President Trump’s assault is one part of his attempt to discredit large portions of the Federal Government, including especially the many branches of the intelligence community, sowing dangerous public distrust of a broad community, many parts of which are essential for the security of our country.
Some background:
The DoJ is part of the executive branch of government (legislative and judicial are the other two) and is headed by the attorney general, who is appointed by the president and is a member of the president’s cabinet. The president has the absolute right to fire his attorney general and appoint a new one but, in practice, it has been considered a dangerous departure from normal politics.
Indeed, during the Watergate crisis in the early 1970s, President Nixon fired the attorney general and also the succeeding assistant attorney general for refusing to end their investigation. This “Saturday Night Massacre” was technically legal, but the consequent threat of impeachment eventually precipitated Nixon’s resignation. In other words, Nixon’s flouting of the tradition of DoJ independence was considered cause for impeachment. In light of this, how do we understand Trump’s repeated disregard for the same tradition?
This disregard has been evidenced in several instances over the course of Trump’s candidacy and presidency.
1. Time after time, Donald Trump has attacked the DoJ about its investigation of the Trump campaign’s involvement with Russia. Early on, the President was highly critical of his own appointee for attorney general, Senator Jeff Sessions, for recusing himself entirely from the Russia investigation. Because of the Senator’s conflict of interest due to his own contact with Russian government officials during the campaign, the recusal was entirely appropriate, indeed, essentially required. Nevertheless, Trump has periodically angrily attacked Sessions.
2. A second breach of the line separating the President from the DoJ has been Trump’s ongoing insistence that the DoJ investigate Hillary Clinton. The attorneys general are the head, of the DoJ and it is they who are responsible for initiating criminal probes, and the president is to stay out of it. Furthermore, even proper procedure would have been an unprecedented legal attack on a former political adversary, more consistent with a dictatorship or banana republic. If a future candidate believed, for instance, that the winner could “lock her up” after the campaign, the damage to the democratic process would be incalculable.
3. As I’ve written earlier, the President attacked the FBI for abusing its surveillance authority when it sought a secret court order to monitor a former Trump campaign official. On May 20th, the President went further:
I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes.
Dubbing this “Spygate,” the President tweeted that it “could be one of the biggest political scandals in history!”
The FBI is an agency within the DoJ, so this, too, is an inappropriate order. And there is absolutely no evidence for such abuse. First, no agent was “implanted” into the campaign as the President insists. Stefan Halper, the agent in question, was a counterintelligence operative quite appropriately assigned to interview and question several campaign members who had previously been suspected of involvement in a ongoing case about illegal Russian participation in the 2016 election. There was no FBI surveillance on the campaign, much less “spying.”
4. Most recently, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes and President Trump insisted that the FBI release confidential files about Halper, who was at that time undercover. Intelligence agencies warned in no uncertain terms that “turning over Justice Department documents could risk lives by potentially exposing the source.” FBI Director Chris Wray told the Senate Appropriations Committee, “[t]he day that we can't protect human sources is the day the American people start becoming less safe." Ultimately, the FBI caved, releasing the documents, which eventually made Halper’s name public, exposing him and others.
The President could certainly have requested to see the confidential files himself without having them broadcast. Ordinarily, the president would have a strong interest, however, in protecting such a source. Before Halper was outed and since the FBI has taken extreme measures to protect the agent, the other sources, and the ongoing investigations.
After Edward Snowden and others’ damning revelations about the intelligence community, there is good reason for suspicion about some of their activities. Intelligence agencies have in some important situations clearly overstepped their boundaries, acting illegally and counter to the best interests of the country. But Trump’s broad-brush attack on even the necessary and proper functioning of the intelligence community to further his own narrow political purposes is an irresponsible tarring of proper intelligence and counterintelligence activities. The President is apparently willing to attack our democratic institutions for his own protection, further weakening legitimate trust in government. Inserting his own unwarranted personal concerns into the necessary debate over the proper role of the intelligence community, especially when there is no evidence of FBI misbehavior, is shocking, even for Donald Trump.
