By SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images.
Over at The New York Times today, you will find a lengthy look at the various tactics Donald Trump has employed over the last two years in his ongoing attempts to defang the many, many investigations into his conduct. Chief among them, of course, have been Trump’s 1,200 or so public attacks on individuals and groups connected to inquiries into potential collusion between his campaign and Russia. (Trump has called Robert Mueller’s investigation a “witch hunt” dozens of times on Twitter; other times he just blurts “witch hunt!” without any context whatsoever.) There’s also the time he fired the director of the F.B.I.; the private campaign to remove Jeff Sessions for failing to “protect him”; and the hiring of Rudy Giuliani, whose job has been to wage a public-relations war to “undermine the credibility of both Mr. Mueller and the Justice Department,” which has not worked out so well. More recently, the president apparently used some precious hours of “Executive Time” to try to install a friendly face atop the investigation into his hush-money payments during the election.
Last year, according to the Times, Trump summoned his newly installed acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker—the one he claimed to not know despite meeting with him on at least 12 separate occasions—to ask him a very legal and very cool question. Could Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, take over the investigation into Trump’s role in paying porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal to keep quiet about their alleged affairs? In Berman, Trump obviously saw the perfect guy for the job, given his background as the son of a real-estate developer; his time as a principal at the law firm of Greenberg Traurig, which previously employed Giuliani until the association likely became too mortifying to bear; and his hefty donation to the Trump campaign in 2016. In Whitaker, too, Trump presumably saw a guy with a somewhat elastic view of right and wrong, who would be eager to do his bidding. But alas! It was not to be:
Mr. Whitaker, who had privately told associates that part of his role at the Justice Department was to “jump on a grenade” for the president, knew he could not put Mr. Berman in charge because Mr. Berman had already recused himself from the investigation. The president soon soured on Mr. Whitaker, as he often does with his aides, and complained about his inability to pull levers at the Justice Department that could make the president’s many legal problems go away.
The revelation not only highlights Trump’s continued reliance on Sopranos-esque tactics while working in the White House, but also puts Whitaker in an awkward situation vis-à-vis potentially lying to Congress:
Mr. Whitaker, who this month told a congressional committee that Mr. Trump had never pressured him over the various investigations, is now under scrutiny by House Democrats for possible perjury.
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department told the Times that the White House never asked Whitaker to interfere in the hush-money investigation. “Under oath to the House Judiciary Committee, then-Acting Attorney General Whitaker stated that ‘at no time has the White House asked for nor have I provided any promises or commitments concerning the special counsel’s investigation or any other investigation,’” said Kerri Kupec. “Mr. Whitaker stands by his testimony.” Meanwhile, it will undoubtedly shock you to hear that Trump has dubbed the whole thing “fake news”:
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