Trump has picked a fight with the FBI. He'll be sorry.

[yallerdawg]

Source: Washington Post, by Eugene Robinson

Presidents don’t win fights with the FBI. Donald Trump apparently wants to learn this lesson the hard way.

Most presidents have had the sense not to bully the FBI by defaming its leaders and — ridiculously — painting its agents as leftist political hacks. Most members of Congress have also understood how unwise it would be to pull such stunts. But Trump and his hapless henchmen on Capitol Hill, led by Rep.?Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), have chosen the wrong enemy. History strongly suggests they will be sorry.

I’m old enough to remember the days when J. Edgar Hoover ran the place like his own private Stasi — wiretapping civil rights leaders such as the Rev.?Martin Luther King Jr., infiltrating anti-Vietnam War groups with informers and provocateurs, seeking or manufacturing damaging “evidence” against those he targeted, keeping copious files on the peccadilloes of the politicians who were theoretically his masters. Presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt through Richard Nixon coexisted warily with Hoover, afraid to fire him for fear of all the beans he might spill.

It was another FBI man — Mark Felt, then an assistant director — who became the famous source Deep Throat, secretly meeting Post reporter Bob Woodward in a parking garage to guide the paper’s illumination of the president’s crimes.

Now comes Trump. His oafish attempts to neutralize the FBI director he inherited, James B. Comey — trying to extract a Godfather-style loyalty pledge, asking him to drop the investigation of Michael Flynn, ultimately firing him — are potential fodder for what may be an obstruction-of-justice case against Trump being assembled by Mueller.

Comey wrote everything down. The FBI always writes everything down.

Read it all at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/messing-with-the-fbi-trump-doesnt-know-history/2018/02/01/53f94f62-0788-11e8-94e8-e8b8600ade23_story.html

[dchill]

1. I'm writing this down.

[sheshe2]

2. 4.5K comments

[yallerdawg]

3. A cynic might say (found in comments):

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”—H.L. Mencken (1920)

A basketful, anyway!

[sheshe2]

4. Lol

Yeah...saw that. Perfect. Oh and make that a bushel basket.

[BigmanPigman]

5. Such fools...they have created a powerful enemy

by attacking the FBI.

[Yonnie3]

6. He doesn't know the old adage,

Don't just make enemies, choose them wisely.

I've heard this in various forms and don't know the source.

[randr]

7. If the federal judicial establishment was not biased in any way

They will be from now on. You don't forget those who threw you under the bus.

[yallerdawg]

8. It's not so much a left/right thing.

Mr. Robinson points out:

"The bureau has no political ax to grind, and the attempt by Nunes and others to portray it as some kind of liberal cabal is comical. But it does have great institutional cohesion, a proud sense of mission, and a culture that inculcates the “us vs. the world” attitude that is so common among law enforcement agencies."