James Comey’s leaked memos turn out to be really bad – for Donald Trump
After months of trying, Donald Trump’s Republican allies in Congress finally got their wish today, when Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein gave them copies of former FBI Director James Comey’s memos about Trump. The GOP was hoping to use these memos to embarrass Comey or to sabotage the FBI investigation into Trump’s crimes, but the memos are too redacted for them to have much to work with. Instead, the content of the memos is making Trump look really bad.
One of James Comey’s memos documents his conversation with Donald Trump about finding leakers. Here’s what Comey wrote about that conversation: “I said I was eager to find the leakers and would like to nail one to the door as a message. I said something about it being difficult and [Trump] replied that we need to go after the reporters, and referred to the fact that 10 or 15 years ago we put them in jail to find out what they know.”
So here we have evidence that Donald Trump wanted to throw reporters in jail, not because they committed any crimes, but in order to blackmail them into giving up their sources. According to his memo, even after Comey tried to convince Trump that it wasn’t a good idea, Trump pressured him to find a way to do it anyway, and told Comey to consult with Jeff Sessions about it. In other words, this wasn’t merely an idle lament on Trump’s part; he really was telling Comey to throw reporters in jail.
These kinds of lawless, dictatorial, objectively evil orders on Donald Trump’s part may impress his deranged political base. But in the real world, mainstream Americans see this kind of thing as profoundly inappropriate and a reason for Trump to be thrown in prison. The GOP may end up regretting having opened up this can of worms.
