We are now watching a high-stakes struggle being played out inside the Trump administration, between those who believe in the rule of law and those who advocate the law of the ruler.
On the side committed to the notion that we are a nation of laws and not men, you have Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
On the side of those who believe the Justice Department can be used as the president’s praetorian prosecutors to punish political foes are Trump and his White House enablers, aided by certain House Republicans and right-wing media lackeys.
As a candidate, Donald Trump threatenedto prosecute Hillary Clinton if elected; as president, he has repeatedly urged the Justice Department to investigate or prosecute or jail this person or that, from Clinton to former FBI director James Comey to Mayor Libby Schaaf of Oakland, Calif. The hyper-partisans in the House, who want the Trump administration to go full banana republic, have called for the DOJ to investigate a baker’s half dozen of those whose actions have somehow upset them. They want Comey, for example, prosecuted for failing to prosecute former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, whom, of course, they also want prosecuted.
So far, Sessions, Rosenstein, and Wray have adopted a bend-but-don’t-break posture with regard to Trump’s pressure, finding ways to distract or deflect their boss or divert his intrusions into more appropriate avenues. That’s clearly what Rosenstein did when he responded to the president’s norm- violating request for an investigation of the FBI’s use of an informant — or in Trump’s tendentious terminology, “spies’’ the FBI “implanted’’ in his campaign “for political purposes’’ — by referring the matter to the department’s inspector general, as has been done with other such requests. This was essentially a diversion, a matador twirling his cape and sidestepping as the enraged bull rushes by.
On Monday, Trump doubled down on his misuse of presidential power, pressing Rosenstein and Wray, apparently successfully, to share confidential information with House members. This concession is more troubling. The House interest here goes under the rubric of congressional oversight but, as we’ve seen, Representative Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is running a pro-Trump propaganda shop. He not only gave the Trump campaign a clean bill of health on possible collusion, but also tried to cast doubt on the intelligence community’s assertion that Russia’s election interference was designed to elect Trump.
Now, if Trump were confident that he, his family members, and his campaign team have no exposure in the Russia probe, he would be fine with that investigation moving forward without concocting a conspiratorialist counter-narrative to discredit it. And he’d agree to an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller.
But the fact that Trump instead seems to be growing progressively more agitated suggests he won’t let this play out. And that the moment may well come when he decides to move against Mueller by ordering his firing. That could be easier if he could get rid of Sessions, who has recused himself from oversight of the investigation, or Rosenstein, who has said he won’t execute an order to fire Mueller absent good cause.
For Sessions and Rosenstein, this increasingly seems like a matter of personal integrity and rectitude. Those are qualities Trump honors mainly in the breach. His problem is finding a plausible cover for his action. His regular complaints aside, this has not been a protracted affair. Nor has it been without results. Quite the contrary.
If the president does decide to move on Mueller, that politically bloody spectacle will stand as an unmistakable indicator that he has something to hide.
Scot Lehigh can be reached at lehigh@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeScotLehigh.
