LawFare's Benjamin Wittes: Hard to Find Better 'Evidence of Corrupt Intent' Than Trump's Sessions...

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LawFare’s Benjamin Wittes: Hard to Find Better ‘Evidence of Corrupt Intent’ Than Trump’s Sessions Tweet

by Joe DePaolo | Sep 4th, 2018, 9:05 am

President Donald Trump might be practically handing special counsel Robert Muller evidence to support an obstruction of justice charge on a silver platter — according to one prominent legal analyst.

Tuesday on Morning Joe, Benjamin Wittes — a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and editor in chief of the national security law blog Lawfare — took on the “astonishing” Labor Day tweets from the president, in which Trump bashed Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The president, Monday, ripped his attorney general for overseeing a Justice Department which has brought indictments against Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) and Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA).

Wittes believes the tweets are nothing short of a gift to an investigator who’s looking into an obstruction case.

The tweet is pretty astonishing because it incorporates so many of his attitudes that the purpose of the Justice Department is not to do impartial justice, but to protect his friends and punish his enemies. To advantage him in elections. And certainly not to do something that would disadvantage his favored candidates in an election. You’d think that even if he believed these things, he’d have the decency to be a little bit ashamed of it, but he’s not. And so he just says them out loud.

One problem with doing that is that if you happen to be a special counsel looking for evidence of corrupt intent, it’s hard to get better than the president saying that the purpose of the Justice Department is to help you elect early and that the attorney general really should pony up on that score.

video
https://www.mediaite.com/online/lawfares-benjamin-wittes-hard-to-find-better-evidence-of-corrupt-intent-than-trumps-sessions-tweet/