Since his election, revelations of Donald Trump’s contempt for the legal process have been dizzying. The rule of law is what protects democracy in the United States. The president has done everything possible to subvert it.

The right's not-so-secret effort to discredit Trump-Russia inquiry Read more

There was the White House counsel’s failed effort last March to convince Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from the Russia inquiry. Then came the stunning news that the very same counsel, Donald F McGahn II, threatened to quit if the president fired special counsel Robert Mueller last June. Then there was the president’s grilling of acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, including asking him whom he had voted for in 2016.

“Where’s my Roy Cohn?” Trump reportedly wailed when his attorney general, a key actor in the Russia-infected presidential campaign, recused himself. The president was invoking the name of his disgraced fixer, long dead, a lawyer who was discredited for aiding Joseph McCarthy and disbarred for unethical conduct.

Where is my Congress? This is the urgent question posed by these outrageous attempts by the president to subvert the constitution. The legislative branch of government must hold an out-of-control president with authoritarian tendencies accountable.

Neither the news media nor Robert Mueller can do this alone.

Congressional Republicans who stick by Trump and protect him will be remembered as the villains of Washington’s unfolding drama. They are the ones enabling an epic White House end run around the constitution.

Instead of holding Trump to account, Republicans are joining him in a cynical attempt to tarnish the FBI and undermine the criminal investigation into Russian election meddling.

Republicans who stick by Trump and protect him will be remembered as the villains of Washington’s unfolding drama

Aided by the conspiracy mongers at Fox News, they have promoted a crackpot theory that there was a “secret society” within the FBI trying to bring down Trump. The zany conspiracy story involves two FBI officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and text messages they exchanged during the 2016 campaign. These were leaked to the press after the justice department turned them over to Congress.

Some of the messages can be read as mocking Trump – in one, he is called an “idiot”. Mueller demoted Strzok, who had been one of his top counterintelligence experts, from his Trump-Russia investigation as a result. Strzok had led the FBI’s Hillary Clinton email investigation so the notion of him being a pro-Democratic mole is, simply, ludicrous.

The Republicans want to destroy the public’s faith in the impartiality of the FBI, in order to undermine Mueller. Their aim is to insulate Trump against the obstruction of justice charges the special counsel is said to be contemplating.

This is political poison. It is toxic to democracy. It goes beyond anything contemplated by Richard Nixon and his supporters during Watergate. What can prevent the poison from infecting the country’s lifeblood?

A free press, led by the New York Times and the Washington Post, which have broken the big stories this month, is crucial.

Government officials showing courage and conscience is also vital. Although Trump derided the Times’ scoop about wanting to fire Mueller as “fake news”, Don McGahn’s threat to quit is an example of how a White House counsel should act: protecting the people first, not the president. (Since McGahn was cast in the role of bad guy in pressuring Sessions not to recuse himself, perhaps the leak to the Times was an effort to restore his reputation).



McGahn’s standing up to Trump puts him in the same league of honor as former FBI director James Comey, who stood up to another GOP president, George W Bush, rather than allow an end run around laws against warrantless eavesdropping.



Comey’s independence and ethics cost him his job when Trump fired him. But it’s actions like these that separate the United States from lawless countries like Russia and Turkey. If our president had his way, he’d exercise power as shamelessly as the autocrats Putin and Erdoğan.

GOP efforts to undermine the FBI seem doomed but are important to watch. Puppets like Arizona congressman Andy Biggs must be unmasked. In a press release on 22 January, Biggs made this baseless allegation: “Peter Strzok and Lisa Page believed that then-candidate Donald Trump was a threat to this country and appeared to be taking steps, as sworn members of law enforcement, to subvert the will of the American people.”



The congressman wants to make hay out of nonsense missing messages between the two law enforcement officials. Such “missing text messages” are a chimera, just as Clinton’s so-called missing emails were in 2016. It is a supreme irony that Strzok, the Javert of the Clinton email hunt, should be hoisted by the same petard.

Trump-Russia investigation: the key questions answered Read more

The FBI is not a perfect institution. Like all big federal agencies, it is riven by factionalism. Like all law enforcement professionals, FBI officials can be overzealous. But it is crucial to the functioning of the law. Many people who have made their careers at the FBI are feeling undermined by a president who has contempt for their work. Many of Trump’s recent tweets have assailed the FBI.

I await Mueller’s findings of whether the president broke the law in dealing with Russia and the fallout of the election. Only he has anything approaching the full picture. That’s why upholding the legitimacy of his investigation – and investigators – is so important.

As the Republicans continue their campaign to discredit the FBI, it’s important to remember a piece of history. Without Deep Throat, the Washington Post’s secret source, the Watergate scandal might never have been exposed. Deep Throat, we learned in 2012, was Mark Felt, the No2 official at the FBI.

The constitution owes him, and those who have followed in his footsteps, a giant debt of gratitude.

