Andrew McCabe's firing and Trump's anti-Mueller tirade, explained
Andrew McCabe’s firing and Trump’s anti-Mueller tirade, explained
"The president of the United States is unhinged."
By Alex Ward and Zachary Fryer-Biggs Mar 19, 2018, 8:40am EDT
President Donald Trump’s unprecedented attacks on federal law enforcement turned even more vindictive over a series of jarring events last weekend.
The drama began with the late Friday night firing of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe just 26 hours before he would have qualified for a full federal pension. It ended Sunday with a string of presidential tweets attacking McCabe, former FBI Director James Comey, and special counsel Robert Mueller. Trump had never before attacked Mueller by name in a tweet.
Taken together, the weekend’s developments show that Trump’s war with US law enforcement has entered a new phase and that the president and his loyalists feel more emboldened to attack Mueller and others working on the Trump-Russia probe directly. It also raised new fears that Trump would take the extreme step of actually firing Mueller himself — a move that both Democrats and Republicans say would spark a constitutional crisis.
“This is an escalation because it’s open warfare against the special counsel by name, and it’s capping off a 10-month effort to thwart the FBI and Mueller,” Andy Wright, a professor at Savannah Law School, told Vox. “I don’t know what happens next because we’re in uncharted territory.”
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/19/17135940/andrew-mccabe-firing-trump-fbi-benefits-twitter-comey