We should have seen this coming. Apparently, after CNN broke its big old scoop about how the White House tried to use the FBI to help squash news stories about the connections between Russia and the Trump team, the administration put together a fairly solid pushback by which it claimed that the whole mess was a kind of casual conversation at a White House meeting between members of the administration and FBI officials. This is a plausible political strategy in response to an incredibly serious threat to an administration's credibility.

Then, somebody looked away and the president* found his phone again.

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The FBI is totally unable to stop the national security "leakers" that have permeated our government for a long time. They can't even...... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 24, 2017

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find the leakers within the FBI itself. Classified information is being given to media that could have a devastating effect on U.S. FIND NOW — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 24, 2017

FIND NOW!

TRUMP SMASH!

Yeah, that'll get everyone on the same page. Won't drown out the echoes, though.

Subsequent thereto, Richard M. Nixon, using the powers of his high office, engaged personally and through his subordinates and agents in a course of conduct or plan designed to delay, impede, and obstruct the investigation of such unlawful entry; to cover up, conceal and protect those responsible; and to conceal the existence and scope of other unlawful covert activities. ...Wherefore Richard M. Nixon, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

—Article I, Passed By the House of Representatives, July 27, 1974.

Maybe Watergate marked me. Maybe it made me prone to overreact and to jump at shadows and to assume the worst in every smoke-or-fire story that pops in Washington. Maybe it just touches off the visions of Gordon Liddy and Tony Ulasciewicz that forever dance somewhere in my subconscious. Maybe my brain went modified limited hangout 45 years ago and never came back.

Or maybe not.

From the aforementioned CNN scoop:

The FBI rejected a recent White House request to publicly knock down media reports about communications between Donald Trump's associates and Russians known to US intelligence during the 2016 presidential campaign, multiple US officials briefed on the matter tell CNN. But a White House official said late Thursday that the request was only made after the FBI indicated to the White House it did not believe the reporting to be accurate. White House officials had sought the help of the bureau and other agencies investigating the Russia matter to say that the reports were wrong and that there had been no contacts, the officials said. The reports of the contacts were first published by The New York Times and CNN on February 14. The same White House official said that Priebus later reached out again to McCabe and to FBI Director James Comey asking for the FBI to at least talk to reporters on background to dispute the stories. A law enforcement official says McCabe didn't discuss aspects of the case but wouldn't say exactly what McCabe told Priebus. Comey rejected the request for the FBI to comment on the stories, according to sources, because the alleged communications between Trump associates and Russians known to US intelligence are the subject of an ongoing investigation.

The fact that it was obvious anagram Reince Priebus who reached out, marking him once again as one of the most dangerously oblivious lightweights in the history of the Republic, further proves the truth of the old political axiom that you should never put into a position of great power someone who couldn't get elected to the state senate from Kenosha.

(And, again, James Comey steps center stage as the most interesting man in politics. However, if I'm Comey, I'm running the ol' Geiger counter over every takeout order for the next few months.)

Getty Images

As I said, maybe I was marked forever back in the John Sirica Days, but this seems like something that could be the beginning of the end of the end of the beginning. Or something. You can't use the FBI like your own private spin team. You can't have an office in the White House and even think you can do that. If the idea ever crosses your mind, you should immediately hand in your hard pass, walk out to Pennsylvania Avenue, and catch the first bus to the nervous hospital. God only knows if it was actually legal for them to do this, since nobody's really sure what "adjustments" Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III has wrought in the Department of Justice regulations since he took over—or since the story broke at around 7:30 last night. But legality is far too narrow a metric for a fck-up of this magnitude. As RN used to say, let me make this perfectly clear.

You can't use the goddamn FBI to squash news stories you don't like any more than you can send the FBI out to shoot the guy who dented your fender outside the goddamn pro shop. Do you think the guys with the badges are valet parking attendants or your own private security goons? And you can't do it when the FBI is already investigating you on suspicions of the very same conduct detailed in the stories you're trying to squash. What in the hell is wrong with you, man?

First of all, Priebus has to go. Today. Even if there's nothing illegal in what happened—and even, as seems completely implausible, the request was made out of simple anger at inaccurate reporting instead of abject terror that accurate reporting was getting too close to where the borscht got made last year—Priebus is revealed as a guy who should not be allowed to spread butter with anything sharper than his thumb, let alone run the staff of any White House, including Camp Runamuck. This is, or ought to be, a career-ender.

This is, or ought to be, a career-ender.

Second, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III shouldn't be allowed within an area code of any investigation of the contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. (I suspect there might be several of these.) He's hopelessly compromised.

Third, come on, man. You don't go this far out on a limb because you're pissed about fake stories. Not even this White House is that stupid. You take this kind of long chance because you believe that there's something out there that's worse than being found to be using the FBI to ratfck the New York Times. That's why old RN said this to Harry Robbins Haldeman on June 23, 1972.

"That the way to handle this now is for us to have [CIA director] Walters call [FBI director] Pat Gray and just say, "Stay the hell out of this…this is ah, business here we don't want you to go any further on it." That's not an unusual development…"

In our current parallel situation, the FBI is the CIA and the New York Times is the FBI, and that's the only thing that may keep this from being an actual obstruction of justice. But, as I said, that's a very limited way to measure the magnitude of this story. This is plainly a White House that has no compunction about asking the federal law enforcement apparatus to run its errands, and to operate as barroom bouncers on call whenever the jefe feels inconvenienced. At least Nixon hired his own investigators when he got pissed at newspaper leaks. These clowns tried to turn the FBI into the Plumbers. It's going to get really crowded in DC parking garages pretty soon.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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