Legendary Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein made a simple, but damning, point on Tuesday about President Donald Trump’s frequent attacks on the FBI.
Earlier that morning, Trump once again attacked the federal law enforcement agency, accusing the FBI of orchestrating the Mueller investigation with Hillary Clinton to undermine him.
WOW, @foxandfrlends “Dossier is bogus. Clinton Campaign, DNC funded Dossier. FBI CANNOT (after all of this time) VERIFY CLAIMS IN DOSSIER OF RUSSIA/TRUMP COLLUSION. FBI TAINTED.” And they used this Crooked Hillary pile of garbage as the basis for going after the Trump Campaign!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2017
Of course, the dossier Trump is talking about was commissioned by a conservative publication known as The Washington Free Beacon, who paid Fusion GPS, who enlisted ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to compile it. Only after the Free Beacon abandoned the research did the Clinton campaign have it continued. Only a few parts of the dossier remain unconfirmed, but it is largely independently verified.
But Trump is hoping to bend the facts to discredit the FBI, and the Russia investigation, something that Bernstein noted doesn’t really make sense if Trump actually believes he is innocent.
Bernstein began during an appearance on CNN, mocking Trump for blaming everyone else but himself:
“Everybody else is the issue here, not Donald Trump and his actions or those around him.”
The key word in all of this that he keeps using is ‘tainted. There’s only one institution that has been tainted through these months and that is the Trump presidency. It’s tainted by the president’s lies, by his disrespect for American institutions operating under the law with traditional American democracy and the instruments thereof.”
Indeed, Trump repeatedly attacked the FBI in recent weeks, and Republicans in Congress and conservative media followed his lead, with Fox News going so far as to call the investigation a “coup” and compare the FBI to the KGB.
Bernstein said:
“He’s contemptuous of those instruments and what we are seeing in these constant attacks, which are undermining confidence in the legitimate institutions of our government, which are trying to do their job.”
And then Bernstein dropped the hammer.
“If the president is as confident as he says that this investigation is going to end very soon and with him being exonerated, he ought to welcome all this instead of attacking constantly. He’s doing a grave disservice to our democracy.”
Here’s the video via Daily Motion.
That’s a good point to make. Only a guilty person with something to hide would launch such desperate attacks on the FBI and Robert Mueller. An innocent person would welcome the investigation. In fact, they’d testify under oath in public.
But we all know Donald Trump is not innocent. He colluded with Russia during the 2016 Election, and he has tried to cover up his crimes ever since, committing obstruction of justice along the way. He shouldn’t be president. He should be in prison.
Featured Image: Screenshot.
