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Donald Trump and his supporters may be waging battles against the press, immigrants, voting rights, the environment, science,social welfare programs, Planned Parenthood and what they label political correctness and the deep state.

But to them these are mere skirmishes in a muchlarger conflict. The president has essentially declared an all-out waron the American 1960s.

What he and his followers hope to do is not necessarilyturn back the clock to the 1950s, but rather restore a socialorder, value system and real America that they believe was hijacked by the liberal culture,politics, thought leaders and policy priorities that emerged from the 60s.

An October 2016PRRI surveyfound close to three-fourths ofTrump voters and white evangelical Christians bemoaning anAmerican society and way of lifethat to themhaschanged for the worse since the 1950s. Donald Trump has become their cultural and political reset button.

To be sure, no immigration policy orinsistence on saying Merry Christmaswill reinstate the 1950s in America. A nation that was87 percent non-Hispanicwhite in 1950will be 47 percent in 2050.Seven in 10 Americans claimed church membershipduring the 50s, butnow just20 percent of millennialssay churchgoing is important andalmost40 percent say they have no religious affiliationat all.

But while the president and his supporters cant reverse demography, they are trying through rhetoric, symbolism, policy and politicsto resurrect an iconic post-World War IINorman Rockwellversion of what itmeans to be authentically American.

To them, the 60s undermined what was good and virtuous in America. In their sepia-toned view of our history, it was atriumphant military,a white working class and aconceptionof nuclear families, moral values andsuburban bliss that made America great.

In this America wesaluted the flag, revered the police, attended church, trusted authority, respected traditionand veneratedsturdy, stoic,upstanding lunch pailheroeswho earned theirAmerican dreamwithout griping or government assistance.

Its not that religious and ethnic minorities are absentfrom this history they gave America character, after all and we all need to show our melting pot tolerance. But how nice it was that they knew their place, didnt get too uppity and honored the primacy of Christians and whites who, the story goes, steadied and builtthe United States.

America was much more of a community before the agitatorscaused all the problems, wasnt it?

Then came the 1960s.And it was then that the so-calledagitators pointed out that those charming Levittown havens just like theTrump apartment complexes had no welcome mat for blacksand thosegood middle-class occupations excluded women.

It was a generation that questioned God, fled the church, disparaged conformity, upended gender roles, asserted black powerandcriticized the military for Vietnam and thepolice for brutalizing civil rights workers, killingAfrican-Americans and bullyingantiwar protesters.

It also was a singular moment in our historythat codified into lawpersonal privacy rights and a womans rightto control her own fate. It would begin our long cultural march to rethink masculinity andlift the taboo from same sex relations. It also launched an environmental movement that said yes to the Earth and no to thesmokestack.

In the 60sour moral compass pivotedfrom judgmental scrutiny of ourprivate lives to an examination of our collective and individual capacity for prejudice, bigotry and discrimination. Minorities, previously considered Americas outliers, became central to our historical narrative. We passed civil rights and immigration laws that changed the complexion of mainstream America and who showed upto vote.White men would no longer control Americas storyline.

For many, the 60s redefined patriotism away from flag waving and military mightto the pursuit of equality and justicefor all. It was an era that celebrated an unbowedpress forrooting out corruption, uncovering secrets and pointing out where our democracy had fallen short.

Whereas the 1950ssanctifiedunfettered capitalism as a rebuke to communism and symbol of freedom, in the 1960s many began to eyeitwith a new skepticism as corporations pumped pollution into riversand produced carsunsafe at any speed.The economic and cultural fulcrum also began its shift from the factory floor to the college campus and with it camethe realization that brains and not brawn would define our future and builda stronger America.

The 60s also challenged a shibboleth of the 50s: that if you worked hard you could succeed, but if you didnt succeed it was because you didnt work hard. Liberals led byMartin Luther King Jr. and Lyndon Johnson argued thateven the hardest of work didnt free millions from the chains of history, and so they turned to government to level the playing field and cushion the hard blows of misfortune.

To many white men who saw their own sweat and labor yield suburban happiness and middle-class fruits and seemingly unconcerned that the same opportunities werent available to all government elites werecreating a protected class at their expense.

The 60s bent the river of American history and now Donald Trump and his own silent majority are doing everything in their power to bend it back.

On immigration, race, voting rights, womens rights, religion, cultural issues, public schools, higher education, social programs, business, labor, coal, the environment, the news media, the white working class,themilitary and the police,virtually all of his policies, pronouncements and tweetsare aimed at restoring what Steve Bannon has called thevery kind of 1950s valuesthat made America great.

Perhaps that is what President Trump meant in hisJuly 2017 speech in Warsaw, Poland, when he dedicated his presidency to counter forces . . . that threaten over time to undermine these values and to erase the bonds of culture, faith and tradition that make us who we are.

Its often said that Trump is fixated on undoing everythingPresident Obama accomplished. But in truth its not the Obama legacy hes undoing. Its the 1960s.

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Donald Trump's war on the 1960s - Salon

This week, as Donald Trump publicly attacked Attorney General Jeff Sessions, an assault one restrained observer described as a multitiered tower of political idiocy, a sublime monument to the moronic, a gaudy, gleaming, Ozymandian folly, even David Horowitz, the anti-Leftist intellectual and author of Big Agenda: President Trumps Plan to Save America, felt compelled to admit something to his Twitter followers: I have to confess, I'm really distressed by Trump's shabby treatment of Sessions.

Trump has always been vehemently opposed from the left and distrusted on the right by Never Trump conservatives, who continue to be dismayed by his behavior. But this week as never before, public doubts surfaced among Trump boosters and apologists, prompting Jay Cost to quip, at the end it's just gonna be Sean Hannity huddled in a corner, quietly whispering to himself that Trump is a great American.

Trumps attack on Sessions is the biggest reason. Victor Davis Hanson, who made the case for Trump to National Reviews readers before the election, characterized it this way:

If Trump were to fire Sessions, it would be suicidal; if he thinks berating him encourages other independent and respected cabinet officers to get in line, he is sorely mistaken; if he moves on, lets Sessions do his needed work, and forgets this unfortunate diversion from critical issues, he will be wise.

Tucker Carlson, whose Fox News program panders to the rights populist mood at every opportunity, has repeatedly criticized Trump over Sessions, suggesting hes concluded that the position wont damage his populist credibility.

And Breitbart, typically among the most sycophantic pro-Trump web sites, has openly criticizing the president, publishing a Matthew Boyle bylined article, Jeff Sessions: A Man Who Embodies the Movement That Elected Donald Trump President.

Its scolding of Trump includes these passages:

As Trumps treatment of Sessions provides another stark example of his willingness to betray those around him, more general mistrust of the president seems to be growing, reflected not only in his dismal approval ratings, but also in anecdotes like one Rush Limbaugh offered on his talk-radio show the morning after the president celebrated himself at a campaign-style rally in Youngstown, Ohio:

I got a lot of complaints about Trump at the rally last night. They loved it, but they thought it was six-month-old stuff. They said, Hey, you dont need our vote. We already voted for you. What is this, a campaign rally? We love you. We love you already. Do the agenda! You should tell us whats wrong in Washington. Tell us what youre up against so we can help you out. Dont tell us what we already heard during the campaign. Im hearing that complaint. I dont think thats the way to look at it, folks.

Rush Limbaugh is wrong. Trump is failing to govern in the manner that he promised his voters. And insofar as they are getting suspicious, that is warranted, even if the talk radio host is back to his habit of carrying water for Republican hucksters, rather than leveling with the listeners who are taken in by his golden voice.

Trump is even giving anti-Trump conservatives new reasons to lament his rise.

At National Review, veteran David French, an earnest commentator who agrees with the substance of banning transgender Americans from the armed forces, complained that the president announced that policy in a most irresponsible, counterproductive manner. And Charles C.W. Cooke, a principled conservative who is allergic to anything resembling groupthink that emanates from the mainstream media, finds Trump wearing on his patience after the president has spent just six months in the White House.

He writes:

Calvin Coolidge was a great president not solely because he sought to limit the federal state, but because he did not feel a need to inject himself into the nations consciousness every single day. Donald Trump is the least Coolidge-like president we have ever had. Compared to him, Barack Obama looks like a Carthusian monk. Every morning Trump is in the United States is a morning during which he is drawing attention to himself.

The pattern is familiar: He wakes up, he picks up his phone, and he throws grenades onto Twittermost of which, it should be said, rebound immediately off the wall and explode in his face. He announces policies in the most counter-productive way imaginable; he defends himself as might a cartoon character; he dredges up old fights and throws punches at skeletons. And then, of course, come the responses: Online, on Twitter, on TV, in the newspapers, in the magazines, on the streets, at the Oscars, at dinner tables across the land.

In effect, the president is deciding daily what America will discuss, and more often than not that what is him. Whatever ones politics, this is extraordinarily unhealthy. The president is the head of the executive branch within a free republic, he is not a King or spiritual leader. When the government is as big as it is, we will inevitably be forced to care what he thinks.

But the attention that this man insists upon bringing upon himself transcends that inevitability, and ranges into the realm of narcissism and vaingloriousness. This is, in other words, a choice. It is a decision that Trump is making, day in, day out. Those who want to live their lives without constantly being dragooned into endless political hostility should band together and speak with one voice: Mr. President. Please, please, please be quiet.

Then there is Rod Dreher. His moral compass never allowed him to support Trump, but he is so alarmed by secular progressivism that he believes religious conservatives ought to withdraw into cloistered enclaves to protect their families and religious traditions, which he believes to be under existential threat from Democrats.

Here is his latest thinking:

My friend Ryan Booth is a white Evangelical, a former state GOP committee member, and one of the most sensible, upright people I know.

After this Sessions insanity, he writes: Hillary would not have been worse, folks. As some of you know, I didnt vote for either. But Donald Trump is an unstable lunatic. If he lasts until 2020, then Ill likely end up voting for a Democrat for the first time in my life.

Im almost there with him.

I believe the Democratic Party today wants to do as much damage as it possibly can to social and religious conservatism. I believe the Democratic Party would empower some of the worst people in America. But at least you know what theyre going to do. Trump really is an unstable lunatic whose word means nothing, and who sees no higher obligation than serving himself. If he will do this to Jeff Sessions, there is no reason at all to expect that his next SCOTUS nomination will be Gorsuch II.

Maybe it will, but how do we know that?

These wildly diverse observers on the right are correct to fear that Trump will turn against them and any principle that they hold dear if the mere whim strikes his fancy. And the spin that attempts to lay blame on Trump underlings is comical. Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director, suggested to Hugh Hewitt that White House staff is the problem.

The worst thing you can do for the president is have internecine fighting inside the West Wing, he said. So what we all have to do is subordinate our egos to the greater good of the agenda. He then offered an analogy that is ironic given the circumstances:

Im not an American military person, but Im a big troop supporter. Im on the board of Business Executives for National Security. Ive been to Iraq and Afghanistan, and Ive really studied the Army model of leadership. And as you know from the Army, the leaders, the generals eat last.

They put the troops ahead of themselves.

And if were going to work for this man, we have to start doing that in the context of the agenda and the President. And so for me, I said something to staff yesterday, which I really believe, that theres 325 million people in our country, and theres 300 of us in the West Wing. Were one in a million. Just think about the extraordinary opportunity and the blessing that we have here to serve our country and serve our president. So if youre going to fight with each other and leak on each other, and say stupid things about each other in the corridor, maybe we can stop doing that, and stop acting like Mean Girls from the 2004 movie.

In fact, White House staffers cannot change their culture, so long as the president continues to shirk his duties to the country, pick internecine fights, say stupid things about his team on Twitter, and act like a character in the 2004 movie Mean Girls. The president is the general. And it doesnt take a military expert to see why he keeps failing as a leader. He cares less about governing than satiating grotesque appetites for attention, adoration, and domination. Many who voted him into office were starving for hope. But no matter what, Donald Trump eats first.

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Donald Trump Eats First - The Atlantic

White House Senior Advisers Steve Bannon, left, and Jared Kushner, right, listen as President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting. (AP Photo / Andrew Harnik)

Donald J. Trump is preparing his endgame. Besieged in every directionby Robert Muellers multi-pronged special-counsel inquiry, by the FBI and the Department of Justice, by several congressional committees, and by a steady drumbeat of leaksthe White House is building an Alamo-like fortress to protect the president. In the battles ahead, Trump is relying on his innermost core of loyalists: his two sons, his daughter, his son-in-law, his lawyers, and a select group of White House staffers and former campaign advisers whove passed muster by pledging ultimate fealty to the commander in chief.

Everyone else is either being thrown overboard or getting the runaround, and many who were once considered Trumps closest allies are now seen as likely to resign. These include Attorney General Jeff Sessions, under relentless attack from the president, and Reince Priebus, the out-of-favor White House chief of staff. An obsequious GOP organization man, Priebus lost a key ally last week with the ouster of Sean Spicer, a former aide and spokesman for the RNC, who served just six rocky months as White House press secretary. Following Spicers exit, another White House communications staffer, Michael Short, was forced out. And there will be more to come.

Im going to fire everybody, said Anthony Scaramucci, the Wall Street tycoon and political neophyte whose appointment as White House communications director prompted Spicer to quit and who is now rumored to be in the running to take over as White House chief of staff, replacing Priebus. If Ive got to get the thing down to me and Sarah Huckabee, then the leaking will stop, he said.

A strong indication that Trump and Scaramucci are getting ready to lower the boom on Priebus came with Scaramuccis overt warning, issued on Wednesday. If Reince wants to explain that hes not a leaker, let him do that, he said. Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported that Trump is engaged in detailed talks about ousting Sessions, despite vociferous objections from Sessionss GOP allies and Breitbart News.

At least one member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is worried that Trumps attack on Sessions could intimidate others in the administration, including top intelligence officials such as Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, CIA director Mike Pompeo, and incoming FBI director Christopher Wray. Watching the president slap the attorney general around has a pretty chilling effect on people who want to keep their job, Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA) told The Nation. The conduct by the president is reprehensible, and his intent on thwarting the investigation is alarming and very challenging, from a constitutional perspective. The scary part of this is that there arent more people objecting.

The circling of wagons follows the devastating revelation that three Trump insidersDon Jr., Jared Kushner, and then-campaign manager Paul Manafortheld a secret tte--tte in June 2016 with several Russians who claimed to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton from the Russian government. All three participants were summoned to Congress this week following that report, which was confirmed by Trump Jr. himself and seen by many as a smoking gun. Kushner was hauled in front of both the House and Senate intelligence committees, and Manafort and Don Jr. were the subject of an inquiry by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

A pair of outside advisers and ber-loyal followers of Trump, Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, seem to be playing key roles in whats likely to be a no-holds-barred defense of Trump. Back in May, the White House mulled the idea of creating a war room dedicated to an all-out defense of Trump amid charges of pre-election collusion with Russia and a swirling number of conflict-of-interest and malfeasance charges against Trump aides and allies. Their mission: Respond, rebut and refute bad press and legal issues emanating from the special counsel probe led by former FBI Director Robert Mueller into Russian influence on the 2016 election, reported Fox News.

Tapped to lead the effort was Steve Bannon, the ultra-nationalist former Breitbart executive and leader of the alt-right wing of the White House staff. Steve Bannon is not a lawyer, but the chief White House strategist is poised to become the senior partner in a heavyweight firm of bareknuckle barristers at the center of President Trumps counter-offensive against Russia collusion claims, added Fox. Axios, reporting on the war-room plans, quoted a White House insiderpossibly Bannon himselfsaying, Were getting the street fighters ready to go. According to CNN, Lewandowski and Bossie would be among those street fighters: The internal White House war room may be aided by an outside rapid response operation, staffed by Trump loyalists who have remained outside the administration. Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and ex-top campaign official David Bossie have been mentioned repeatedly in those conversations.

Though the war-room plans were temporarily put on hold, it appears that they are being revved up now. When Trump traveled this week to Youngstown, Ohio, for a fire-breathing campaign rally, he took both Lewandowski and Bossie along for the ride, along with Sebastian Gorka, a key Bannon aide and former Breitbart national-security editor. Politico reported that the pair have been spending more time in the White House in recent weeks. And, according to CNN, last week Bannon dispatched both Bossie and Lewandowski to Capitol Hill to plunge into the last-ditch Senate effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And Gorka, a Hungarian Islamophobe with ties to the countrys far right, has emerged as Trumps go-to television and radio defender. Did you see Gorka? Trump said recently after one of Gorkas pugnacious TV appearances So great, I mean, really truly great!

Russiagate may be nearing an endgame, especially if Mueller starts to unravel Trumps finances. The people Trump wants in the trenches with him are not the opportunists who climbed aboard the bandwagon after it rolled to victory, but the few who were there with him when it all began. His tiny circle of trusted intimates starts and ends with his family and a few hardcore loyalists such as Bannon, Gorka, Bossie, Lewandowski, and Scaramucci.

In a now-famous interview with The New York Times, Trump delivered stinging remarks about three top Department of Justice officials, a clear sign that he considers their role as law-enforcement officials either questionable or illegitimate. He delivered a blistering rebuke of Sessions (extremely unfair. I would have picked somebody else). He ridiculed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the Mueller inquiry (Who is he? What the hell is this all about?). And he warned Mueller himself that the special counsel ought to steer clear of Trump and his familys murky financial history, including real-estate deals related to Russian investors and contacts with Russian banks.

His statements amounted to a declaration of war against the Department of Justice, on top of his ongoing war against the media and his utter refusal to accept the judgment of the US intelligence communityincluding the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the FBIthat Russias GRU intelligence agency and President Putin himself ordered the hack-and-leak attack in 2016 and coordinated an information war against the American electoral system using social media, bots, and trolls to spread fake news.

But what are Trumps options, other than tweeting furiously and building a White House war room? Most immediately, it appears that his first goal is to oust Sessions, though that is a high-risk move. With a steady stream of tweets and public remarks (our beleaguered attorney general, very WEAK position on crimes by Hillary Clinton). Of course, the president could fire the attorney general outright, as he did FBI director Jim Comey in May, but Scaramucci, Bannon, and other top White House officials have undoubtedly learned the lesson of the Comey firing, which led to harmful leaks, an exquisitely damaging Comey appearance at a congressional hearing, and the appointment of Mueller as special counsel. As with the Comey firing, an aggressive Sessions ouster could contribute to obstruction-of-justice charges against the president, something that Mueller is already looking into.

And then what? If Sessions quits, Trump has suggested a tough successor, with Rudy Giuliani a leading candidate according to various reports. But getting an attorney general ratified by a hostile Senate Judiciary Committeethe same committee seeking testimony from Don Jr. and Manafort this weekwont be easy. Its been suggested that Trump could make a recess appointment, which The Washington Post reported is being actively discussed in the White House. Such an appointment wouldnt need Senate confirmation, which would allow Sessionss replacement to serve until 2019, though that would be an explosively controversial move. Giuliani, Ted Cruz, or Chris Christie might decide to fire Mueller if appointed as attorney general, but that could also trigger impeachment hearings.

But what are Trumps options, other than tweeting furiously and building a White House war room?

Even if Sessions stays on, Trump could order Rosenstein to get rid of Mueller, but that would have the same earthshaking consequences. And, as with the Watergate-era Saturday Night Massacre, it could lead to a cascading series of resignations of DOJ officials who refuse to carry out Trumps order to fire Mueller.

Trump also has the power of the presidential pardon in his back pocket, which could protect current and former officials, as well as family members. But that course has a severe downside too. By pardoning witnesses and potential witnesses in the Russiagate inquiry, Trump adds to the long list of actions that could be construed as obstruction of justice. Once pardoned, those individuals would no longer be able to use the Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination, so theyd have to testify about what they know. But if any of the folks under Muellers microscope are thinking about flipping, or getting immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony against higher-ups, the possibility of a pardon might keep them from doing so.

In the end, neither Mueller nor the House and Senate committees will be intimidated by Trumps bluster. The presidents expectation is that [our investigation] is going to be wrapped up in the next three weeks, Representative Speier told The Nation. It wont be wrapped up in the next three months, in my view. There are a lot of witnesses that have yet to be called, including the most significant witnesses. Among them, she says, are the people that appear to have the potential relationships with Russia.

On Tuesday, the House intelligence committee heard testimony from Jared Kushner concerning the June 2016 meeting with the Russian go-betweens. The hearing went on for probably a hour longer than it was scheduled to, and he was happy to answer all the questions that the members had. He offered to come back, which is going to important in his case, because we have not seen his SF-86 [security clearance form] yet or his financial disclosure statement, says Speier. He wasnt defensive or aggressive. But he didnt recall a lot of things.

And what did Kushner say? I have to be careful here, because it was in closed session, she says. But its safe to say that what he was inclined to say is that hes new to politics. He has used the line that hes a business guy, and that politics is very new to him. But its very early in the process, and we do not have the benefit of documents. The majority was really pushing to have him testify, and I think the intention was to move it before we had access to the documents.

Stay tuned. If youre Donald Trump, you can fortify your Alamo. Of course, Trump doesnt know much history, so someone should tell him that at the battle of the Alamo, the Mexicans won.

Originally posted here:
Donald Trump's Inner Circle Is Quickly Evaporating - The Nation.

WASHINGTON On July 27, 2016, Donald J. Trump stood behind a lectern in a Miami suburb and asked the Russian government to intervene in the 2016 election.

Russia, if youre listening, I hope youre able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, Trump told a crowded press conference, referring to messages his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, kept on a private server and deleted. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.

Twelve months later, top U.S. intelligence officials have said Russian state-backed entities did something similar to what Trump asked for: They hacked and released internal Democratic Party emails to embarrass Clinton and aid Trump. The leaked materials dominated media coverage for weeks, notably in the lead-up to Election Day itself.

Whats unclear and currently under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller and three congressional committees is whether Trump and his campaign were involved in that foreign interference effort.

Trump himself says the remark last year was sarcastic, and there is no proof yet of criminal collusion. But a pile of evidence thats drawn attention since he made the comment shows a pattern of open cooperation. And the latest big story about Trump-Russia contacts regarding a June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr., other campaign aides and a well-connected Russian lawyer proves there was a willingness in the Trump camp to accept Russian help even before Trumps statement.

In March testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, former FBI agent Clint Watts explained that the Trump team and Moscow-linked media, including the site Wikileaks, spent months amplifying each others sharing of false information and conspiracy theories, helping the Kremlin get more bang for its buck.

Part of the reason active measures [by Russia] have worked in this U.S. election is because the commander-in-chief has used Russian active measures at times against his opponents, Watts said. He described Trumps Oct. 11 promotion of a fake news report published on Russias Sputnik News, and how former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort pushed a different false story that Watts traced back to Russian sources.

He denies the intel from the United States. He claims that the election could be rigged, Watts said. They parrot the same lines.

The Russian social media influence campaign also spent time trying to boost disaffection among supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), targeting a constituency Trump repeatedly reached out to,Watts noted.

A few days after that hearing, the popular blog Lawfare shared a similar assessment in a post titled Of Course Theres Evidence Trump Colluded With Russian Intelligence. They provided an appendix listing the many, many times candidate Trump praised the leaks and denied growing U.S. intelligence suggesting Russia was behind them something he has continued to do as president.

And in May, Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, issued a reminder that theres more than enough smoke to suggest a fire.

What we do not have right now is conclusive proof that President Trumps team colluded with the Russian government. But a lack of conclusive proof is not the same thing as a lack of evidence, and we should not confuse the two, Smith said in a press release. There is sufficient evidence to justify the appointment of a special prosecutor, there is enough evidence for Congress to continue investigating, and there is enough evidence that the American people should be deeply concerned about the Presidents dealings with Russia. We do the truth a disservice when we blur those two questions, and it is important that we make every effort to keep this distinction clear.

Smith noted the case of Manafort, who ran Trumps presidential campaign until the New York Times revealed in August of last year that Ukrainian investigators believed he had received $12.7 million in undisclosed payments from a pro-Russian political party. (The Times has since shown that Manafort was in debt to pro-Russian interests just before he began working for Trump, and Manafort has spoken with Senate investigators about his role in the meeting with the Trump son.)

Smith also mentioned Carter Page, a Trump foreign policy adviser who flew to Moscow last July to deliver a speech slamming the U.S.approach to the world and promoting Russias foreign policy. In 2016, a Foreign Intelligence Service Court judge determined that the FBI was probably correct in considering Page a Russian agent. And he cited Roger Stone, who was a Trump adviser for decades and loud promoter of the materials taken from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. Smith also noted the multiple undisclosed meetings between Trump officials like Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Its also become clearer over time how desperate Trump is to quash the Russia investigation. To that end, he has already fired FBI director James Comey, threatened Mueller and Sessions despite support for them within the GOP, and repeatedly attempted to switch the focus back to Clintons alleged wrongdoing.

Its striking that all this is often still forgotten in coverage and conversations of the affair. In discussing Trumps links with Russian media election efforts, Lawfares writers attempted to explain why this is the case. We have collectively discounted this cooperation for two related, and quite perverse, reasons: It was overt and public and it was legal, they wrote. The consequence has been that we largely ignore it in discussing the matter.

Contributing to the confusion is the public fascination with uncovering something secret, the real desperation to find that one damning clue that will explain it all, and the difficulty reporters and the public have in realizing that the traditionally hawkish GOP could now share interests with Moscow.

But the current tendency to forget Trumps public call on Russia to hack his opponent is a worrying sign. Russian interference is far from over, and Moscow does its best to make its efforts public to take advantage of the way open liberal democracies work, and avoid clear incrimination of Russia or its partners, experts on Kremlin strategy argue. Unless Americans gain a better understanding of how this kind of influence works, theres little reason to believe it will end, no matter how the Trump-Russia case concludes.

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Donald Trump Asked For Russian Help In The Election 1 Year Ago Today - HuffPost

President Donald Trump speaks in the Rose Garden at the White House on Wednesday in Washington.

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

In a fusillade of Twitter posts this week, President Donald Trump blasted his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for failing to pursue probes of Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey. It is unclear whether the presidents posts will spur his attorney general and the Justice Department to pursue investigations into either individual. It is increasingly clear, though, that Trump has no compunction about using the machinery of federal law enforcement as a weapon against his political opponents. What he probably doesnt realize is that he is committing a crime by doing so.

There are 120,000 full-time federal law enforcement officers in the United States, all of whom reportat least indirectlyto the president. Meanwhile, thefederal criminal code runs to 868 pages, with many crimes defined vaguely and many rarely enforced. If the president wants to use the vast investigative and prosecutorial infrastructure at his disposal to go after his rivals, its likely that federal law enforcement officers will be able to findsome provision that his opponents have violated. Even if not, the president could make his opponents lives miserable with ceaseless probes and baseless charges.

But the very breadth of federal law enforcement power has, at least since Richard Nixon abused it, given rise to a strong norm of independence from political control. While the president is the nominal head of the executive branch and can order the Justice Department to follow his priorities, he must not use his authority to criminalize political opposition or harass his opponents.

A now mostly forgotten political scandal from George W. Bushs second term shows what can happen when an administration tries to transform the Justice Department into a political weapon. To put that scandal in context: Each of the federal judicial districts has a U.S. attorney who serves as its chief federal prosecutor. The president can fire any one of them at any time. In 2006, Bush dismissed nine, includingmost controversiallythe U.S. attorney in New Mexico, David Iglesias.

Iglesias says he was fired after a number of Republican officials in the state pressured him to bring corruption charges against a prominent Democratic politician in therun-up to the 2006 midterm election. That would potentially violate obstruction of justice laws, which make it a crime for anyone to corruptly influence a grand jury investigation oragency proceeding (among other matters). A subsequent Justice Departmentreport recommended the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate whether Bush administration officials had broken the obstruction laws in the course of the Iglesias firing. The report stated: [W]e believe that pressuring a prosecutor to indict a case more quickly to affect the outcome of an upcoming election could be a corrupt attempt to influence the prosecution in violation of the obstruction of justice statute. The report added that the obstruction laws didnt just apply to the indictment of an opponent prior to an electionthey could apply to pressuring a prosecutor to take partisan considerations into account under other circumstances as well.

A special prosecutor was ultimately appointed to investigate the Iglesias firing and eventually concluded that there was insufficient evidence that any Bush administration official had pressured the New Mexico U.S. attorney. But all along, the Justice Department proceeded on the assumption that administration officials could be charged with obstruction if they had sought to influence Iglesias investigation for partisan purposes. In that case, there was no smoking gun: no tweets in which the president intimated that he would fire the prosecutor unless the prosecutor brought charges against the presidents political rival. (Twitter was only a fewmonths old then, and Bush wasnot a user.)

Is Trump pressuring Sessions to pursue cases on the basis of partisan considerations? Seems like it.

Today, by contrast, the gun smokes in 140-character plumes. In one of his posts, Trump asked why his beleaguered attorney general wasnt looking into Clintons crimes and Russia relations. In others, he complained of Comeys illegal leaks of memos to the New York Times and berates Sessions for taking a VERY WEAK position on leaks and on Clintons alleged mishandling of classified material. In yet another, he blasted Sessions for failing to replace the acting FBI director with someone who will go after Clinton with vigor. On Wednesday, theWashington Post published a piece sourced to four people familiar with the issue indicating that Trump may fire Sessionsa leak that may be aimed at Sessions himself.

Is Trump pressuring his attorney general and the acting FBI chief to pursue cases on the basis of partisan considerationsthe sort of conduct the Justice Department said could amount to criminal obstruction? Seems like it. If Trump follows up by replacing Sessions, the parallels to the Iglesias firing will be even stronger, except that this time there will be ample evidence of the presidents motive.

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To be sure, Trumpas presidenthas a constitutional responsibility to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, and he might argue that this is what motivates his interest in the Clinton and Comey cases. But if a jury could be convinced that Trumps motives are political rather than in the public interest, then his advocacy for action against Clinton and Comey could be considered corrupt, thus amounting to criminal obstruction. That, at least, appears to be the implication of the Justice Department report regarding the Iglesias episode, and it is consistent with the way the obstruction laws have been interpreted in other contexts.

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Certainly Mueller is already collecting all the necessary documentation on this particular crime, right? At this pace, Mueller is going to have to leave some felonies out of his final report just for the sake of brevity. More...

Trumps power over the Justice Department might dissuade prosecutors from pursuing obstruction charges against him. But the Justice Department is staffed with career attorneys committed to the rule of lawand in many cases protected by civil service regulations. It is not so clear that they can be browbeaten by the president. Plus, whether or not Trump can be indicted while still president, he will find himself in legal jeopardy after he leaves office. And then there are his aides and associates; if any of them have assisted Trump in his campaign to pressure the Justice Department, they are complicit in a crime.

The vast reach of federal criminal law and law enforcement leaves us vulnerable to the risk that Trump will use these resources for political ends, as he already seems to have suggested. But Trump is vulnerable to the same forces that he seeks to unleash on his rivals. In an effort to ensnare his opponents, he may be laying his own trap.

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The Obstruction of Justice Case Against Donald Trump - Slate Magazine