Donald Trump goes berserk, attacks Matthew Whitaker
The Matthew Whitaker experiment clearly hasn’t gone the way Donald Trump was hoping. In the six weeks since Trump illegally appointed Whitaker as Acting Attorney General, we’ve seen Special Counsel Robert Mueller continue plowing forward at full speed. Now it turns out Trump has grown so frustrated at Whitaker’s ineptitude, he’s begun lashing out at him.
Donald Trump has privately lambasted Matt Whitaker to his face on at least two different occasions, each time after federal prosecutors succeeded in formally implicating Trump in felonies. Trump demanded to know why Whitaker wasn’t doing more to protect him. Of course doing so would constitute felony obstruction of justice on Whitaker’s part. Our guess is that Mueller and Rod Rosenstein made Whitaker aware on day one that he could end up in prison if he tried to interfere with the probe, and that Whitaker has been laying low accordingly.
Interestingly, just days ago, it was reported that the Department of Justice advised Whitaker to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation, but he decided not to recuse himself anyway. Based on the fact that Mueller has kept chugging forward for the past month and a half, Palmer Report suggested yesterday that perhaps Whitaker is declining to recuse himself in order to avoid Trump’s wrath, while also declining to interfere because he doesn’t want to go to prison.
Today’s report, which helps make clear that Matthew Whitaker is doing nothing to help Donald Trump, would seem to further our theory that Whitaker is essentially a deer in the headlights. It’s clear that Trump intends to replace him as quickly as possible, as evidenced by Trump’s swift nomination of Bill Barr to permanently fill the Attorney General position. For now, Trump seems content to simply rant while he continues to lose.
