Trump asked FBI to drop Flynn probe

The Washington Post reports:

President Trump asked the FBI to drop its probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn and urged former FBI director James B. Comey instead to pursue reporters in leak cases, according to associates of Comey who have seen private notes he wrote recounting the conversation.

According to the notes written by Comey following a February meeting with the president, Trump brought up the counterintelligence investigation into Flynn and urged Comey to drop the probe in the wake of the national security adviser’s resignation.

The conversation between Trump and Comey took place after a national security meeting. The president asked to speak privately to the FBI director, and the others left the room, according to the Comey associates, who, like other officials, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to reveal internal discussions.

“I hope you can let this go,’’ Trump said, according to the Comey notes, which were described by the associates. Comey’s written account of the meeting is two pages long and highly detailed, the associates said.

I doubt even this will be enough to convince Trump fanatics that he simply does not have the right judgment or temperament to be President. Because Trump is the enemy of their enemy, they will defend him regardless. You wonder what he would have to do for them to actually change their minds.

For those about to defend Trump, imagine this happened in New Zealand. Say Helen Clark’s national security adviser had just resigned for lying about his contacts with (say) China. And that adviser was being investigated by the Police.

Then suddenly Clark sacked the Commissioner of Police, and it transpired that a few weeks earlier she had urged the Commissioner to stop the investigation into her former adviser.

Would you be defending Clark, as you do Trump, and saying she did nothing wrong. That it was all the fault of the Police for investigating a bogus allegation, and that the Prime Minister has every right to ask the Police to stop an investigation and then sack the Commissioner when he carries on? Or would you be demanding Clark resign?

We all have a natural tendency to be softer on the “team” we support. But when that tendency becomes an obsession and you can see no evil and hear no evil, you become what you claim to oppose.