Rachel Maddow explained that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for Donald Trump and his team to escape allegations that they obstructed justice in the investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia during last year’s campaign.
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Rachel #Maddow Explains How An Airtight Obstruction Of Justice Case Is Building Against Trump pic.twitter.com/qx8z51T4GE
— Sean Colarossi (@SeanColarossi) December 22, 2017
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Maddow said:
FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe has now reportedly testified in Congress that Comey did, in fact, tell him at the time about those conversations. Okay, so this is going to be a problem for the White House. If their position on whether or not the president criminally obstructed justice hinges on their contention that President Trump never told James Comey to ease up on the Flynn investigation – well, one man’s word versus another man’s word is not a great basis for an indictment or a prosecution, but when one man’s word in that kind of a he said, he said, one side of it is bolstered by contemporaneous, detailed memos written by a trained senior FBI official and bolstered by contemporaneous reporting to other senior FBI officials who are now starting to testify under oath that, in fact, they got the notifications contemporaneously at the time the conversations happened. That’s not he said, he said anymore. That’s going to be difficult for the president in terms of his liability on obstruction.
As the MSNBC star said, it is no longer just a matter of former FBI Director James Comey claiming one thing and Donald Trump saying another. Even with Trump’s known history of lying, it would be difficult to bring a case against him or his administration based on the claims of one man.
But today’s news that one of the highest ranking FBI officials is confirming Comey’s testimony – in addition to the fact that, as Maddow noted, other officials in the bureau are testifying the same thing – is going to make it increasingly difficult for Trump to argue that he did not unlawfully impede the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia.
As Maddow pointed out on Thursday, the case for obstruction of justice against this president continues to grow, and it may have just reached a point of no return.
Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
