Trump's Friday Night Massacre Was Only the Beginning
On Friday, President Donald Trump began a spree of vengeance against officials who testified before Congress during the impeachment inquiry. The firing of two witnesses, National Security Council adviser Alex Vindman and Ambassador Gordon Sondland—and Vindman’s brother Yevgeny, an NSC lawyer—was foreshadowed the day before, when Trump held what he described as an acquittal “celebration” in the East Room of the White House with his closest Republican supporters and issued a series of warning shots to the “very evil and sick” people he blamed for impeachment.
Multiple Republican senators acknowledged Trump used the powers of the presidency to inappropriately target his political opponents before they voted to acquit him. In doing so, they’ve effectively given Trump permission to continue to abuse his office. The Friday Night Massacre is just the beginning. Attorney General William Barr announced last week that investigations of political campaigns will now require his personal approval, opening the door for all sorts of chicanery.
Trump went on the attack in his nationally televised East Room performance. His speech, along with public reporting around the final days of impeachment, offers a road map of who the president’s perceived enemies are and what he might try to do to them. Here are some of the people who might need to watch their backs:
Trump went after his “sleazebag” former FBI director very early on in his speech on Thursday. “It was evil, it was corrupt, it was dirty cops, it was leakers, and liars,” Trump said. “Had I not fired James Comey, who was a disaster by the way, it’s possible I wouldn’t even be standing here right now. We caught him in the act. Dirty cops, bad people.” What did Trump want done to Comey? He had some suggestions: “If this happened to President Obama, a lot of people would have been in jail for a long time already,” Trump said. “Many, many years.” Previous efforts to target Comey for leaks failed spectacularly, but Barr’s heavily politicized Department of Justice has kept Comey on its radar. Last month the New York Times reported that the DOJ was looking into a 2017 leak surrounding Comey’s investigation of Hillary Clinton and apparently focusing on Comey’s possible involvement. On Tuesday, Trump tweeted out a video of a political ally calling on the president to appoint a special counsel to investigate his political enemies, including top FBI officials.
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