Democratic Senator Ron Wyden gets Donald Trump official to resign by calling his bluff

| 7:59 pm EDT August 31, 2017
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One day after Democratic Senator Ron Wyden called the bluff of an Energy Department official in the Donald Trump administration, that official has now resigned. William C. Bradford was caught making controversial disparaging comments in an online forum, and had tried to cover his tracks by claiming he’d been hacked. That’s when Wyden asked the FBI to investigate whether Bradford was truly hacked.

Bradford was already in hot water earlier this year for racist and antisemitic tweets he had posted before Donald Trump appointed him to the Department of Energy. That trouble recently escalated when he was caught having posted comments online which accused President Obama’s mother of being a “whore” and “porn actress.” That’s when he fell back on the claim that he had been hacked, and that the comments hadn’t truly been made by him.

That denial prompted Senator Wyden to call his bluff by asking the FBI to open an investigation into the supposed hacking. News of Wyden’s letter to the FBI was reported yesterday by CNN, and by today, Bradford announced his resignation (link). It appeared Bradford didn’t want the FBI looking into the matter and determining that he had indeed made the comments himself, which would have left him in the position of having falsely reported a felony.

That still leaves Donald Trump in the position of having appointed someone with a history of racist, sexist and antisemitic attacks in public discourse. This won’t help Trump’s case as he continues to struggle to make the argument that he isn’t a racist himself. Trump openly defended white supremacists after their deadly terrorist attack in Charlottesville. He’s still promoting policies aimed at demonizing and scapegoating Mexicans, immigrants, and Muslims, among others. And of course Trump also has a history of having bragged about the number of women he’s sexually assaulted. No wonder he liked Bradford for the job.