Donald Trump, James Comey, and those White House tapes
Donald Trump was so eager to settle a petty squabble with the Wall Street Journal over whether he said “I” or “I’d” during his recent interview, he ended up releasing the audio that his team had recorded of the interview. In his eagerness to bludgeon the media, he gave away that he’s become paranoid enough to secretly record everything that’s going in the White House. This gives some new context to a previous public exchange between Trump and former FBI Director James Comey about supposed tapes of their conversations.
Comey was about to testify before Congress about Trump’s private attempts at meddling in the Russia investigation when Trump began trying to intimidate him. Trump tweeted that there might be secret tapes of their private conversations. When Comey was ultimately asked about this, he famously said “Lordy I hope there are tapes.” Because Trump is a constant liar, most of us figured at the time that this was just another lie, and we didn’t take it as legitimate evidence that there really were tapes. But now things have changed.
Thanks to the recording posted by Trump’s people today, we now know for sure that at some point Trump began having his people secretly record White House conversations. For all his constant lies, Trump does also have an increasingly frequent habit of accidentally blurting out the truth about things he’s supposed to keep secret. So what if Trump really does have tapes of his conversations with Comey?
At this point it appears that everyone from former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus to current White House Counsel Don McGahn is already cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller. That means that if tapes of Trump and Comey exist, there’s a good chance Mueller already has them. If so, proving obstruction of justice just became a lot easier.
