A Lawless President

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FRED WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE | JUNE 13, 2019freadshot

“President Trump is a lawless, authoritarian President and a direct and unprecedented threat to our constitutional system of government, our democracy, and the rule of law.”

President Donald Trump’s comments yesterday that he sees nothing wrong with accepting opposition research from a foreign country seeking to influence our elections, shocking as it is, should come as no surprise.

Trump made his position on this clear during the 2016 presidential campaign when he publicly called on Russia to find Hillary Clinton’s emails and make them available, and when he called on Wikileaks to provide information hacked from the Clinton campaign.

Furthermore, when Trump was told yesterday that the FBI Director had said that anyone who is offered campaign assistance by a foreign country should notify the FBI, Trump’s response was, “The FBI Director is wrong.”

This was Trump once more showing his disdain for the efforts of the intelligence agencies to protect the country from foreign attacks on our elections.

At the same time, The New York Times revealed today that Attorney General William Barr is investigating the CIA’s findings that Russia invaded the 2016 presidential campaign to assist Trump’s election. This comes on top of Barr’s investigation of the origins of the 2016 FBI investigation into the relationship between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Barr is operating as the President’s shield and his sword, not as the nation’s Attorney General, in personally going after the President’s perceived enemies.

Barr is investigating the investigators and it raises the profound question: Who is going to investigate the investigator of the investigators? Because Barr’s actions certainly need investigating.

Meanwhile President Trump’s comments yesterday provided an open invitation to foreign adversaries to invade the 2020 presidential campaign and to attack our democracy once again.

President Trump is a lawless, authoritarian President and a direct and unprecedented threat to our constitutional system of government, our democracy, and the rule of law.

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Fred Wertheimer is the Founder and President of Democracy 21, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to strengthen our democracy and ensure the integrity and fairness of government decisions and elections. See previous Notes from Fred here.