I am very much aware of my international audience
that consists of individuals from countries from throughout the world. This, for example,
includes these countries (aside from the U.S.) who are regularly tuning into my blog posts: Russia,
Germany, Slovakia, Mexico, Netherlands, United Kingdom, China, Ireland, and
Vietnam. Other countries tune in on other weeks with other posts with regular visitors from Canada, Australia, Finland, France, India, and the Ukraine (I'm sure I'm missing a few other countries...apologies). Thank you so much for your interest in my blog.
That said, I take great responsibility with my thoughts and words
in this Fake News World of ours. I also do my best never to sound
alarmist even if I express deep concern, especially over policies, politics, and the general direction our country is headed.
I'm not just a blogger, but also a college professor at The University of Texas at Austin and I take my role as a public intellectual seriously and try to model this for my students who are developing their own voices.
In any case, I think that a better title for this New York Times opinion-editorial by David Leonhardt is “We are in a full-fledged constitutional crisis," with the firing of FBI Director James Comey. Leonhardt develops his argument by pointing correctly to Trump's penchant for lying. Just as importantly, as Leonhardt also notes, is his huge
motive to get rid of Comey to compromise the investigation of Trump's ties to the Russian
government.
Lest you think we Americans are dim-witted, trust me that none of this is lost on those of us that remain attentive to the news and/or who are otherwise involved in policy and politics. And because of the freedoms that we enjoy in this country, our numbers are great and always growing.
Many of us are preparing at the moment for the 2018 midterm elections in order to get this party out of power. In the meantime, it is incumbent on the Republican party to reign in Trump who has, conveniently to himself, compromised the investigation of his dealings with Russia.
Not only do we need for this investigation to be done with integrity and independent oversight, but as a part of this, we need to see Trump's income taxes, once and for all. If there's smoke, there's fire.
Angela Valenzuela
c/s
The president of the United States is lying again.
He is lying about the reason he fired James Comey, the F.B.I. director. Trump
claimed that he was doing so because Comey bungled the investigation into
Hillary Clinton’s email, which meant that Comey was “not able to effectively
lead the bureau.”
There is no reason to believe Trump’s version of
the facts and many reasons to believe he is lying. How can I be so confident?
First, it’s important to remember just how often Trump lies. Virtually whenever he
finds it more convenient to tell a falsehood than to tell a truth, he chooses
the falsehood.
An incomplete list of the things he has lied about
include: Barack Obama’s birthplace, Obama’s phone “tapp,” John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Sept. 11, the Iraq war, ISIS, NATO, military veterans, Mexican immigrants, Muslim immigrants, anti-Semitic attacks, the unemployment rate, the murder rate, the Electoral College, voter fraud, the size of his inaugural crowd, his health care bill and his own groping of women.
Second, Trump previously praised Comey for
reopening the Clinton email investigation, which was the core of Trump’s
rationale for the firing, as Igor Volsky noted.
Third, Trump claimed that he was merely following
up on a Justice Department recommendation and released a letter from the
department to bolster his case. Yet the timing doesn’t make sense — and Trump aides
have already undercut their boss, by acknowledging that he wanted to fire
Comey.
As Bill Kristol pointed out, the Justice Department
letter was dated the same day as the firing, and the official who wrote it has
been on the job for just two weeks — not enough time for a serious review that
could have reversed Trump’s previous position.
“So there was no real recommendation from DOJ,”
Kristol wrote. “Trump wanted to do it, and they created a
paper trail.” Kristol, a conservative, added, “One can be at once a critic of Comey and
alarmed by what Trump has done and how he has done it.”
Even more damning, White House sources also
admitted on Tuesday night that Trump himself initiated the firing. The White
House charged Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, with coming up with a reason
to fire Comey, as The Times and others have reported.
Finally, and most obviously, Trump had a very big
motive to fire Comey and install a loyalist. Comey was overseeing the
investigation into the Trump campaign’s numerous strange ties with the Russian
government.
“The firing of James Comey as F.B.I. director is a
stunning event,” Benjamin Wittes and Susan Hennessey, two of the sharpest
observers of the Russia case, wrote for Lawfare. “It is a profoundly dangerous
thing — a move that puts the Trump-Russia investigation in immediate jeopardy
and removes from the investigative hierarchy the one senior official whom
President Trump did not appoint and one who is known to stand up to power.”
The president is lying about firing a top law enforcement
official, and he is almost certainly lying to protect himself and his aides
from a full investigation into their own activities.
Brian Schatz, a Democratic senator from Hawaii, wrote on Tuesday night, “We are in a full-fledged
constitutional crisis.”
It’s now clear that Trump’s Justice Department has
no independence. Both Sessions, and Sessions’s deputy, Rod Rosenstein, are
acting like Trump enforcers. And now the F.B.I. is compromised as well.
The only way to unwind the constitutional crisis is
an independent inquiry, completely free of Trump’s oversight. Several
Republican members of Congress expressed concern about Comey’s firing, but
words aren’t enough.
Members of Congress need to give Americans reason
to believe the Russia investigation isn’t a charade with a predetermined
outcome. They need to make clear that while the president may think he is above
the truth, he is not above the law.
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