Trump just reignited his feud with John Brennan and the Justice Department in furious Twitter attack

President Trump took to Twitter this morning to rail against former CIA Director John Brennan and former associate deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, inspired of course by his morning dose of FOX & Friends. He aimed his latest attack at the former intelligence officials who he is dragging into his interminable, albeit fruitless, efforts to discredit the Special Counsel and the members of the intelligence community who will be called forward to testify against him.

He began by demanding that his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, immediately fire Bruce Ohr from the Justice Department as punishment for his connections to Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent who compiled the now-infamous Steele Dossier, which alleges an elaborate quid pro quo between the Trump campaign and agents of the Russian Federation as well as allegations that the Russians are blackmailing Trump with videos of him engaging in lewd acts while on a 2013 trip to Moscow.

Bruce Ohr is the latest right-wing whipping boy, a somewhat obscure figure that the Republican spin machine has put on a pedestal due to his personal connection to Christopher Steele and his wife’s work with Fusion GPS, the opposition research company that hired Steele to assemble the dossier.

He was removed from his position in late 2017 after his connections to Steele were discovered; the Washington Post remarks that it’s still “unclear” what Ohr does at the Justice Department these days.

It remains to be seen whether or not Attorney General Sessions is preparing to give the President his pound of flesh, though there is little evidence that Ohr or his wife assisted Steele in his work as Trump and his hooting allies say that he did.

Prior to that, the President took a swipe at former CIA director John Brennan and inadvertently exposed a major problem within our intelligence community — though not in the way that he thinks he did.

This weekend, Brennan announced in an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that he’s considering suing the Trump administration over the spiteful revocation of his security clearance as a way to punish him for his vocal criticisms of the President and his administration — which inspired this outburst from the President, who dared him to bring it on:

While this certainly isn’t the case in this particular instance, the President did reference a common practice in Washington that should make all of us concerned: the way that former intelligence officials turn their security clearances into very lucrative “consulting” and lobbying opportunities for weapons manufacturers and private security contractors, ensuring there’s always a crowd of Very Respected members of the intelligence community pushing for eternal war and the endless squandering of our tax dollars on the bloated abomination of our national security state for a nice paycheck.

Of course, that all will be lost in the hubbub surrounding his attacks on Brennan, which should focus on Trump’s undemocratic efforts to bully Brennan into silence rather than any need to “respect” the man who created President Obama’s murderous drone warfare program and abused his power to spy on the U.S. Senate.

The president is growing increasingly desperate, and these shameless attacks are all the proof we need to know that the walls are closing in on him. But the silver lining of this entire mess is how effortlessly he exposes the corruption and the rot endemic in our political system, and it is imperative that we address it with just as much vigor as we address the excesses and authoritarian impulses of President Trump.

 

Colin Taylor

Managing Editor

Colin Taylor is the managing editor of the Washington Press. He graduated from Bennington College with a Bachelor's degree in history and political science. He now focuses on advancing the cause of social justice, equality, and universal health care in America.