Thanks to Trump’s anti-Jeff Sessions tweet, we might get another special counsel

Less than 24 hours after Attorney General Jeff Sessions confirmed to Fox News’ Catherine Herridge that the DOJ inspector general would be probing allegations of FISA abuse, Trump took to Twitter to ridicule the move.

Calling your own high-ranking Cabinet member or their decisions disgraceful meshes with Trump’s modus operandi. Yet, even after three years of this cat-and-mouse game, his tweets continue to shock. And the shock seems to always serve Trump’s purpose.

Trump’s early-morning criticism of Sessions dominated news coverage for the day and forced the media to do something it had been deftly avoiding until now: report on the issue of FISA abuse. For the last month, the press ignored the details of the Obama administration’s improper use of uncorroborated hearsay contained in the Steele dossier to obtain a FISA warrant against former Trump volunteer Carter Page. Instead, the media attacked the messenger, painting Chairman Devin Nunes’ release of the House Intelligence Committee memo as somehow improper. Then, following Saturday’s release of the Schiff memo, the press peddled the narrative that the Democrat response refuted claims of prosecutorial abuse, without ever exploring the evidence of the abuse.

Trump’s tweet drove the question of FISA abuse to the forefront of the day’s news coverage. While the main storyline focused on the riff between Trump and his attorney general, by necessity, the coverage included details surrounding the previously ignored FISA abuse backstory.

The responses provoked by the president will likely keep the story fresh for a few more cycles. In just one day, we’ve already seen several follow-up reports. First, as The Hill reported, Jeff Sessions “pushed back” against the president’s criticism, stating:

We have initiated the appropriate process that will ensure complaints against this Department will be fully and fairly acted upon if necessary. … As long as I am the Attorney General, I will continue to discharge my duties with integrity and honor, and this Department will continue to do its work in a fair and impartial manner according to the law and Constitution.

To report this update, The Hill needed to add this tidbit for context: Trump’s latest attack came after Sessions said that the Justice Department’s inspector general would look into whether FBI officials abused a clandestine process that allows law enforcement and intelligence agencies to surveil suspected spies and terrorists. Some Republicans have alleged that senior officials improperly secured warrants to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Trump claimed last year that Obama administration officials wrongfully surveilled members of his presidential campaign and transition team.

MSN.com continued Wednesday’s coverage of the presidential tweet by reporting that Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., “voiced confidence in the Justice Department’s inspector general after President Trump attacked the government watchdog earlier in the day over a probe into alleged surveillance abuses. Gowdy, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said that Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz ‘has been fair, fact centric, and appropriately confidential with his work.’”

While Gowdy’s statement countered Trump’s reference to the “I.G.” as an “Obama guy,” coverage of the president’s attack on Horowitz, and the response it triggered also serves Trump’s interests. To date, the Mueller-obsessed media has remained uninterested in Horowitz’s investigation of the “investigation” of Hillary Clinton. But with attention focused on Horowitz, the media has been forced to acknowledge that the inspector general is currently investigating Hillary Clinton.

Here’s CNN, for example, albeit with its pre-election pretense that government agents target inanimate objects for criminal conduct: “The office is currently examining how investigations were handled at the department and the FBI in advance of the 2016 presidential election, including, notably, the Hillary Clinton email server probe.”

The Hill likewise noted that the Justice Department’s inspector general “is currently conducting the probe into the FBI’s handling of the 2016 investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.” And in covering Gowdy’s praise for Horowitz, MSN.com noted Horowitz has been “leading a probe of the FBI’s handling of the 2016 investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of State.”

With the media’s suffocating coverage of the Russia investigation, there wasn’t much air left in the room to report on the inspector general’s investigation into the so-called DOJ’s investigation into Hillary Clinton. Trump’s tweet has changed that.

But there’s more: The day ended with Newsmax reporting that, following Trump’s tweet, there are now calls for the appointment of another special counsel. Penning a letter on behalf of 13 congressmen, Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., called on Sessions to appoint a special counsel “to investigate decisions made by and activities of the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation with regards to FISA abuse.”

Trump’s criticism of the attorney general may just serve as the impetus needed for Sessions to appoint a special counsel to take over from the DOJ’s inspector general. And that might well have been Trump’s goal all along—although animal instincts, and not 7-dimension chess, always seem to me the more likely motivator.

Either way, if the end goal was the appointment of a special counsel, I much prefer Trump’s surreal tweet to former FBI Director James Comey’s unethical leak.

Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She served nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk to a federal appellate judge, and is a former full-time faculty member and current adjunct professor for the college of business at the University of Notre Dame.

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