It seems like each day removed from the firing of FBI Director James Comey, a picture is being painted of a President who seems either totally unaware of the separation between the Oval Office and the nation’s law enforcement, or he simply doesn’t care about it. In his first interview since he was fired by the Trump administration in March, former top Manhattan prosecutor Preet Bharara explained on ABC’s The Week that Trump called him twice as the president-elect, then a third time after the inauguration. Bharara decided not to return the third phone call, thinking it was inappropriate, and a day later, he was fired.
Bharara went on to describe the phone calls as “unusual” after stating that he never once received a phone call from Barack Obama in his seven and a half years working for him. Whether these phone calls were made because of Bharara’s jurisdiction in New York, where Trump was based at the time (and where many of his family still runs his businesses), he declined to say. “It was a little bit uncomfortable, but he was not the president. He was only the president-elect.”
Bharara continued by saying the phone calls from Trump were in an effort to “shoot the breeze” with the attorney, asking him how he was. This didn’t sit well with Bharara:
“It’s a very weird and peculiar thing for a one-on-one conversation without the attorney general, without warning between the president and me or any United States attorney who has been asked to investigate various things and is in a position hypothetically to investigate business interests and associates of the president.”
What’s odd is that at face value, multiple people have now come forward saying that Donald Trump called them up to chit chat. When the warmness wasn’t returned, Comey and Bharara were fired. Maybe Donald Trump isn’t obstructing justice, he’s trying to advance friendships and is just a lonely guy like so many reports have stated? Or he’s using his stature to influence those around him. There’s that, too.
(Via Reuters)