The president has made his problems worse while he’s been in office through seeking to undercut the justice system, rather than just going along with the federal investigations into his team over possible cooperation with Russia. More recently, the federal lines of inquiry into his team have been more formally revealed to have extended beyond questions of connections to Russia; it was just recently that the Department of Justice revealed that it had been investigating the president’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen for some time.
In the face of these developments, the president is continuing to dig in at his present position.
In a tweet posted Sunday afternoon, he took on memos from former FBI Director James Comey that were recently released.
Comey has alleged that the president sought to have him move to end the Russia investigation when he was still on the job; the president dismissed Comey last May. The former FBI director created contemporaneous memos documenting his questionable interactions with the president to that effect that have served as the bulk of the substantive, concrete evidence against the commander-in-chief.
In the face of the release of those documents, the president tweeted a message Sunday reading:
‘Kim Strassel of the WSJ just said, after reviewing the dumb Comey Memos, “you got to ask, what was the purpose of the Special Counsel? There’s no there there.” Dan Henninger of the WSJ said Memos would show that this would be one of the weakest obstruction cases ever brought!’
Note that, as this tweet makes clear, it’s only when the mainstream media present viewpoints that diverge from his own that they’re spreading “fake news.” If an outlet, be it Fox News or the Wall Street Journal, wants to give a platform to viewpoints that support his own, then he’s all in.
With his Sunday message, the president acknowledges that there is a potential obstruction of justice case against him, although he did so unwittingly through asserting that it would be “one of the weakest obstruction cases” were it to actually be brought against him in a legal context.
In addition, evidence against the president extends beyond just that contained in James Comey’s memos. It was the president himself who told NBC’s Lester Holt that he had fired the now former FBI Director with the “Russia thing” in mind. He recently claimed otherwise on Twitter, but it’s not as though he can un-broadcast that interview.
There’s another issue with the president and his allies’ lines of reasoning, too.
The president and his allies have claimed both that the Comey memos are full of lies and irrelevant points and that they contain classified information.
They can’t have it both ways, although the president here doesn’t explicitly claim that the memos are full of lies. Still, the president has in the past claimed the memos to be full of lies, so that’s the logical next step from his comments here.
Even still, as mentioned, he can’t have it both ways. In his desperation to get out of accountability for possible misdeeds, the president seems to just be running down the list of possible defenses here.
Check out Twitter’s response to his latest ranting below.
Featured Image via Mike Theiler/Pool via Bloomberg
