Comey's firing puts the GOP Congress in cross-hairs of history

When I think about how rarely we interact socially with politically unlike-minded people, I am amazed at how much we've segregated ourselves into political tribes.  Moreso than during the decades in which I grew up, it seems our political views correlate with so many life choices that we barely interact with non-members of the tribe.     This is not a viable blueprint for a democratic society, and it's getting worse, so it's hard to foresee a happy resolution to these divisions.  I try to do the right thing, and I try my best not to be hateful, egocentric or petty -- in other words, generally to live my life in precisely the opposite way that the so-called-and-hopefully-soon-to-be-ex-president lives his.    But to be honest about it, my attempt to be such a model of temperance and charity is still, shall I say, more aspirational than achieved. For a timely example of tribal division, the Inquirer published one of their topical side-by-side point-counterpoint pairs of op-eds, this pair of competing commentaries reflecting on the Comey firing.  Dana Milbank brings the progressive lens to the subject, Hugh Hewitt the so-called conservative one.    Hewitt's position is the "so-called" conservative one because his take in this op-ed merely parrots the rump adminstration justification for the Comey firing and in doing so diverges from the reactions of more autonomous-thinking conservatives like Max Boot, David Frum, Jennifer Rubin, Bill Kristol, Steve Schmidt, Charlie Sykes and Rick Wilson.  That group agreed with Democrats that Comey was axed to impede the Russia investigation, and they found it ludicrously lacking credibility that rump tossed Comey for the latter's shabby and unprofessional treatment of Hillary Clinton.     Meanwhile, Hewitt's op-ed parrots the original rump-spicer line, that the Deputy AG initiated the firing for cause.  That line was no longer even operative by the morning that my paper landed on my front walk with an op-ed that Hewitt had no doubt written and submitted before that official line was reeled back in following Rosenstein's threat to resign rather than be rump's personal fig leaf.  Old Rod refused to be left twisting in the idiot wind as the pretextual legitimizer of the new American despotism.      Now Dana Milbank is nice, way too nice to have started his column by recycling Dan Akroyd's iconic abuse of Jane Curtin -- i.e., with the ever-popular "Hugh, you ignorant slut!"  For me, however, being a struggling wannabe of a nice guy, that would have been a too-faint damnation for putz-head Hugh, who hopefully will wear this dead albatross of a WashPo column around his obsequious and servile neck for a long time. Max Boot, like Hewitt a right-wing pundit who unlike Hewitt is daring to piss off some of his audience, said two nights ago on MSNBC that he was appalled at the subservience to rump of the "supine" GOP members of Congress.  If they are supine, Hewitt has been totally pancaked by his own mindless partisanship, like Wily Coyote under an ACME Co. safe the size of an outhouse, dropped on him by the roadrunner from the top of the cliff.    Beep-beep indeed.  Hewitt can not unprint his words.  His intellectual cred has to be shredded, and for me that is triple-crème, max-calorie schadenfreude, because this guy, just like Utah's McCarthy-lite witch-hunter-in-the-House Jason Chaffetz, was so appalled by rump... before 11-8-16, after which he morphed into a rump surrogate.  That's why I have it in for Hugh Hewitt, whose embarrassment is the smallest of potatoes in the scheme of what I pray to God is the unfolding of the stepwise disintegration and demise of this would-be autocratic regime of a megalomaniacal Mafioso.  Rump's admission to Lester Holt that he'd fired Comey without regard for Rosenstein's and Session's opinions, that he did it cuz the, like, the Russia thing is a made-up narrative, was in his mind not an admission at all, it was an assertion of his massively powerful will, more powerful than the law or historical precedent because the people will love him even if he shoots some schmuck like Comey in the middle of Fifth Avenue.      And so far the son of a bitch still has that going for him.  This morning the polling showed 84% of Repubicans supporting that extra-judicial termination.  Among Democrats, the figure was 9%.  Two different worlds of Americans looking at the same things through different lenses -- not to mention different media.  The critical point is that Repubican Congressmen who take their oaths of office to heart, however many that may be, face a deep and very public crisis in the tension between saving the rule of law in America and appeasing the 84%.  Dana Milbank in his column calls on them to do the right thing even if it would be unpopular with that 84%.  As Milbank points out, doing that would also mean bucking the so-called leadership of Mitch McConnell, a human Potemkin village with nothing but the levers of partisan machination behind the façade.   A few nights ago Stephen Colbert satirized memo-author Rod Rosenstein's after-the-fact pushback against the narrative that he'd initiated the firing.  Colbert displayed a mocked-up book jacket featuring Rosenstein's portrait under the title Threats of Courage.  Democrats are calling on Dep. AG Rosenstein to appoint a special prosecutor with a mandate to investigate the Russia-rump relationship and the attendant subpoena power.  So far, he resists, even though we might have expected that he'd lean toward an action that would belie his ethical and professional capitulation in writing the legally flimsy memo.    So it keeps looking like the whole sustaining structure of the rule of law and democracy is left to Congressional Repubicans -- senators, really -- either to stand up for or to stand by while rump sells the pieces for scrap to the Russians.  They could start a process that might lead to the truth and with that an outcome that could bring healing to the gaping divides among the people.  That hope may be far-fetched, but at least the truth could save the American idea from autocracy.   Firing Comey Will GOP recognize this threat to America? DANAMILBANK @Milbank   Mitch McConnell is no Howard Baker. Baker, the late Republican senator from Tennessee and GOP Senate leader in the 1970s and 1980s, became a profile in courage when he put country above party during the Watergate investigation, famously asking, “What did the president know, and when did he know it?” McConnell, who now occupies the high office Baker once held, had a chance Wednesday for his Baker moment. The night before, President Trump had fired FBI Director James Comey, the man overseeing the investigation into Russian interference in the election with potential Trump campaign collusion. Even many Republicans were aghast at the clumsy, Nixonian move that was plainly aimed at shutting down the probe. Forty-five of 48 Democrats were at their desks Wednesday morning on the Senate floor, which was gravely silent — a measure of the gravity of the moment. Several Republicans were there, too. McConnell rose — and spoke about “Honor Flights” for veterans. He then furnished more complaints about Obamacare. Then, by way of afterthought, he added a few words on the stunning events of Tuesday night. “What we have now,” he argued, is “our Democratic colleagues complaining about the removal of an FBI director whom they themselves repeatedly and sharply criticized.” McConnell went on to argue that a new investigation “could only serve to impede the current work being done” to investigate the Russian interference. Right. So calls for a more vigorous investigation would … impede the investigation. And people who previously criticized Comey can’t complain about the extremely suspicious manner in which he was fired. By that logic, those who criticized Abraham Lincoln’s military strategy were hypocritical to condemn John Wilkes Booth for shooting him. McConnell’s small-mindedness would be funny if the situation weren’t so grave. This is a serious threat, not to Republicans but to America. A leading adversary successfully intervened in a presidential election — possibly with the collusion of the victor. And the man leading the investigation, who just last week asked for more resources for the probe, was instead fired by the man he asked (new Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein), quite likely on the president’s instructions. There have been reports that grand-jury subpoenas were ready to fly, and public testimony raised new suspicions of collusion. We also know that Trump refused to take action when told his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was compromised with the Russians — until the matter blew up publicly. We also know that the firing (and now replacement) of the FBI director is under the auspices of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who is supposed to be recused from the Russia probe because of his own Russia contacts. And look at the man McConnell is protecting. Russophile Trump surrounded himself on the campaign with men tied to Russia: Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Roger Stone, Flynn. And on Wednesday morning, the day after firing Comey, Trump gave a new display of his Russia-friendly ways. He sat down in the Oval Office with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and banned the U.S. media from the session; the only “media” present, apparently, was Tass, the Russian state-owned news agency, which published photos of the meeting. During Watergate, there were many Republicans who bravely stood up to Nixon. Rep. Lawrence Hogan of Maryland, father of the current governor; Rep. M. Caldwell Butler of Virginia; Attorney General Elliot Richardson; Sens. Hugh Scott (Pa.) and Barry Goldwater (Ariz.), and others earned places of honor in history for that. There are some who have the potential to play that role now. Sen. Richard Burr (N.C.), chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said the timing and reasoning of the firing don’t make sense, and he invited Comey to testify. Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) has called for a select committee to investigate and Rep. Justin Amash (Mich.) for an independent commission. Sens. Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Marco Rubio (Fla.), Bob Corker (Tenn.), James Lank-ford (Okla.), and a couple of others, have raised questions. Will they, like their predecessors 40-odd years ago, be able to recognize that Trump’s action Tuesday night and McConnell’s mindless defense of it are more a danger to country than to party? As Democrats thundered about the need for a special prosecutor, Republicans quietly expressed unease and White House officials fabricated facts to justify Trump’s actions, the president took to Twitter. “When things calm down,” he wrote, everybody “will be thanking me.” Sergei Lavrov and the Russians may thank Trump. But in America things won’t “calm down” —they can’t calm down — unless a few brave Republicans find the courage to set this right. Dana Milbank is a Washington Post columnist.   Confidence in the FBI needs to be restored. By Hugh Hewitt Long ago, when I was a young special assistant first to Attorney General William French Smith and then to Attorney General Edwin Meese, the young staff would automatically stand up whenever William Webster, then head of the FBI, walked into a room. At Friday morning round-table briefings, when Webster spoke, everyone leaned in. He had the bearing, the competence, and the character of the nation’s top and trusted cop. Last summer an old D.C. hand told me how shocked he was at then-FBI Director James B. Comey’s decision to publicly discuss the Hillary Clinton email investigation and to walk the public through a hundred details of the case and then conclude she should not be prosecuted. Agree or disagree with that decision, he said, it’s not what the FBI does. Ever. Agents present facts to prosecutors. They may nudge or even push in one direction or the other, but they don’t decide. This former assistant U.S. attorney and then-senior official in numerous positions and companies, was not so much outraged by Comey’s actions at the time as puzzled, perhaps even shocked. Apparently, new Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein shared exactly that view and expressed it succinctly in his three-page memo to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Confidence in the FBI would not come back until a new director was in place, and that, of course, requires that Comey be fired. Not a decision to be taken lightly, Rosenstein argued, but one he recommended that Sessions make. Sessions reviewed the recommendation, concurred and forwarded a joint recommendation to the president, who agreed. Anyone who thinks this is connected to a cover-up of “Russian collusion” has to believe that both Rosenstein and Sessions would participate in such a corrupt scheme. I don’t. It is, in fact, absurd to think that. Reread the Rosenstein memo — a few times. There’s the story. Comey was wrong in July, wrong in subsequent statements, wrong as recently as last week, and refused to admit error. The story is a straight-line one, and it’s about Rosenstein. In fact, just last week Comey said this in response to a question from Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) about whether Rosenstein should appoint a special prosecutor in the Russian investigations: “That’s a judgment he’ll have to make. He is, as I hoped I was as deputy attorney general, a very independent-minded, career-oriented person, but it’d be premature for me to comment on that.” That’s Comey on Rosenstein. Last week. Under oath. Which doesn’t mean that questions about the investigation of Russia’s attack on our election are any less serious or the need for a thorough inquiry into charges of collusion between Russia and anyone in the many circles of President Trump is any less pressing. It just means that the FBI has to be led by someone like Webster to assure that both sides of deeply divided D.C. accept the results of all facets of the investigation. Moreover, atlast week’s hearing Comey told Sen. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) that there are 2,000 investigations into would-be “violent extremists” — half home-grown and in the “lone wolf” category, the other half in contact with foreign organizations (of whom about 300 are immigrants to the United States). That’s a massive threat. The FBI is the chief bulwark against it as well as against all cybercrime from abroad (government-sponsored and private criminal activity) and organized crime at home. The director simply cannot lack the confidence of the deputy attorney general or the attorney general. So whom to turn to? Most definitely someone in the Webster mold, which means a current or former federal judge of stellar reputation for both character and competence, and perhaps with some charisma that could prove useful in rallying the FBI and the Justice Department. Someone like J. Michael Luttig, former Fourth Circuit judge and now-general counsel for Boeing, or U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon, who has handled scores of terrorism cases. There are, in fact, plenty of superb candidates in the mold of these two that must bring stature and independence to the job. But first we have to endure a few days of over-the-top takes from the always overwrought mainstream media. This isn’t the “Saturday Night Massacre.” There are no tapes, no subpoenas for presidential documents, no resignations from the Justice Department, but instead recommendations from the Justice Department. It’s four months into an administration, not four years. In short, the overwrought media has toppled into hysteria again. Hugh Hewitt can be heard from 6 to 9 a.m. weekdays on WNTP-AM (990). He wrote this for the Washington Post.