, and hotel room of Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime lawyer. Trump’s fury over the raid has made many of his closest advisers worry that he’s inching closer to firing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the Mueller probe, and possibly Mueller as well.
Friday night, a team of Washington Post national security reporters wrote that Sessions said he'd quit if Trumpanzee fires Rosenstein. That might be another incentive for Señor T to initiate his own Saturday Night Massacre. I wonder if anyone has explained to the ignorant Putin puppet what the Saturday Night Massacre was and what it led to.He's still fuming that Sessions recused himself from all things related to Putin-Gate and would love to see him leave the Justice Department. Sessions called Don McGahn, the official chief White House counseland told him if Trumpanzee fires Rosenstein over the Cohen raid, he may have to resign. The Post speculated that "the protest resignation of an attorney general-- which would be likely to incite other departures within the administration-- would create a moment of profound crisis for the White House." Really? Why? Trump only cares about what his base thinks and none of this would mean anything to them as long as Trump tweets something derogatory about Sessions.The 4 Post writes pointed out that "Last summer, when it appeared Trump was going to fire Sessions or pressure him to resign, Republican lawmakers and conservative advocacy groups rallied to Sessions’s side and warned the president not to move against him." Since then, Trump's power with the GOP has grown immensely and he doesn't care what Republican lawmakers or conservative advocacy groups whine about. If he's not king of America, he is king of the GOP. He dominates the Republican Party utterly and entirely. He refers to Sessions as Mr. Magoo and Rosenstein as Mr. Peepers. There is no one who can stand up to him--no one. And remember, Rosenstein isn't some Obama administration hold-over. Rosenstein, a Republican, was put in place by Señor Trumpanzee himself.
Trump had told senior officials last week that he was considering firing Rosenstein, who was confirmed by the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support last year. Since then, alumni of the Justice Department have rallied to Rosenstein’s defense.As of Friday afternoon, more than 800 former Justice Department employees had signed an open letter calling on Congress to “swiftly and forcefully respond to protect the founding principles of our Republic and the rule of law” if Trump were to fire the deputy attorney general, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III or other senior Justice Department officials....Rosenstein, the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, is tasked with running the day-to-day operations of the sprawling agency of 113,000 employees who work for the FBI; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Bureau of Prisons; U.S. attorneys offices; and Main Justice, the agency’s headquarters. But from the time he was confirmed in May of last year, the investigation into possible coordination during the 2016 presidential campaign between Trump associates and agents of the Russian government has overshadowed everything he has done....A month after Rosenstein became deputy attorney general, he was criticized for his role in the firing of FBI Director James B. Comey. Rosenstein wrote a critical memo lambasting Comey for his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, and the White House later used the document as a pretext to remove the FBI director. After a few days, though, Trump said he was thinking about the Russia investigation when he fired Comey. Comey has said in recent days he believed Rosenstein “acted dishonorably” and could not be trusted.At that point, Rosenstein was overseeing the Russia investigation because Sessions had recused himself. On May 17, about a week after the Comey firing, Rosenstein announced that he had appointed Mueller as special counsel to conduct the Russia investigation.Rosenstein took the action without first consulting Sessions and notified him when he was at the White House meeting with Trump. The decision took Trump by surprise and greatly angered him.A person close to the White House and the Justice Department said Sessions has “vacillated, I think, from being concerned about the deputy leaving or being fired and recognizing that Rosenstein has not been a friend of either him or the department.”...This week, two of Trump’s top legislative allies and leading members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus met with Rosenstein and pressed him for more documents about the conduct of law enforcement officials involved in the Russia probe. They warned him that he could face impeachment proceedings or an effort to hold him in contempt of Congress if he did not satisfy Republican demands for more documents.
By forcing the Justice Department into releasing Comey's memos to themselves, House Republicans-- who promptly leaked the memos to the press-- blundered into making Trump look even more repulsive and more guilty than he already looked. On top of which there's all this chatter about whether or not the sleaze-bag Michael Cohen will "flip" on Trump. It's unimaginable to be but... isn't Trump in the White no less unimaginable? [Also unimaginable: the media referring to yenta and Fox scumbag Alan Dershowitz as a "liberal."]
Two sources close to the president said people in Trump’s inner circle have in recent days been actively discussing the possibility that Michael Cohen-- long seen as one of Trump’s most loyal personal allies-- might flip if he faces serious charges as a result of his work on behalf of Trump.“That’s what they’ll threaten him with: life imprisonment,” said Alan Dershowitz, the liberal lawyer and frequent Trump defender who met with the president and his staff over two days at the White House last week. “They’re going to threaten him with a long prison term and try to turn him into a canary that sings.”...In a court filing last week, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York explained the FBI raid was “the result of a months-long investigation” into the president’s lawyer and that prosecutors were looking for evidence of crimes related to his business dealings.Trump and his allies fear that documents and recordings that the FBI swept up from Cohen’s home and office could come back to haunt the president, whose lawyers have joined Cohen’s in New York in asserting attorney-client privilege and are asking a federal judge to approve an independent review of the material.“Who knows what Cohen has in those files,” said a person close to the White House.But their concerns go beyond Cohen’s voluminous files. Increasingly, Trump’s outside advisers are worried about the risk posed by Cohen himself.“I think for two years or four years or five years, Michael Cohen would be a stand-up guy. I think he’d tell them go piss up a rope. But depending on dollars involved, which can be a big driver, or if they look at him and say it’s not two to four years, it’s 18 to 22, then how loyal is he?” said one defense lawyer who represents a senior Trump aide in Mueller’s Russia investigation.“Is he two years loyal? Is he 10 years loyal? Is he 15 years loyal?” the attorney added. “That’s the currency. It’s not measured in inches. It’s measured in years.”Jay Goldberg, a longtime Trump lawyer, told the Wall Street Journal that he spoke with Trump on Friday about Cohen and warned the president against trusting Cohen if he is facing criminal charges. Goldberg said he warned the president that Cohen “isn’t even a 1” on a scale of 1 to 100, where 100 was remaining fully loyal to the president, the newspaper reported....The prospect of years or even decades in prison might be easier to swallow if Cohen believes a presidential pardon is possible. White House officials and others close to the president insist that last week’s decision to pardon former Vice President Dick Cheney’s senior aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby on perjury charges dating to his service in the George W. Bush administration was not intended to send a message to Cohen-- but it nonetheless could go a long way toward reassuring the president’s lawyer.“They’re going to squeeze him like a grape. I think in the end he’ll pop unless Trump pardons him,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a senior fellow at the nonprofit R Street Institute and a former senior counsel during independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s investigation into President Bill Clinton....Cohen flipping “would be Trump’s worst nightmare,” said John Dean, the former White House counsel whose cooperation with Watergate prosecutors helped lead to President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974.“It would be as stunning and life-disrupting a surprise as his winning the presidency,” Dean added. “And if there is any prosecutor’s office in the USA that can flip Cohen, it is the Southern District of New York.”
