60 Minutes<\/em>\u00a0interview to be aired on Sunday. He also reportedly said that McCabe wanted the so-called Russia collusion investigation to go after Trump for obstructing justice in firing Comey and for any instances they could turn up of his working in behalf of Russia.<\/p>\nThe idea of invoking the 25th Amendment was discussed, it seems, at two meetings on May 16, 2017. According to McCabe, top law enforcement officials pondered how they might recruit Vice President Pence and a majority of cabinet members to declare in writing, to the Senate\u2019s president pro tempore and the House speaker, that the president was \u201cunable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.\u201d That would be enough, under the 25th Amendment, to install the vice president as acting president, pushing aside Trump.<\/p>\n
But to understand what kind of constitutional crisis this would unleash and the precedent it would set, it\u2019s necessary to ponder the rest of this section of the 25th Amendment. The text prescribes that, if the president, after being removed, transmits to the same congressional figures that he is indeed capable of discharging his duties, he shall once again be president after four days. But if the vice president and the cabinet majority reiterate their declaration within those four days that the guy can\u2019t govern, Congress is charged with deciding the issue. It then takes a two-thirds vote of both houses to keep the president removed, which would have to be done within 21 days, during which time the elected president would be sidelined and the vice president would govern. If Congress can\u2019t muster the two-thirds majority within the prescribed time period, the president \u201cshall resume the powers and duties of his office.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s almost impossible to contemplate the political conflagration that would ensue under this plan. Citizens would watch those in Washington struggle with the monumental question of the fate of their elected leader under an initiative that had never before been invoked, or even considered, in such circumstances. Debates would flare up over whether this comported with the original intent of the amendment; whether it was crafted to deal with physical or mental \u201cincapacitation,\u201d as opposed to controversial actions or unsubstantiated allegations or even erratic decision making; whether such an action, if established as precedent, would destabilize the American republic for all time; and whether unelected bureaucrats should arrogate to themselves the power to set in motion the downfall of a president, circumventing the impeachment language of the Constitution.<\/p>\n
For the past two years, the country has been struggling to understand the two competing narratives of the criminal investigation of the president.<\/p>\n
One narrative\u2014let\u2019s call it Narrative A\u2014has it that honorable and dedicated federal law enforcement officials developed concerns over a tainted election in which nefarious Russian agents had sought to tilt the balloting towards the candidate who wanted to improve U.S.-Russian relations and who seemed generally unseemly. Thus did the notion emerge, quite understandably, that Trump had \u201ccolluded\u201d with Russian officials to cadge a victory that otherwise would have gone to his opponent. This narrative is supported and protected by Democratic figures and organizations, by adherents of the \u201cRussia as Threat\u201d preoccupation, and by anti-Trumpers everywhere, particularly news outlets such as CNN,\u00a0The Washington Post<\/i>, and\u00a0The New York Times<\/i>.<\/p>\n
The other view\u2014Narrative B\u2014posits that certain bureaucratic mandarins of the national security state and the outgoing Obama administration resolved early on to thwart Trump\u2019s candidacy. After his election, they determined to undermine his political standing, and particularly his proposed policy toward Russia, through a relentless and expansive investigation characterized by initial misrepresentations, selective media leaks, brutal law enforcement tactics, and a barrage of innuendo. This is the narrative of most Trump supporters, conservative commentators, Fox News, and\u00a0The Wall Street Journal\u00a0<\/i>editorial page, notably\u00a0<\/i>columnist Kimberley Strassel.<\/p>\n
The McCabe revelation won\u2019t affect the battle of the two narratives. As ominous and outrageous as this \u201cdeep state\u201d behavior may seem to those who embrace Narrative B, it will be seen by Narrative A adherents as evidence that those law enforcement officials were out there heroically on the front lines protecting the republic from Donald J. Trump.<\/p>\n
And those Narrative A folks won\u2019t have any difficulty tossing aside the fact that McCabe was fired as deputy FBI director for violating agency policy in leaking unauthorized information to the news media. He then allegedly violated the law in lying about it to federal investigators on four occasions, including three times while under oath.<\/p>\n
Indeed, Narrative A people have no difficulty at all brushing aside serious questions posed by Narrative B people. McCabe is a likely liar and perjurer? Doesn\u2019t matter. Peter Strzok, head of the FBI\u2019s counterespionage section, demonstrated his anti-Trump animus in tweets and emails to Justice official Lisa Page? Irrelevant. Christopher Steele\u2019s dossier of dirt on Trump, including an allegation that the Russians were seeking to blackmail and bribe him, was compiled by a man who had demonstrated to a Justice Department official that he was \u201cdesperate that Donald Trump not get elected and\u2026passionate about him not being president\u201d? Not important. The dossier was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party? Immaterial. Nothing in the dossier was ever substantiated? So what?<\/p>\n
Now we have a report from a participant of those meetings that top officials of the country\u2019s premier law enforcement entity sat around and pondered how to bring down a sitting president they didn\u2019t like. The\u00a0Times<\/i>\u00a0even says that McCabe \u201cconfirmed\u201d an earlier report that deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein suggested wearing a wire in meetings with Trump to incriminate him and make him more vulnerable to the plot.<\/p>\n
There is no suggestion in McCabe\u2019s interview pronouncements or in the words of Scott Pelley, who conducted the interview and spoke to\u00a0CBS This Morning<\/em>\u00a0about it, that these federal officials ever took action to further the aim of unseating the president. There doesn\u2019t seem to be any evidence that they approached cabinet members or the vice president about it. \u201cThey\u2026were speculating, \u2018This person would be with us, this person would not be,\u2019 and they were counting noses in that effort,\u201d said Pelley. He added, apparently in response to Rosenstein\u2019s insistence that his comments about wearing a wire were meant as a joke, \u201cThis was not perceived to be a joke.\u201d<\/p>\nWhat are we to make of this? Around the time of the meetings to discuss the 25th Amendment plot, senior FBI officials also discussed initiating a national security investigation of the president as a stooge of the Russians or perhaps even a Russian agent. These talks were revealed by\u00a0The New York<\/i>\u00a0Times\u00a0<\/i>and CNN in January, based on closed-door congressional testimony by former FBI general counsel James Baker. You don\u2019t have to read very carefully to see that the reporters on these stories brought to them a Narrative A sensibility. The\u00a0Times<\/i>\u00a0headline: \u201cF.B.I. Opened Inquiry into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia.\u201d CNN\u2019s: \u201cTranscripts detail how FBI debated whether Trump was \u2018following directions\u2019 of Russia.\u201d And of course, whoever leaked those hearing transcripts almost surely did so to bolster the Narrative A version of events.<\/p>\n
The independent journalist Gareth Porter, writing at Consortium News, offers a penetrating exposition of the inconsistencies, fallacies, and fatuities of the Narrative A matrix, as reflected in how the\u00a0Times<\/i>\u00a0and CNN handled the stories that resulted from what were clearly self-interested leaks.<\/p>\n
Porter notes that a particularly sinister expression in May 2017 by former CIA director John O. Brennan, a leading Trump antagonist, has precipitated echoes in the news media ever since, particularly in\u00a0the\u00a0Times<\/i>. Asked in a committee hearing if he had intelligence indicating that anyone in the Trump campaign was \u201ccolluding with Moscow,\u201d Brennan dodged the question. He said his experience had taught him that \u201cthe Russians try to suborn individuals, and they try to get them to act on their behalf either wittingly or unwittingly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course you can\u2019t collude with anybody unwittingly. But Brennan\u2019s fancy expression has the effect of expanding what can be thrown at political adversaries, to include not just conscious and nefarious collaboration but also policy advocacy that could be viewed as wrongheaded or injurious to U.S. interests. As Porter puts it, \u201cThe real purpose\u2026is to confer on national security officials and their media allies the power to cast suspicion on individuals on the basis of undesirable policy views of Russia rather than on any evidence of actual collaboration with the Russian government.\u201d<\/p>\n
That seems to be what\u2019s going on here. There\u2019s no doubt that McCabe and Rosenstein and Strzok and Brennan and Page and many others despised Trump and his resolve to thaw relations with Russia. They viewed him as a president \u201cwho needed to be reined in,\u201d as a CNN report described the sentiment among top FBI officials after the Comey firing.<\/p>\n
So they expanded the definition of collusion to include \u201cunwitting\u201d collaboration in order to justify their machinations. It\u2019s difficult to believe that people in such positions would take such a cavalier attitude toward the kind of damage they could wreak on the body politic.<\/p>\n
Now we learn that they actually sat around and plotted how to distort the Constitution, just as they distorted the rules of official behavior designed to hold them in check, in order to destroy a presidential administration placed in power by the American people. It\u2019s getting more and more difficult to dismiss Narrative B.<\/p>\n
Robert W. Merry, longtime Washington journalist and publishing executive, is the author most recently of\u00a0<\/i>President McKinley: Architect of the American Century.<\/p>\n
___
\nhttps:\/\/www.theamericanconservative.com\/articles\/do-you-believe-in-the-deep-state-now\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Do You Believe In The Deep State Now?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=116823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116823\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=116823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=116823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=116823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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