When you get in these people when you…get these people in, say: "Look, the problem is that this will open the whole, the whole Bay of Pigs thing, and the President just feels that" ah, without going into the details… don't, don't lie to them to the extent to say there is no involvement, but just say this is sort of a comedy of errors, bizarre, without getting into it, "the President believes that it is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again. And, ah because these people are plugging for, for keeps and that they should call the FBI in and say that we wish for the country, don't go any further into this case," period.

—Richard M.Nixon, June 23, 1972

It happens every day now. Right at the end of business, another shoe drops and another count is added to the steadily lengthening—and still largely imaginary—bill of indictment. From The New York Times:

"I hope you can let this go," the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo. The existence of Mr. Trump's request is the clearest evidence that the president has tried to directly influence the Justice Department and F.B.I. investigation into links between Mr. Trump's associates and Russia. Mr. Comey wrote the memo detailing his conversation with the president immediately after the meeting, which took place the day after Mr. Flynn resigned, according to two people who read the memo. The memo was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president's improper efforts to influence a continuing investigation. An F.B.I. agent's contemporaneous notes are widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations.

You can see the viper coiled in that paragraph, can't you? It's right there in this phrase.

The memo was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created…

James Comey is a lot of things, for good or ill, but one of those things is that he is a consummate bureaucrat. The man probably writes a memo every morning on what he had for breakfast. You don't survive the Bush administration Justice Department with your reputation for integrity intact, and you don't monkey around with a presidential election and keep your job, without knowing how to walk between the raindrops. He's a damn sight smarter than the president*, who keeps bungling and stumbling over federal law with every step.

What happens now? Seriously, what is it going to take? Does he really have to shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue to jolt the Republican congressional majorities out of their ideological stupor? If this story is true, it's as clearly an impeachable offense as anything Richard Nixon ever did. Hell, when Nixon wanted to obstruct justice, he at least had the decency to subcontract the job to H.R. Haldeman and the CIA.

You just know there are more memos. There are probably dozens of them. And you know that Comey and his minions know precisely the order in which to dole them out.

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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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