Thread: How to recuse the President from a counterintelligence investigation

On May 10, 2017, McCabe tasked Page and Baker with crafting a legal strategy to prevent Trump from shutting down an FBI counterintelligence investigation into his ties with Russia. That’s not easy.

All counterintelligence investigations by any Executive Branch intelligence agency (whether FBI, CIA, etc.) ultimately reports up to and is controlled by the President.

But what if, as Maddow asked Baker, the President is the subject of the investigation?

Baker’s point is that you’d need to find some way to recuse the President from the investigation. And you’d need to ensure he stayed recused and didn’t just start firing everyone involved in the investigation in order to shut it down.

I can only think of one way to do that, and the only reason I’m able to think of it is because it’s happening right now. This must be what they did, step by step:

Step 1: Remove the investigation out from under DOJ by making it purely counterintelligence. A criminal element would strand it under mandatory DOJ oversight. Leave that to Mueller in his narrower criminal case that doesn’t target Trump for anything other than obstruction.

Step 2: Remove oversight of the investigation from the FBI Director so Trump can’t install a new one and shut it down. McCabe knew he’d be replaced quickly, so McCabe could just consent to removing oversight from FBI and giving it to, say, the Director of National Intelligence.

Step 3: Protect the counterintelligence investigation from Trump by cloaking it within Mueller’s investigation. If Trump thinks Mueller is doing the entire investigation (like we all thought, by the way) then he will focus on Mueller and the FBI can do its thing quietly.

Step 4: Find a way to get a report out. Luckily, DNI and FBI have reporting obligations to House and Senate Intel, and both of those committees can produce reports and read them from the floor of their respective chamber, even if classified. (Hint: Pick the one without Nunes.)

Looks to me like all four steps were followed to perfection. My hat is off to the architects of the plan. It’s really quite ingenious.

And, remember, Trump wasn’t just recused from the investigation of his ties to Russia, he also was recused from the FBI investigation into Russian interference for Bernie in the 2020 primaries. This is highly unusual and suggests Trump is working with Russia and the FBI knows it.