Trumps Tweets About FBI Could Be Witness Intimidation, Former White House Lawyers Say
Updated | President Donald Trump’s recent tweets about current or former FBI officials could violate laws meant to protect witnesses, according to two former White House ethics lawyers.
In recent days, Trump has criticized former FBI Director James Comey, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and outgoing FBI general counsel James Baker. In a tweet on December 23, Trump repeated a previous claim that Comey leaked a memo to a friend to pass along to a reporter. In the same tweet, the president also resurfaced a claim that McCabe received $700,000 from “puppets” of Hillary Clinton, a reference to a state senate campaign in which McCabe’s wife received $675,288 in contributions from two entities associated with Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a Clinton ally.
In a follow-up tweet that day, Trump added, “FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!” And in a third tweet, he wrote, “Wow, ‘FBI lawyer James Baker reassigned,’ according to @FoxNews.”
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“Normally, someone being investigated for obstruction of justice who intimidates and threatens three key witnesses against him (here Comey, McCabe and Baker) risks additional witness tampering charges,” tweeted Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and special assistant for ethics and government reform for former President Barack Obama.
Richard Painter, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School who served as chief ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush White House, agreed. “Using Twitter on Christmas Eve to intimidate a witness (McCabe) in a criminal investigation is not a very Christian way to celebrate the holiday,” he tweeted. “But it does make Mr. Mueller’s job easier and that’s a nice thing to do. Merry Christmas!”
http://www.newsweek.com/trumps-tweets-about-fbi-could-be-witness-intimidation-former-white-house-758591
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