Dear President-elect Trump,
Sometimes your lack of impulse control works for you. For example, on Friday night, you lashed out at the Broadway hit, Hamilton. With the stroke of a few tweets, you dominated the weekend news cycle. The fun ended Sunday morning, when Vice-President-elect Mike Pence told CBS’s John Dickerson that Hamilton was “a great show.”
Pence “wasn’t offended” by a 90-second post-performance comment on behalf of the cast and producers. Your tweets had demanded an apology from them, but it turned out that you now owe one — for misstating the facts and challenging First Amendment principles.
You achieved a larger objective. Your twitter tantrum diverted popular attention from: your thumbs-up group photo after meeting with business partners developing a Trump-branded luxury apartment complex in India; white nationalists convening in Washington to celebrate your election; and your selection of National Security Adviser-designate Mike Flynn, who called Islam a “cancer” and a “political ideology hiding behind religion.” He’s also a board member of ACT for America, which the Southern Poverty Law Center calls “far and away the largest grassroots anti-Muslim group in America.”
Master Distracter
Your Hamilton tweets also moved the spotlight away from your attorney general-designate. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan’s Republican Senate put Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court and made William Rehnquist chief justice. But even at the height of the Reagan revolution, Alabama’s then-U.S. attorney Sessions became only the second nominee in 48 years to be rejected for a federal judgeship. Now he’ll be your attorney general.
In a normal world, Sessions’ earlier defeat would doom your nominee. But you’re normalizing the abnormal. When Steve Bannon is the baseline for comparison, even Jeff Sessions looks good. He shouldn’t.
Sessions on the Merits
The junior senator from Alabama is one of its most conservative members. He opposes: any path to legalizing undocumented immigrants, gay marriage, abortion, and the legalization of marijuana. He voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. His portfolio is a distressing compilation of what you seem to mean by “Make America Great Again.”
Sessions is far out of step with most Americans. (Hillary Clinton’s popular vote victory — 1.5 million ballots and growing — proves that you are, too.) But resigned to his confirmation, I propose a bipartisan assignment for him: restore the integrity of the FBI. It will require a public investigation into events culminating in your election.
Roll the Tape
In October, polls showed you losing so badly that you were likely to cost Republicans the Senate. Three months earlier, FBI Director James Comey had announced that no reasonable prosecutor would bring criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. But in an unprecedented press conference, he’d opined about her recklessness anyway. That kept your “Crooked Hillary” rally theme alive. Even so, as summer turned to fall, the email-gate story was losing its legs.
On October 25, your key surrogate, Rudy Giuliani appeared on Fox & Friends. When a host asked whether you had anything other than “some more inspiring rallies” planned for the remaining 14 days of the campaign, Giuliani chuckled.
“Yes,” he grinned.
“What?” a co-host asked.
“You’ll see,” Giuliani answered in a full-throated laugh. “We’ve got a couple of surprises left. I call them surprises in the way we’re going to campaign, to get our message out there. Maybe in a little bit of a different way. You’ll see, and I think it’ll be enormously effective.”
Giuliani then discussed how “all of these revelations about Hillary Clinton, finally, are beginning to have an impact.”
On Oct. 26, Giuliani appeared with Fox reporter Martha MacCallum. As the interview ended, he interrupted her to volunteer, “And I think he’s [Trump] got a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next few days.”
MacCallum tried to conclude the interview, but Giuliani kept pushing: “I mean, I’m talking about some pretty big surprises.”
Finally, MacCallum took the bait.
“I heard you saying that this morning,” she said. “What do you mean?”
“You’ll see,” Giuliani laughed.
Friday, October 28
Only days after Giuliani’s teasers, Comey violated Justice Department guidelines with a letter informing Congress that the Bureau was reviewing additional evidence relating to the Clinton email investigation. Conservative radio talk show host Lars Larson interviewed Giuliani.
“There’s a kind of revolution going on inside the FBI about the original [July] conclusion being completely unjustified and almost a slap in the face of the FBI’s integrity,” Giuliani said. “I know that from former agents. I know that even from a few active agents who, obviously, don’t want to identify themselves.”
Later, Giuliani backpedaled.
“I don’t know anything about leaks from the FBI or the Justice Department,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “I haven’t talked to anybody in the FBI or Justice Department.”
When Blitzer confronted Giuliani with the Lars Larson interview, Giuliani responded, “Well, the information I’ve been getting is from former FBI agents. If I did say that, that was wrong.”
In 48 hours, Giuliani had gone from “I know that even from a few active agents who, obviously don’t want to identify themselves” to “the information I’ve been getting is from former FBI agents.”
But Giuliani’s distinction didn’t help the Bureau. Whether the leaks came directly from active agents, or whether active agents leaked to retired agents who then went to Giuliani, they originated within the FBI. In addition to professional responsibilities of confidentiality under the ABA Standards on Prosecutorial Investigations, agents sign employment agreements that have sharp non-disclosure teeth. Certain FBI personnel working on the Clinton investigation also signed a “Case Briefing Acknowledgement,” agreeing that “due to the nature and sensitivity of this investigation, compliance with these restrictions may be subject to verification by polygraph examination.”
Lie detectors!
Wednesday, November 2
Less than a week before Election Day, another FBI leak produced a new bombshell. Bret Baier of Fox News cited “two separate sources with intimate knowledge of the FBI investigations” for what turned out to be a bogus report. He said that the Clinton investigations would likely to lead to an indictment. You milked that one. As rally crowds responded with “Lock her up” even more loudly than before, some members of your mob added, “Execute her!”
By Thursday, Baier admitted that he’d spoken “inartfully” about the false FBI report. By Friday, he was in full retreat: “That just wasn’t inartful, it was a mistake and for that I’m sorry.”
When MSNBC’s Brian Williams grilled your campaign manager Kellyanne Conway on whether you would stop using the earlier false report in your stump speech, she smiled and said, “Well, the damage is done to Hillary Clinton…”
Sunday, November 6
Then Comey sent another letter confirming that his earlier missive had been a false alarm. But by then, early voters had cast 40 million ballots — almost 30 million of which came after his October 30 letter. Meanwhile, you’d spent the week telling crowds that Clinton’s problems were “bigger than Watergate” and that criminal investigations into her dealings would continue for years into her presidency.
When confronted with Comey’s latest exoneration of Clinton, Kellyanne Conway kept her smile as she told MSNBC, “We have not made this a centerpiece of our messaging… This has not been front and center of our campaign.”
Sessions could put Rudy Giuliani under oath and ask him to name his FBI sources — active or retired. After all, if this had happened to you, hearings in the Republican Congress would already be underway. Now they’ll never happen. To “Make America Great Again,” start with the FBI, if you dare.
The Belly of the Beast 