Wow! Benjamin Wittes thread about Trump's comments

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Wow! Benjamin Wittes thread about Trump's comments on the DOJ and FBI

Starting here, with all the tweets in the thread on one page:

Benjamin Wittes
✔ ‎@benjaminwittes


I've been thinking about these comments Trump made. What a fabulous tribute they are to the men and women of the DOJ and the FBI!

https://twitter.com/benjaminwittes/status/926269757443190785 …

I've been thinking about these comments Trump made. What a fabulous tribute they are to the men and women of the DOJ and the FBI!

The tribute is, of course, inadvertent: Trump doesn't understand the statement he is making about independent law enforcement. /2/

But let's unpack it for a moment. /3/

The President is saying that he would like to interfere in ongoing investigations. He is saying that he would like to order up /4/

investigations of his political opponents. He is announcing that he is a corrupt actor who does not believe in the rule of law. /5/

He is a man who is capable of firing his FBI Director because he will not aid him in these endeavors and to threaten his AG and his DAG /6/

and the special counsel over the inconveniences they pose him. Even as I type this, he is tweeting about how DOJ should be investigating /7/

Clinton. (For example: …)

In these comments, he is announcing frankly how badly he wants to corrupt the DOJ. /8/

And yet, he is "frustrated." Why? It's not because of Jim Comey. He got rid of Jim Comey. It's not because of Sessions or Rosenstein. /9/

Lordy knows they have not shrouded themselves in glory. It's because the norm of independent law enforcement—which he is menacing— is /10/

actually strong enough to constrain him—at least right now. It's strong enough that he can fulminate all he wants about investigating /11/

Clinton and still Mueller does his job, and the FBI does its job, and the men and women of the DOJ do their jobs, and none of their /12/

jobs, as our democratic polity has determined them, is to fulfill his undemocratic ambitions to loose investigators on people he /13/

doesn't like and to have the Justice Department protect him. It's a stunning statement of presidential constraint: A president actually /14/

saying that he aspires to corrupt interference with law enforcement and can't pull it off. Let it warm your heart. It sure warms mine. /15/

That's all I got. /16/

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