{"id":32915,"date":"2017-06-23T05:11:07","date_gmt":"2017-06-23T05:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=32915"},"modified":"2017-06-23T05:11:07","modified_gmt":"2017-06-23T05:11:07","slug":"how-trump-dubious-claims-make-the-entire-government-react","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/how-trump-dubious-claims-make-the-entire-government-react.html","title":{"rendered":"How Trump dubious claims make the entire government react"},"content":{"rendered":"

How Trump dubious claims make the entire government react<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

The words leapt from President Trump\u2019s mind to Twitter at 8:26 a.m. on the Friday after he fired FBI director James B. Comey, setting off a cascade of activity inside and outside the federal government to figure out what, exactly, he meant.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cJames Comey better hope that there are no \u2018tapes\u2019 of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!\u201d Trump wrote.<\/span><\/p>\n

With that tweet, Trump immediately deepened his own \u00adlegal and political quagmire, evoking comparisons to President Richard M. Nixon and prompting congressional committees investigating his campaign\u2019s alleged ties with Russia to demand the disclosure of any such recordings. The message also prompted Comey to release previously undisclosed memos of his conversations with the president, which ultimately led to the appointment of a special counsel, who is now investigating whether Trump obstructed justice.<\/span><\/p>\n

Far from knocking down the assertion that Trump had recorded conversations in the White House, his aides refused to give a definitive answer for weeks. Trump, ever the reality television host, teased at a news conference, \u201cI\u2019ll tell you about it over a very short period of time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

On Thursday, 42 days later, he finally did. As most in Washington had anticipated, Trump said he did not have any such tapes.<\/span><\/p>\n

The incident highlights a new reality for Washington, which now must spring into action to bolster or rebuff presidential assertions of dubious origin and with no evidence to back them up. In many cases, the claims have had the opposite effect of what the president presumably intended \u2014 feeding into doubts about his credibility, deepening his legal woes and generating unflattering accounts that dominate the news for weeks at a time.<\/span><\/p>\n

And even when Trump has walked back a questionable comment, he has sometimes planted a new and similarly unsubstantiated claim. In denying Thursday that he had created \u201ctapes\u201d of his conversations with Comey, for example, Trump also suggested that he may have been surveilled.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWith all the recently reported electronic surveillance, intercepts, unmasking and illegal leaking of information, I have no idea whether there are \u2018tapes\u2019 or recordings of my conversations with James Comey,\u201d Trump wrote in one tweet, before denying that he had created any.<\/span><\/p>\n

Before the tapes, there was Trump\u2019s unfounded claim that President Barack Obama \u201cwiretapped\u201d him in Trump Tower during the presidential campaign, setting off a flurry of official inquiries from Congress. His oft-repeated assertion during the campaign that a wall along the southern border would be paid for by Mexico is one that lawmakers in Trump\u2019s own party believe will never come to fruition \u2014 yet they and others in the government continue to look for some way to help the president save face.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump has also repeatedly claimed that millions of illegal immigrants voted in the last presidential election, with no proof. Yet in an effort to validate his comments, the Trump administration has created a commission aimed at investigating his claim of widespread voter fraud.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happens with the president is he shoots himself in the foot, and soon the gangrene spreads to the entire body politic,\u201d said Norm Eisen, a former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic and a former ethics czar in the Obama administration. \u201cThis is going to be the new normal: elements of the president\u2019s own executive branch openly, or indirectly through leaks, responding to these false tweets.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

After Trump raised the prospect of Comey-related tapes, \u00adexasperated lawmakers in both parties pledged to find out one way or another. \u201cI don\u2019t have the foggiest idea,\u201d Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) said on ABC News the following Sunday.<\/span><\/p>\n

ut the most significant consequences were yet to come.<\/span><\/p>\n

Comey told lawmakers in testimony this month that as he lay awake in his Northern Virginia bed a week after he was summarily fired, he decided to act \u2014 in large part because of Trump\u2019s tweet.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt didn\u2019t dawn on me originally that there might be corroboration for our conversation. There might be a tape,\u201d he said, explaining why he leaked memos of his conversations with Trump to the media. He also testified, \u201cLordy, I hope there are tapes!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Comey\u2019s memos prompted the appointment of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, a former FBI director, to investigate possible collusion between Trump campaign associates and Russians who interfered in the election. The Washington Post has also reported that Mueller is investigating whether Trump attempted to obstruct the investigation.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing criminal or illegal about bluffing,\u201d said Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard Law School professor who has often defended Trump against various allegations. \u201cI don\u2019t think he would have said he had tapes if he had them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But Dershowitz acknowledged that the tweet may have been a shortsighted attempt to ensure that Comey was careful about his public statements on Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know whether it was an unforced error or a tactic, but it could have been both: a tactic that turned out to be an unforced error,\u201d Dershowitz said. \u201cHe should have thought through all of that. I very often keep contemporaneous memos, particularly when I\u2019m dealing with people who have credibility issues.<\/span><\/p>\n

A similar dynamic played out in March when Trump blasted out another shocker of a tweet claiming that Obama had wiretapped him \u2014 an implausible assertion that government officials and lawmakers moved quickly to deny.<\/span><\/p>\n

But among Trump loyalists in the White House and in Congress, there was a spirited effort to validate the claim.<\/span><\/p>\n

Three White House officials unearthed classified documents that suggested that Obama administration officials may have \u201cunmasked\u201d the names of Trump campaign associates that were contained in classified intelligence reports. Intelligence experts note that unmasking is a legal practice, if done properly, and completely different from Trump\u2019s claim that he was illegally \u201cwire tapped.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But armed with the documents procured by the White House, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a member of Trump\u2019s transition team, set out to defend the president\u2019s tweets. Nunes later told Fox News host Sean Hannity that he felt obligated to brief the president on the unmasking issue because he was \u201ctaking a lot of heat in the news media\u201d for his wiretapping tweets.<\/span><\/p>\n

To intelligence experts, the controversy was an attempt by Trump loyalists to confuse two entirely separate issues \u2014 illegal surveillance and legal \u201cunmasking\u201d of the names of American individuals \u2014 to defend the president.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe notion that President Obama could instruct the intel community to set up a tap on Mr. Trump\u2019s offices is preposterous on its face. He doesn\u2019t have that authority,\u201d said Robert Deitz, a former general counsel at the National Security Agency and the Defense Department. \u201cOne of the things that\u2019s interesting about Washington is that it\u2019s a little bit of \u2018Alice in Wonderland\u2019: You hear something or you see something in the press, and you try to make sense of it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-=\u00a0https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/how-trumps-dubious-claims-make-the-entire-government-react\/2017\/06\/22\/0a7fd7e8-568a-11e7-b38e-35fd8e0c288f_story.html?utm_term=.b3d065480fd3<\/span><\/p>\n

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