Trump Tries to Make It All Go Away
May 23 2017
Donald Trump's attempt to get FBI Director James Comey to quash the investigation of Gen. Mike Flynn was not the first time the president had tried to silence the opposition. In February, his administration tried to get FBI officials to contact news organizations to tell them their reporting of Trump associates’ ties to Russia were inaccurate. When FBI contacts refused, the White House asked Republican lawmakers to do its bidding, even successfully enlisting no less than the heads of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, Richard Burr of North Carolina and Devin Nunes of California, who admitted they had actually made such calls to the media and did not find it improper. White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus then turned them — like Dick Cheney building the case to invade Iraq by quoting the New York Times as authority after planting the story in the paper. In television interviews he said, “the top levels of the intelligence community” had denounced as false reports of Trump campaign contacts with Russia.
The Washington Post has now uncovered that Trump's attempts to put an end to investigations were more widespread still. March 20th had been a bad day for the president. Testifying before the House Intelligence Committee with the National Security Agency (NSA) chief Adm. Mike Rogers alongside, FBI Directory James Comey had confirmed that the Bureau was not only conducting an investigation into Russia's assault on the American democratic process but that they were also looking into possible collusion with the Russians by the Trump campaign. The Post learned that Trump had then sought out Rogers and the Director of National Intelligence, Daniel Coats, to urge them to publicly deny there being any evidence of collusion with Russia during the 2016 election. They both refused to comply, they said. And following the same practice as that employed by Comey, an NSA official wrote an internal memo to memorialize Trump's attempt.
Please subscribe if you haven't, or post a comment below about this article, or click here to go to our front page.
