The tribulations of Donald Trump continue to mount as news of his crumbling network of accomplices gets more dire with each passing day. Just this week his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was convicted of eight felonies and his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to felonies of his own. Then two close associates – David Pecker of the National Enquirer, and Allen Weisselberg, CFO of the Trump Organization – were granted immunity by federal prosecutors in exchange for their cooperation.
As usual, when ever Trump sees dark clouds gathering he attempts to blow them away by creating a windstorm of his own. It’s an obvious tactic that just makes him look desperate and even more guilty. On Saturday morning he deployed this scheme with a series of tweets intended to distract from the Mueller probe and the slow-motion apocalypse that is his presidency:
Big story out that the FBI ignored tens of thousands of Crooked Hillary Emails, many of which are REALLY BAD. Also gave false election info. I feel sure that we will soon be getting to the bottom of all of this corruption. At some point I may have to get involved!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 25, 2018
“The FBI only looked at 3000 of 675,000 Crooked Hillary Clinton Emails.” They purposely didn’t look at the disasters. This news is just out. @FoxNews
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 25, 2018
“The FBI looked at less than 1%” of Crooked’s Emails!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 25, 2018
The “Big story” that Trump refers to is one that has been in circulation for nearly two years now. It revolves around allegations that Hillary Clinton engaged in some vaguely defined wrongdoing connected to her handling of classified documents. This matter has been investigated by everyone from the FBI to various Republican-controlled committees in the House and Senate. And even when starkly partisan players in Congress were pushing hard to find misdeeds, they never did.
If getting “to the bottom of all of this corruption” was actually on Trump’s agenda, he would not be relying on Fox News as his source for information. After all, he has the world’s most sophisticated intelligence operations at his fingertips, but he still prefers the imbecilic sycophants on Fox and Friends to experienced law enforcement professionals.
The big story that has Trump triggered now is one that alleges that the FBI failed to review thousands of Clinton’s emails during their investigation in 2016. Trump attributes the story to Fox News, but it originated with a website, The Federalist, that is a virulent right-wing fount of extremist propaganda. The article authored by Paul Sperry is an interminably long screed that offers nothing but conjecture, when it isn’t rehashing ancient history about alleged Clinton misdeeds.
The key point that Trump’s tantrum focuses on is the charge that the FBI deliberately ignored thousands of Clinton’s email that were discovered on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, who was married to Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Sperry asserts that some 675,000 emails were found, but that the FBI only reviewed 3,077 of them. That’s because the FBI conducted an automated review that identified the vast majority of these emails as duplicates that they had received and reviewed from other sources. Sperry casts doubts on the FBI’s ability to have effectively screened out the duplicates, but he offers no proof for that contention, and he completely ignores the fact that computers are quite capable of comparing text.
Somehow, Trump concludes from this dubious article that the emails that were supposedly unreviewed were “REALLY BAD” and “disasters.” Where he got that from is anyone’s guess because even Sperry never made that claim. Nevertheless, on the weakness of this report, Trump is threatening, again, that he “may have to get involved” in the work of what should be the independent Justice Department. He has long claimed that he has that right and that he could even run the investigation himself if he wanted to. Imagine that: a president who personally takes control of the persecution of his political enemies. That says pretty much everything you need to know about the wannabe dictator in the White House.
This is a Creative Commons article. The original version of this article appeared here.
Donald Trump is nothing but one big lie. He lies to make himself look smart and important. When in reality, if he didn’t have money, he’s the type of person who would have no friends and nobody could tolerate. But I don’t feel sorry for his family, they are all the same.
Soooooooooooooo, Donnie John say’s:
“I feel sure that we will soon be getting to the bottom of all of this corruption. At some point I may have to get involved!”
At some point???? He claims that there is mass corruption and HE may have to get involved? Corruption that has “evidently” been going on for over two years and he has done absolutely nothing about it, other than to tweet about it for the last two years. So, he knew of massive corruption for over two years and only NOW “may” get involved? Quite the American patriot, heh?