‘You Will Not Destroy America’: A Trump Battle Is No Longer One-Sided
March 19, 2018 by admin
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Other former officials who have been the subject of the president’s taunts have also had choice words for him on Twitter. John O. Brennan, a former C.I.A. director who now refers to himself as “a nonpartisan American who is very concerned about our collective future,” attacked the president’s character on Saturday.
“When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history,” wrote Mr. Brennan, whom Mr. Trump once called “one of the biggest liars and leakers in Washington.” “You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America…America will triumph over you.”
Throughout history, presidents have found themselves in private conflict with members of law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Bill Clinton clashed with Louis J. Freeh, who oversaw the F.B.I. during the Lewinsky scandal. Richard M. Nixon fired the independent special prosecutor in the “Saturday Night Massacre,” and his attorney general and deputy attorney general resigned in protest.
But those tense interactions, experts say, seem almost quaint compared to the public mudslinging unfolding now.
“We’ve never had anybody so blatantly go after a president before,” Gary J. Schmitt, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who was once an intelligence adviser to President Ronald Reagan, said in an interview. “It’s also unprecedented to have a president so overtly going after various intelligence officials.”
He added, “It’s a race to the bottom.”
The president, who has no qualms about publicly attacking individuals as well as institutions, has grown only more frustrated as the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia continues well beyond the timeline given to him by his lawyers. On Saturday, one of them, John Dowd, said that he thought the investigation was baseless and should end.
The president followed up with a pair of tweets singling out the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, for the first time.
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“Why does the Mueller team have 13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary supporters, and Zero Republicans? Another Dem recently added…does anyone think this is fair? And yet, there is NO COLLUSION!” Mr. Trump wrote.
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The White House did not respond to questions about the former officials’ criticism of the president, but Mr. Trump’s outrage spoke for itself. He kept lobbing tweet-size insults until Sunday morning, when he left the White House for a round of golf.
In one, he took aim at news that Mr. McCabe, who was one of the first officials at the F.B.I. to look into possible Russian ties to the Trump team, had kept contemporaneous memos about his interactions with the president. (Mr. Comey also kept memos.)
“Spent very little time with Andrew McCabe, but he never took notes when he was with me,” Mr. Trump wrote. “I don’t believe he made memos except to help his own agenda, probably at a later date. Same with lying James Comey. Can we call them Fake Memos?”
Jeremy Bash, who served as chief of staff to Leon E. Panetta in his roles as C.I.A. director and defense secretary during the Obama administration, said in an interview that current and former officials were alarmed to see a president so intent on eroding the public’s trust in the F.B.I. They are keenly aware, Mr. Bash said, that Mr. Trump’s insults have a way of making it to TV, and vice versa.
“It seems to be a very short distance between the president’s Twitter device and the megaphone of Fox News and other allies on Capitol Hill,” Mr. Bash said. “I think most professionals I speak with think he will ultimately fail, but they worry we are a few Fox News segments away from more and more people in that conspiracy theory echo chamber.”
Some experts question the decision of Mr. Comey and others to publicly hit back at the president. Mike German, a former F.B.I. agent who is now at the Brennan Center, a public policy and law institute, said the public exchanges were further proof of an eroding of trust between the head of the executive branch and its traditionally apolitical civil servants.
He said the former officials’ willingness to speak out against the president could spell problems for Mr. Mueller.
“I would imagine from Bob Mueller’s point of view having potential witnesses tweeting back and forth with the president is the last thing you want,” Mr. German said. “The credibility of everyone involved is being torn to tatters in broad daylight.”
Vicki Divoll, a former general counsel for the Senate Intelligence Committee and a former assistant general counsel for the C.I.A., said remarks by former officials like Mr. Comey and Mr. Brennan reflected a larger frustration that others, including Republican members of Congress, were not speaking out against transgressions that would have felled other politicians.
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“Comey and Brennan are perfect examples who do not seek the limelight,” Ms. Divoll said, “who do not do anything but speak publicly and privately in very measured ways. But the gloves are off. That’s not happening anymore.”
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Austin explosions: Police investigating blasts ask residents to stay inside
March 19, 2018 by admin
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Police told residents of a neighborhood in southwest Austin to stay at home until 10 a.m. (11 a.m. ET) Monday after the fourth explosion in less than a month hit Texas’ capital, injuring two men.
In a late-night news conference on Sunday, Austin Police Chief Brian Manley raised the possibility that a tripwire triggered the device in Travis County.
“We will not be able to send school buses into the neighborhood on Monday,” he said. “In addition to that, we’re going to ask the residents in the Travis County neighborhood to stay in your homes tomorrow morning and give us the opportunity to process the scene once the sun comes up.”
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The men hurt in Sunday’s blast — both in their 20s — were being treated for non-life threatening injuries, officials said.
Manley asked the community “to have an extra level of vigilance and pay attention to any suspicious device whether it be a package, a bag, a backpack, anything that looks out of place and do not approach it.”
Police are working under the belief that the incident is related to a string of unsolved package bombings this month which killed two and injured two others, though that has not yet been confirmed.
Stephen House, 39, was killed on the morning of March 2, and Draylen Mason, 17, died on the morning of March 12. Both were African-American members of the same church, Nelson Linder, the local NAACP chapter president, told NBC News last week.
Mason’s 41-year-old mother was critically injured in the explosion. Just before noon on March 12, a third bombing critically injured a 75-year-old Hispanic woman, Esperanza Herrera.
Linder added that someone connected to the House or Mason families was the intended target in the third explosion, although he declined to provide additional details.
Asked Sunday whether the bombings were racially motivated, Manley said it’s possible.
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Police believe the two earlier bombings were “meant to send a message,” though Manley didn’t say what that message was during a news conference earlier Sunday.
Manley said that he hoped the bomber was watching and would “reach out to us before anyone else is injured or killed.”
The plea came as local and federal authorities increased the reward for information leading to a conviction to $100,000, Manley said. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was also offering $15,000.
“We don’t have any evidence,” he said. “What we know for certain is: We have three victims that are victims of color, and we have three package bombs that have exploded on the east side of Austin,” where many of the city’s minority residents live.
Brian Jenkins, an analyst with Rand Corp. who has studied bombings, said in an interview that Manley’s invitation to contact authorities could prove fruitful.
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He pointed to the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski, who killed three people and injured nearly two dozen more during a bombing campaign that lasted two decades, and his “desire to communicate, to have some kind of pronouncement or manifesto.”
“He made the offer that he’d suspend his campaign if his manifesto was published,” Jenkins said. “The publication of that ultimately led to him being identified.”
Communication from Muharem Kurbegovic, who was convicted of a bombing that killed three people at Los Angeles International Airport in 1974, helped police narrow their search and apprehend him, Jenkins said.
Such bombings aren’t easy to solve without communication — or without more “events” to provide more clues, Jenkins said.
Related: FBI requests DNA sample from Unabomber
“This isn’t like a convenience store holdup,” he said.
There can be few witnesses. Patterns can be difficult to detect. Evidence can be destroyed in the explosion.
“This requires reconnaissance,” he said. “This requires target selection. They have to think about building a device that works. They have to build that device. They have to think about delivering that device in a way that enables them to conceal their identity.”
A key question, Jenkins said, is determining what motivated the bomber or bombers. Were the attacks a one-off event driven by personal grievance — or were they the beginning of something larger?
“These individuals who become serial bombers — they start campaigns and we don’t necessarily understand what their campaigns are,” he said. “Motives that seem reasonable to them are not discernible to us.”
In 2002, for instance, Lucas Helder planted bombs in mailboxes across the United States in an arrangement that would allow someone looking at the United States from space to see a smiley face.
“Those are things that are not easy for outsiders to figure out,” Jenkins said.