JAMES COMEYS REMARKABLE STORY ABOUT DONALD TRUMP
President Trump appears to be guilty of obstruction of justice. That’s the only rational conclusion to be reached if James Comey’s opening statement for his planned testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Thursday, is to be believed. The lurch of the Trump Presidency from one crisis to the next scandal produces a kind of bombshell-induced numbness, but that should not prevent us from appreciating the magnitude of Comey’s statement.
The statement, alongside other established facts, doesn’t just lay out evidence; it tells a story. In this tale, the President knows how much power he possesses and dangles it before those who serve him. The F.B.I. director was in the middle of a ten-year term, which was designed to give him some insulation from political pressure, but there was a catch: Trump could still fire him. And Trump clearly knew it, as he repeatedly demanded Comey’s personal loyalty. An early conversation, on January 27th, over dinner in the Green Room of the White House, set the tone: Comey was to answer to Trump, or the F.B.I. director would be gone. As Comey put it, he saw that Trump was trying to set up a “patronage relationship.”
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There is, of course, much more to know about this story. Did Trump use other government officials to try to stymie the Russia investigation? During an Intelligence Committee hearing on Wednesday, senators pressed Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, and Admiral Mike Rogers, the head of the National Security Agency, about their contacts with Trump on the issue; they refused to answer. They may eventually tell what they know—as, surely, will others. But the story is now complete in its outline, if not its details, and Trump’s culpability is clear to anyone who cares to look.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/james-comeys-remarkable-story-about-donald-trump
