Dear America,
Last night, I explained the "Saturday Night Massacre" to my wife, who was just nine years old in October 1973 when it occurred. Those of you of less recent vintage might remember that Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox was hot on Richard Nixon's trail at that time and had issued a subpoena for tapes of Oval Office conversations recently discovered to exist in the course of congressional testimony, and Nixon had refused to comply. Nixon ordered his attorney general to fire Cox for his persistence and Attorney General Elliot Richardson, a long-time public servant with a patrician's bearing and impeccable credentials refused, which led to Nixon firing him and then his assistant for also refusing to do so. Nixon ultimately charged the now infamous Robert Bork as acting Attorney General to fire Cox, and Bork did Nixon's bidding. Ironically, Bork was forced to chose Leon Jaworski as Cox's successor, and Jaworski was as unrelenting as Cox had been, ultimately leading the investigation to such damning information that Nixon resigned two weeks after three articles of impeachment were approved by the House Judiciary Committee, at which time it became clear to Nixon that he would not only be impeached, but convicted by The Senate. The firing of James Comey seems to auger Nixon's fate for Donald Trump, I told my wife, but as I said it, I thought that maybe it was just wishful thinking.
Moments later, there was a reference to the Saturday Night Massacre on the news, and this morning it became a persistent theme in reportage on the events of yesterday evening. Even a Republican senator who has a history of toeing the party line was quoted as saying that he couldn't think of a rational justification for the firing at this moment in time. The recurring theme of the interviewees' comments was that if Trump had advocated Comey's firing when Comey went before the media last July, Comey technically exonerate Hillary Clinton while condemning her conduct with withering criticism at the same time--instead of praising Comey's diligence and repeating his then already alt-right resonant chant of "lock her up," that would have been valid. But firing him now after benefiting from Comey's contretemps was an obvious attempt to divert the investigation of the connection between Trump's campaign and Russian subversion of our election process.
When the email scandal was in its nascency, it seemed to me that the use of a private server was less than prudent, but that it wasn't criminal. However, it was a demonstration of Clinton's poor judgment, which was a reason not to vote for her in itself. But then Bernie Sanders came second among Democrat voters in the primaries and the choice was Clinton or Trump, and as between Clinton and Trump--a choice that a relative characterized as "corrupt or crazy," to which my wife replied, "you mean corrupt or corrupt and crazy"--there really was little to think about. I was reminded of my feelings about Clinton's lack of judgment being disqualifying when I heard Lester Holt read out the gratuitous sentence in Trump's letter firing Comey in which Trump thanked Comey for telling him not once, but three times that Trump himself wasn't under investigation. All that sentence did was underscore the dubiety and consternation-redolent motivation that almost everyone sees in this latest Trump debacle. The man thinks like a high school sophomore. Almost certainly, Trump fired Comey for getting too close to something inculpatory, which paradoxically raised to marquee prominence in our public consciousness the specter of Richard Nixon boarding a helicopter while flashing a two fingered victory sign to a besieged cadre of supporters assembled on the White House lawn to see him off to political oblivion. Gratuitous is insufficient to characterize Trump's intended exculpation. It was so obviously self-serving that it not only shed suspicion on Trump's motives, it probably rendered the claim itself unbelievable.
Don't get me wrong. Relative to that July news conference, Comey said to Jason Chaffetz of the House Oversight Committee that if Clinton's conduct had been committed by someone in the FBI, there would have been an inquiry, discipline, and he might have been "shown the door." To Comey I say, you obviously know where the door is; don't let it hit you in the ass on the way out. And we'll see what, if anything, Comey says in the days and weeks to come about his purported exoneration of our mendacious liar in chief, but one thing is certain. These are strange times in Washington, D.C...the kind we haven't seen in forty five years. I can't help but wonder if history is about to repeat itself, and I doubt very much that I am alone.
Your friend,
Mike
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