With reports that Donald Trump wants to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Fox News and its Dear Leader appear to be on the same, Russia-investigation-obstruction page. And while it’s hard to know which came first, the Trump chicken or the Fox egg, what’s indisputable is that Trump and Fox are each working to undermine our system of justice and the rule of law.
Fox has been raging against Rosenstein, who oversees special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, for months. So, apparently, has Trump. But as Media Matters explains, the rhetoric has been heating up of late due to the Trump sycophants’ demand for the release of a memo written by staffers of Trump lackey and House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes. The Trumpers claim the memo shows the FBI and DOJ surveilled Trump adviser Carter Page out of anti-Trump bias via the so-called Steele dossier.
House Intelligence Democrats tell quite a different story. Ranking member Adam Schiff called the memo “a hodgepodge of false statements and misleading representations.”
Removing Rosenstein could mean (but is by no means guaranteed) that he is replaced by a deputy attorney general more compliant to Trump and who would put constraints on Mueller. So, naturally, the Fox News lickspittles are causing as much ruckus as possible for this to happen. And they don’t care whom or what American principles they have to trample over to get it.
From Media Matters’ Matt Gertz:
Hannity, a sometime presidential adviser who has turned his show into a nightly assault on the rule of law in an effort to protect Trump from the Russia investigation, said the night after the memo story first gained credence: “Rod Rosenstein, you need to explain your role in all of this and specifically if you were involved in extending this FISA warrant. And, frankly, Rod Rosenstein needs to be fired.” Hannity again called for Rosenstein to be “fired and investigated” on January 22. He has described the deputy attorney general as “corrupt,” suggesting he was part of a “rogue group of Obama administration holdovers that despise Donald Trump” that were “abus[ing] the powerful, unmatched tools of intelligence that we give our government to protect us” in order to “influence first the election and then undermine the choice of the American people.” He also questioned whether Rosenstein might be part of a non-existent anti-Trump “secret society.”
Gregg Jarrett, a low-profile Fox News anchor who emerged last year as the network’s leading legal defender of the president, told Hannity on Wednesday night that Rosenstein had approved an “illegal investigation.” In an appearance on Lou Dobbs’ Fox Business show the same evening, he claimed that Rosenstein has “serious political bias” and may have committed a federal crime that carries a 10-year prison sentence. Dobbs, who frequently suggests that various people have broken the law by not being sufficiently supportive of the president, replied, “So when do the arrests start?” After Jarrett said that should have happened long ago but “it was hidden for a long time,” Dobbs replied, “I hope that’s also a federal crime.”
Discussing the memo on Justice with Jeanine Pirro on Saturday, Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton claimed that there needs to be “pressure on the FBI to clean out its ranks at the leadership level,” adding, “If Rod Rosenstein isn’t going to do it, they should find someone who will.” Pirro, who has repeatedly called for the arrests of DOJ and FBI leaders and met with Trump in the White House in November, responded, “I got to tell you I couldn’t agree with you more. That place is dirty.”
And in an appearance on Fox’s The Ingraham Angle, former Trump adviser Roger Stone said that Rosenstein “is not on the level” and should be fired.
Regardless of who started the bombardment against Rosenstein, one thing we do know is that Fox is Trump’s “primary source of information gathering.” So the two working in tandem create nothing less than a vicious cycle of abuse of democracy and American institutions.
(Donald Trump caricature by DonkeyHotey via Creative Commons license)