Behind the scenes in the West Wing, President Trump continues to rant and brood about former FBI Director Jim Comey and the Russia investigation that got him fired.
Trump tells aides and visitors that the probe now being run by special counsel Bob Mueller is a witch hunt, and that Comey was a leaker.
So White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders was reflecting her boss’s moods when she attacked Comey at length from the podium yesterday, after being asked about Steve Bannon’s assertion to “60 Minutes” that the firing was one of the worst mistakes in modern political history:
- “I think there is no secret Comey, by his own self-admission, leaked privileged government information. … Comey leaked memos to the New York Times … He politicized an investigation by signaling he would exonerate Hillary Clinton before he ever interviewed her or other key witnesses.”
- Sanders even suggested that Comey himself should be investigated: “His actions were improper and likely could have been illegal.”
Why it matters: The Mueller investigation is hitting ever closer to home for Trump, and he’s using the tools of his office to try to undermine the special counsel’s future findings.
Be smart: Trump allies plan to vilify Mueller the way the Clinton White House treated Ken Starr.
- Watch for a common Trump theme to solidify: partisan overreach.
- The president’s friends are most worried about Mueller digging into past business deals, which is why his team keeps raising concerns in public and private about the “scope” of the investigation.
Interesting that Sarah Sanders gave that rationale for firing Comey (exonerating Clinton before he interviewed her), since that was not known at the time, nor was that Trump’s stated reason at the time.
Trump raging about Mueller is amusing because Trump himself precipitated the events leading to Mueller’s appointment. After demanding Comey’s loyalty and demanding that Comey drop the probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, he gave him the ax. (Trump also revealed publicly that he was furious with Attorney General Jeff Sessions for not protecting him from the investigation, apparently unaware of how inappropriate this was.) Trump’s claim that he had fired Comey on Rosenstein’s recommendation — followed by Trump’s public admission that he had in fact done so because of the Russia probe — left little doubt that he had tried to implicate Rosenstein in creating a cover story for the firing. These flagrant abuses of process and power are what led directly to Rosenstein’s appointment of Mueller.
Does Trump grasp this chain of events and his own role in setting them in motion? It’s really not clear that he does.