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An abstract, in-case-of-emergency-break-glass executive order drafted by the Trump administration in March may become real-world applicable as the president, raging publicly at his Justice Department, mulls firing special counsel Robert Mueller.

Since taking office, the Trump administration has twice rewritten an executive order that outlines the order of succession at the Justice Department once after President Donald Trump fired acting Attorney General Sally Yates for refusing to defend his travel ban, and then again two months later. The executive order outlines a list of who would be elevated to the position of acting attorney general if the person up the food chain recuses himself, resigns, gets fired or is no longer in a position to serve.

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In the past, former Justice Department officials and legal experts said, the order of succession is no more than an academic exercise a chain of command applicable only in the event of an attack or crisis when government officials are killed and it is not clear who should be in charge.

But Trump and the Russia investigation that is tightening around him have changed the game.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has already recused himself from overseeing the investigation into possible collusion between Trump campaign aides and Russian operatives, after it was revealed that he failed to disclose meetings with the Russian ambassador during the campaign. And Trump started his morning on Friday by appearing to take a public shot at his deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, who has increasingly become the target of his impulsive anger.

I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt, the president tweeted.

The Justice Department said in a statement on Friday that there are no current plans for a recusal, but Rosenstein has said in the past that he would back away from overseeing Muellers investigation if his role in the ouster of former FBI Director James Comey becomes a conflict.

That has legal experts closely examining the dry executive order to figure out who might be next up to bat, or, as Democratic lawyers and consultants view it, who might serve as Trumps next sacrificial lamb.

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We know Rachel Brand is the next victim, said Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the editor-in-chief of Lawfare, referring to the former George W. Bush official who was recently confirmed as associate attorney general, the third-highest position in the Justice Department.

For those of us who have high confidence in Rachel the more confidence you have in someone in this role, the less long you think theyll last, said Wittes, who said he considers Brand a friend. That does put a very high premium on the question of who is next.

That question, however, has become more complicated because the Trump administration has been slow to fill government positions and get those officials confirmed. Typically, the solicitor general would be next in line after the associate attorney general, followed by the list of five assistant U.S. attorneys, the order of which would be determined by the attorney general. But none of those individuals have been confirmed by the Senate, and they would be unable to serve as acting attorney general without Senate confirmation.

Because of that, the executive order comes into play one that puts next in line after Brand the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Dana Boente. Boente, a career federal prosecutor and an appointee of former President Barack Obama, was tapped last April to serve as the interim head of the Justice Departments national security division, which oversees the FBIs Russia investigation.

Boente, who was briefly thrust into the no. 2 spot at the Justice Department after Yates was fired, was also tasked with phoning Preet Bharara, then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, to deliver the unexpected news that he was fired. At the time, Boente also vowed to defend Trumps travel ban in the future.

Boente is followed, on the succession list, by the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, John Stuart Bruce; and the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, John Parker. Both are career prosecutors who are serving in their posts on an interim basis, until a presidential appointment is made. But they would not need to be Senate confirmed to take over.

It was not clear why the Trump administration chose those three U.S. attorneys to be in the succession line. During the Obama administration, sources familiar with the drafting of the old executive order said, the positions were chosen based on geographic diversity, and purposely included big cities where officials assumed there would be a talented attorney capable of stepping in: The U.S. attorneys on the succession list were from Washington, D.C., Chicago and Los Angeles.

Some former Justice Department officials said they would find it inconceivable for Trump to clean house, or to fire Mueller even taking into account the sometimes erratic behavior of the commander in chief.

This president is so unpredictable, its hard to say, said Emily Pierce, a former Justice Department official in the Obama administration. It would be the craziest thing hes done to date if he were to start firing the special counsel or Rosenstein. Im trying to give him the benefit of the doubt that he realizes how much trouble he may be in and that with the firing of Comey, he wouldnt do that.

Deputy U.S. Attorney General nominee Rod Rosenstein and Rachel Brand, then a nominee for associate attorney general, testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 7. Brand is considered the next person in the executive order at the Justice Department. | Getty

But others were less willing to predict the actions of a president who prides himself on being unpredictable. At the rate we're going, it's clearly possible, because you could go through a number of people in one go depending on the things that are asked of them, said Jane Chong, a national security and law associate at the Hoover Institution. If Rosenstein had refused to write the memo [laying out the case for Comeys firing], you can imagine him being fired, and you can imagine Brand doing the same thing. Its not difficult to see a scenario like that playing out down the line, Chong said.

In Washington circles, the comparison being made is between Trumps desire to rid himself of Mueller, at potentially any cost, and the Saturday Night Massacre during Watergate, in 1973, when the attorney general and the deputy attorney general both resigned after refusing to obey President Richard Nixons order to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox. It fell to the solicitor general at the time, Robert Bork, to do the deed.

I think the Watergate scenario would make most self-respecting lawyers loath to put themselves in the role that Bork ended up playing, said Brian Fallon, a former Obama Justice Department and Hillary Clinton spokesman. Most career-minded independent lawyers that have high regard for the Justice Department as an institution would be loath to be the modern-day equivalent to Bork.

But Trump, too, is cognizant of the comparison to Nixon, according to one adviser. The president, who friends said does not enjoy living in Washington and is strained by the demanding hours of the job, is motivated to carry on because he doesnt want to go down in history as a guy who tried and failed, said the adviser. He doesnt want to be the second president in history to resign.

A White House spokeswoman referred queries to the Justice Department. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

Darren Samuelsohn contributed to this report.

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Trump threatens to break the glass on DOJ succession plan - Politico

On Wednesday, the hundred and forty-fifth day of his Presidency, Donald Trump did something out of character: he acted Presidential. A few hours after James Hodgkinson, a sixty-six-year-old building inspector from Illinois, shot up an early-morning practice of the Republican congressional baseball team, Trump issued a statement at the White House. He provided an update on what had occurred, praised the two Capitol Police officers who were shot while exchanging fire with Hodgkinson, and said that he and the First Lady were praying for the victims.

We may have our differences, but we do well in times like these to remember that everyone who serves in our nation's Capitol is here because, above all, they love our country, Trump said . We could all agree that we are blessed to be Americans, that our children deserve to grow up in a nation of safety and peace, and that we are strongest when we are unified and when we work together for the common good.

Almost as notable as Trumps statement was the period of dignified silence that followed it. While some conservative media figures, such as Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones, immediately sought to blame the shooting on anti-Trump liberals, Trump himself stayed above the fray. His Twitter account was quiet for most of the day, until, at 9:41 P.M. , he reported that he had just left the hospital after visiting one of the shooting victims, Representative Steve Scalise.

For once, Trump had followed protocol and done what a President is supposed to do in a crisis: act as a unifier. Even some of his harshest critics gave him credit. The Washington Posts Jennifer Rubin wrote, I was impressed with President Trumps well-crafted remarks. Stephen Colbert, the host of The Late Show, said , I want to say thank you to the congressional leadership, and to the President, for responding to this attack of terror in a way that gives us hope that whatever our differences, we will always be the United States of America.

The Trump transformation lasted twenty-four hours. Shortly before 7 A.M. on Thursday morning, he was back to his old ways on Twitter. Responding to news reports that Robert Mueller, the special counsel in the Russia investigation, is now investigating him for possible obstruction of justice, Trump wrote , They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story. Nice. About an hour later, he posted another message: You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history - led by some very bad and conflicted people! #MAGA

Trumps fury didnt diminish as the day went on. Why is that Hillary Clintons family and Dems dealings with Russia are not looked at, but my non-dealings are? he wrote in a mid-afternoon tweet. In a follow-up message, he added , Crooked H destroyed phones w/ hammer, bleached emails, & had husband meet w/AG days before she was cleared- & they talk about obstruction?

These outbursts can be read in at least two ways. The rational actor explanation is that Trump and his allies are engaged in a deliberate campaign to destroy the credibility of Mueller, a Republican and a former director of the F.B.I., by depicting him as a friend of James Comey and the Democrats. Newt Gingrich, a key Trump surrogate, has been taking this line in recent days, and Trumps mention of very bad and conflicted people seemed to be a reference to Mueller.

The attacks on Mueller could be preparing the ground for Trump to fire him. But the White House is well aware that such an incendiary move would create a constitutional crisis that would probably end with Congress insisting on the appointment of another independent prosecutor. (Thats what happened in 1973, after Richard Nixon forced the Justice Department to fire Archibald Cox. Within two weeks, Leon Jaworski replaced Cox.) The Administration, therefore, might be playing a longer game. Few people in Washington think that Mueller will end up bringing charges against the President. The conventional wisdom is that, if he concludes that an obstruction case is justified, he will hand the matter over to Congress, which would then have to decide whether to impeach the President.

If that happens, the survival of Trumps White House would depend on its ability to keep Capitol Hill Republicans in line. And one way to accomplish this is to exert pressure on them via Trumps base. In an interview with Bloomberg View , Bob Inglis, a former G.O.P. congressman from South Carolina, explained that, even with the Presidents approval rating in the thirties, his diehard supporters can kill you in a Republican primary, which is why elected Republicans are terrified of those voters. Trump must know that he is unlikely to convince most of the country that Mueller has an axe to grind. But it may still make sense for him to rile up viewers of Fox News, readers of Breitbart, and his own Twitter followers.

Yet there is a second way to read these attacks on Mueller. It is possible that Trump, having seen his decision to fire Comey boomerang on him in spectacular fashion, is simply ranting and raving.

The reports about Muellers investigation shouldnt have come as a surprise to him. The existence of Comeys memos, in which he recorded what the President said to him about dropping the investigation of Mike Flynn, has been known for a month now. And, in his testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee last week, Comey said straight out that Mueller would have to reach a judgment on whether an offense had been committed.

Officially, the White House stance is that it wont have much more to say on the matter until the President is exonerated, and that questions should be directed to Trumps personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz. But Trump clearly cant stop himself. He reportedly watches hours of news coverage about the Russia investigation every day, and vents about it to anybody who will listen. Aides have tried to change the subject, with little luck, Politicos Josh Dawsey reported on Thursday. Advisers have tried to buck up the president by telling him to be patient, agreeing that it is a witch hunt and urging him to just let it play outand reassuring him, Eventually, you will be cleared, in the words of one. But none of that has changed Trumps response.

It has become a clich in Washington to say that Trump is his own worst enemybut its true. By leaning on Comey to drop the Flynn investigation, and firing him when he didnt, Trump transformed an F.B.I. probe that was still focussing on his campaign aides and associates into a special-counsel investigation in which he is now a principal target. And, although almost all the Republicans on Capitol Hill are still supporting him, the trends are in the wrong direction. Earlier this week, Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House, issued what was effectively a public warning to Trump not to fire Mueller. On Thursday, the Senate approved a bill that would impose additional sanctions on Russia and make it difficult for the Administration to lift them. Meanwhile, a new poll from the Associated Press showed that Trumps approval rating has dropped to thirty-five per cent, while his disapproval rating has risen to sixty-four per cent.

A different President might look at these figures and decide to change course. But, of course, we are not dealing with a different President. This President apparently learned no lessons from the way his measured response to the shooting at the congressional baseball practice was received. On Friday morning, Trump launched yet another fusillade of tweets, in which he mocked the Russia investigation, lambasted the Fake News Media, and turned against Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General, who told Congress earlier this week that he supported Muellers investigation and wouldnt fire him without proper cause. I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Trump wrote. Witch Hunt.

In response to this fusillade, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein issued a statement, saying that Trump was sending a message "that he believes the rule of law doesn't apply to him and that anyone who thinks otherwise will be fired.... We're a nation of laws that apply equally to everyone, a lesson the president would be wise to learn." But is Trump, in this mood, capable of learning anything?'

See the original post:
A Cornered Donald Trump Lashes Out - The New Yorker

"The Fake News Media hates when I use what has turned out to be my very powerful Social Media - over 100 million people! I can go around them," Trump tweeted.

If Trump believes this -- and he certainly seem to -- it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the media views the president's Twitter feed and how he employs it.

The reality is this: Every political journalist in the world is absolutely thrilled that Donald Trump not only tweets but does with the frequency and bluntness that he does. NO reporter wants Donald Trump to stop tweeting. Not one.

Trump's Twitter feed gives the political media -- and anyone else who follows him -- a direct look into his thought processes. We know what he is thinking about -- or angry about -- at all times of day. That's absolutely invaluable. It's "The President: Raw and Uncut."

Even as his White House will be excoriating the media for focusing too little on some policy roll-out or another, Trump will drop a series of tweets about the "witch hunt" Russia investigation or complain, as he did yesterday, about why the Justice Department isn't investigating alleged improprieties surrounding Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

All presidents have private thoughts that sometimes (often?) run counter to the official message the White House is pushing in a given day, week or month. But, no past president has been willing to put those discrepancies on public display in front of the tens of millions of people who follow him on Twitter before Trump.

What sort of reporter would want that pipeline to end?

The people who do want Trump to stop tweeting or to tweet less aren't the media. They're Republicans and Trump loyalists who believe his willingness to tell people exactly what is on his mind at any minute of the day fundamentally undermines the White House's efforts to find some consistent messaging and build the momentum the administration has been sorely lacking to date.

"[Twitter is] a powerful tool, but I do believe that it can be used more effectively to achieve his purpose," New York Rep. Lee Zeldin, a Trump supporter, said on CNN Friday morning. "I don't know the strategy behind, you know, this morning -- this latest tweet you are asking me about. But if there is a bigger strategy that makes sense, I'm all ears."

If you're reading this, Mr. Trump, let me be crystal clear as a card-carrying member of the media: Please keep tweeting. It provides us insight into how you think that we have never had before and may never get again from a president. Period.

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The one big thing Donald Trump gets totally wrong about the media - CNN

And, man, did she have something to say Friday. Here's her full statement on President Donald Trump's latest tweets about the special counsel investigation being led by former FBI Director Bob Mueller:

"I'm growing increasingly concerned that the President will attempt to fire not only Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating possible obstruction of justice, but also Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein who appointed Mueller.

"The message the President is sending through his tweets is that he believes the rule of law doesn't apply to him and that anyone who thinks otherwise will be fired. That's undemocratic on its face and a blatant violation of the President's oath of office.

"First of all, the President has no authority to fire Robert Mueller. That authority clearly lies with the attorney generalor in this case, because the attorney general has recused himself, with the deputy attorney general. Rosenstein testified under oath this week that he would not fire Mueller without good cause and that none exists.

"And second, if the President thinks he can fire Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and replace him with someone who will shut down the investigation, he's in for a rude awakening. Even his staunchest supporters will balk at such a blatant effort to subvert the law.

"It's becoming clear to me that the President has embarked on an effort to undermine anyone with the ability to bring any misdeeds to light, be that Congress, the media or the Justice Department. The Senate should not let that happen. We're a nation of laws that apply equally to everyone, a lesson the President would be wise to learn."

Just a few lines worth reading again:

* "The message the President is sending through his tweets is that he believes the rule of law doesn't apply to him."

* "If the President thinks he can fire Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and replace him with someone who will shut down the investigation, he's in for a rude awakening."

* "It's becoming clear to me that the President has embarked on an effort to undermine anyone with the ability to bring any misdeeds to light."

* "We're a nation of laws that apply equally to everyone, a lesson the President would be wise to learn."

Any one of those lines is a 99-mile-an-hour fastball thrown way, way inside. Taken all altogether, it's a statement very clearly designed to send a message to Trump.

That message? Enough! Time to start acting like a president.

To be clear: Feinstein is a Democrat. She represents one of the most Democratic states in the country and risks absolutely nothing, politically speaking, by issuing a statement like this one that blisters Trump.

But she is also one of the institutions in the Senate, having spent the last 25 years in the chamber. Unlike her longtime colleague Barbara Boxer, who retired in 2016, Feinstein is not seen as terribly partisan and generally enjoys strong across-the-aisle relationships.

"Every conversation that I've had with her now that she's ranking member has been not only friendly, but has been productive, and these little heads-to-heads that you see us having when the committee's actually functioning, work things out right then."

In short: Feinstein isn't just a predictable partisan or someone who pops off at the slightest political provocation. This statement is a purposeful attempt to make clear that Trump has crossed a line and that he needs to take one big step back.

My prediction: He won't.

See more here:
Dianne Feinstein is done pulling punches when it comes to Donald Trump - CNN

New York Times

Donald Trump, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, 'All Eyez on Me': Your Friday Briefing New York Times Steve Garvey, a former major league star, led a prayer before the congressional baseball game in Washington on Thursday. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times. (Want to get this briefing by email? Here's the sign-up.) Good morning. Here's what you need to ... and more »

Originally posted here:
Donald Trump, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, 'All Eyez on Me': Your Friday Briefing - New York Times