Trump Firing of FBI Director Comey Sets Off Calls for Independent Investigator of Russia-Trump Connections

By Frank Gormlie / OB Rag

Back from the dead

Echoes of Watergate: May 9th, 2017 will go down in American history, much like Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre.” It’s all over the news. In the middle of a FBI investigation into Trump’s connections with Russia, Trump fires the man at the head of that investigation.

It is a constitutional crisis in which the rule of law in America is now at question. Trump and the White House are seriously trying to derail the investigation into whether Trump and his people colluded with Russian intelligence in manipulating the 2016 Presidential election. Trump now has a pattern of firing law enforcement professionals when they get too close to the secrets he and his people hold.

There is a whiff of fascism, as Trump tries to assert himself as the main authority in the country. He has disparaged the separation of powers by blocking any cooperation with the Congressional intelligence investigations. He has disparaged the First Amendment with his attacks on the press. Now he has threatened the rule of law.

Only the very foundations of American democracy are at stake, a democracy that has been flailing deeply in recent times.

If Trump is allowed to appoint the person who will now lead the FBI investigation into the White House and Putin’s connections to undermine this democracy, then we’ll see more than a whiff of fascism.

But it’s not over.

Senate Democrats have been called to their desks for a 9 am (Eastern time) emergency response to the crisis.

Americans all over the country have been closely watching this latest unfolding of events — the Comey firing, the literally unbelievable reasons given for the firing (‘Comey was mean to Hillary’), and the push-back. The Resistance movement is still intact.

It’s time for an independent special prosecutor and a special “9-11”-type commission to take over all the investigations into Trump’s probable collusion with a foreign government to thwart our election. Unless one is appointed, confirmed in large numbers by the Senate, and empaneled with sufficient resources, Americans will not be able to trust any results or conclusions from the investigation.

Now there is clear evidence of a cover-up, and it is the same cover-up perpetrated by Nixon back in 1973 and 74.

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Frank Gormlie

A lawyer and grassroots activist, I was finally convinced by Patty Jones to start the OB Rag, a blog of citizen journalists, after she got tired of listening to my rants about the news. Way back during the Dinosaurs in 1970, I founded the original Ocean Beach People’s Rag - OB’s famous underground newspaper -, and then later during the early Eighties, published The Whole Damn Pie Shop, a progressive alternative to the Reader.

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