May 2017.

     This is another failed response to a news story, in this instance what historians will likely view as a milestone of the Trump regime, the sacking of FBI Director James Comey.  The axing of Mr. Comey, for whom I have no great regard, is wedded in memory with a personal event.  The news broke while I was killing time in a waiting room as My Beloved was undergoing laparoscopy on a knee.  During her convalescence, the wall-to-wall cable news coverage of the Comey dismissal was our principal diversion.

     The event afforded me another opportunity to take a swipe at the appalling Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III.  By acceding to the Mr. Comey’s banishment, the attorney general undid his lone virtuous act, his honoring of the Office of Legal Counsel’s advice to recuse himself from oversight of the Department of Justice’s probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.  It seemed clear that canning the FBI director was intended to hobble the investigation by other means.  It was becoming evident by this juncture that neither competence nor honesty nor respect for rule of law would be the métier of Trumpian governance.

     The unpublished letter is a standard response to the situation.  It does contain a misstep in form, an allusion to another letter that had been published.  No one cares about that; however, it indicates how exercised I was by Mr. Sessions’ tenure as attorney general.

Here’s Ellen Nakashima and Matt Zapotosky’s article:

Ellen Nakashima and Matt Zapotosky, “Trump Fires FBI Director,” The Washington Post, 10 May 2017, A1, A4 (www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/comeys-removal-sparks-fears-about-future-of-russia-probe/2017/05/09/013d9ade-3507-11e7-b412-62beef8121f7_story.html).

Here’s the unpublished letter:

     My recent letter (“Mr. McCain’s Words and Actions,” Washington Post, February 2, 2017) implored Senator John McCain to match his fair criticism of President Trump with action by voting against the most troubling of the president’s cabinet nominees, among them former Senator Jeff Sessions.

     Attorney General Sessions’ involvement in the dismissal of FBI Director James Comey – notwithstanding Mr. Session’s recusal of himself from the FBI’s examination of Russian meddling in the 2016 election – exposes the danger inherent in acceding to an unqualified, temperamentally unsuitable, and potentially compromised nominee.

     It is imperative that Republicans resist Mr. Trump’s baldly transparent effort to hamstring the FBI probe and stand with Democrats in calling for a special prosecutor to investigate potential links between the Trump campaign and Russia.  Statesmanship and defense of the constitutional system must outweigh partisanship and the Senate must defend the government’s balance of power against a disingenuous and unscrupulous chief executive.  Senator McCain and his Republican senatorial colleagues can perform signal service to the nation by joining with their Democratic counterparts.