A Quote by John Yang
The disclosure that President Donald Trump allegedly asked Jim Comey to drop an FBI investigation has raised the question of whether this may constitute obstruction of justice. There's plenty of disagreement.
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The most important thing to me is that the president Donald Trump fired the FBI director James Comey all because of the Russia investigation. That first justification given, again, the White House misleading the country about a major action the administration was taking, but the fact that they had a private conversation in which the president, by his own admission, was discussing the future of Director Comey in that job, and the president brings up whether he is under investigation, highly unethical, at a minimum, unethical.
The "New York Times" interview shows that the president Donald Trump believes he can get through the special prosecutor`s investigation of obstruction of justice with the simple words "I don`t remember". Jeff Sessions has been publicly attacked by the president. And in the middle of that attack, the president told all of his teammates who were in the Oval Office that day how he is going to testify when Robert Mueller asks him under oath if he kicked all of them out of the room when he asked to speak with James Comey alone.
President Trump has criticized the Mueller investigation, fired Jim Comey, savagely attacked the FBI, and repeatedly suggested the Russia campaign influence in 2016 was a hoax. In the wake of all of this, the American people need to be assured that Mueller can carry out his investigation without interference.
My experience is that the director of the FBI is particularly important to just how aggressive an investigation will be into an issue. And once you remove James Comey, it creates a vacuum at the top. And the fundamental issue will be whether or not there is support at the highest levels within the FBI to continue to conduct that investigation. That's going to be the question mark.
I don't think the special counsel can avoid that question based upon the president's Donald Trump own statements. But I'm not charging obstruction of justice.
The more that is learned about Comey's involvement in the deep state's illicit targeting of President Trump, the more reason the American people must question both Comey's motives and his management as director of the FBI, the now-disgraced agency he headed before Trump fired him.
I asked the former director James Comey about the FBI's intersections with Jeff Sessions prior to his stepping aside from the Russia investigation. Mr. Comey said his continued engagement with the Russian investigation was "problematic " and he said he could not discuss it in public.
Trump's pardon of Arpaio may not get as much attention as Russian influence or Trump's apparent obstruction of justice in the Mueller investigation. But to me, as a woman of color, it is a clear abuse of power for the U.S. president to pardon a sheriff who targeted people for arrest because of their ethnicity.
Everything having to do with President Trump and Russia, whether it is Mr. Trump's demand for an investigation into the investigation by the special counsel Robert Mueller, or whether Mr. Trump will testify, requires an answer to one essential background question: Can Mr. Mueller seek to indict the president?
Trump fired Jim Comey because the most dangerous thing in the world, if you are Donald Trump, is a person who tells the truth, is dogged, you can't control, and who is as committed as Comey is to the institutional independence of an organization that has the power to investigate you.
Some commentators have attacked the special counsel regulations as giving the attorney general the power to close a case against the president, as Mr. Barr did with the obstruction of justice investigation into Donald Trump. But the critics' complaint here is not with the regulations but with the Constitution itself.
Special counsel Robert Mueller, investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, provided ample evidence that the president should be investigated for obstruction of justice in his attempt to quell the Russia investigation by firing Comey and urging aides to lie.
People elected Donald Trump because he acts decisively. He fired James Comey. He didn't fire the entire FBI. If there's something there, the FBI is going to continue to investigate it.
Gary Tuchman, he can't believe it! He's from the New York-Washington axis, New York-Washington corridor. He's from CNN. The only liar here is Donald Trump. James Comey is the Second Coming right now. Comey is an angel. Comey is the savior. Comey is the individual of mass integrity that's gonna destroy this pig, Donald Trump.
There was certainly merit to the criticism that the deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein had about how James Comey handled the Hillary Clinton investigation. And I don't think Director Comey ever adequately explained why he treated the Clinton investigation one way and the Trump investigation another.
Obstruction, basically, is whether you corruptly influence, obstruct or impede the administration of justice. You tell a chief law enforcement officer get, you know, back off my friend - or I hope you back off my friend and then when he doesn't, you fire him, clearly, that isn't - that is - fits the behavior of obstruction. The question of whether or not you can prosecute the president is open.
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