Donald Trump unsuccessfully pressured NSA Director Mike Rogers to publicly sabotage James Comey
Does Donald Trump even know what NSA Director Mike Rogers looks like? Based on what we now know, it’s entirely plausible that he doesn’t. It now appears that Trump spent hours watching FBI Director James Comey testifying before Congress, and he never did figure out who was sitting next to Comey the whole time and also testifying. Otherwise Trump would might known not to bother trying to pull the retaliatory stunt against Comey that’s now being exposed.
Tonight’s explosive revelation from the Washington Post is that after FBI Director James Comey publicly confirmed that the Trump campaign and Russia were under active FBI investigation, Trump responded by asking NSA Director Mike Rogers to lie to the public for the sake of sabotaging Comey and the investigation (link). Not only did this constitute illegal obstruction of justice on Trump’s part, it also failed, as Rogers declined, and the NSA documented it in a memo.
But here’s the surreal part: everyone who watched Comey and Rogers testify jointly before Congress that day could figure out that they were entirely on the same page when it came to the Russia investigation. Anyone sitting at home could have figured out that there was no way Rogers would have been willing to illegally sabotage Comey’s investigation or reputation. And yet that’s exactly what Trump did a few days later when he called up Rogers on the phone and asked him to make the false claim to the public that the FBI investigation was going nowhere.
So here’s the question: is Donald Trump so far removed from reality that he couldn’t figure out just by watching their joint testimony that day that Rogers never would have been willing to sell out Comey like that? Or did Trump honestly not know that the “NSA Director” he was calling on the phone was the same guy whom he’d just seen testifying in stride with Comey? Did Trump merely think the guy sitting in uniform next to Comey was his bodyguard? Does Trump even know who’s working for him? Does he think Mike Pence is the butler?
