Donald Trump begins pushing FBI officials out of power who can prove his guilt
Even as the media has spent all week breathlessly speculating that Donald Trump might try to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, a different narrative has been playing out instead. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have begun targeting anyone in the FBI who has tried to prove Trump guilty of his crimes, or who can prove Trump guilty of his crimes. On Thursday, the Trump administration made the first official reassignment aimed at pushing an FBI official out of power.
Trump’s new handpicked FBI Director Christopher Wray reassigned the FBI’s top attorney James Baker, according to a Washington Post report (link). The official excuse is a supposed leak, but there doesn’t appear to have been any evidence of any wrongdoing on Baker’s part. His actual sin, as pieced together by ShareBlue based on an old Vox report (link), is that James Comey told Baker that Trump had asked for Michael Flynn to be let off the hook.
That makes Baker a material witness to the obstruction of justice committed by Donald Trump when he later fired Comey to try to sabotage the Trump-Russia investigation. Based on the timing, with the Republicans in Congress now trying to target and falsely criminalize every FBI and DOJ official who can expose Trump’s crimes, no reasonable person would believe that this is a coincidence. Baker is being punished for what he knows.
Donald Trump and his posse can’t find anything to fire Baker for, so instead they’re derailing Baker’s FBI career and making an example out of him. This is aimed at discouraging anyone else in the FBI from continuing to try to expose Trump’s crimes. However, given the steely nature of the bureau and its officials, this is likely to backfire and serve to motivate the FBI to work even harder to bring Trump to justice.
