Seth Abramson weighs in on Trump’s recent antics, says he is openly committing crimes.
Former criminal investigator and criminal defense attorney Seth Abramson weighed in this week on the upcoming testimony of Justice Department official Bruce Ohr and Trump’s twitter campaign to discredit him prior to that hearing.
Abramson began his analysis with a link to an article by The Hill, which provided the following background on the situation:
House Republicans are gearing up for a closed-door interview with Department of Justice (DOJ) official Bruce Ohr, which is slated to take place later this month.
Ohr, who served as the department’s associate deputy attorney general and now currently works in the criminal division, is the latest target among House conservatives who claim there is ample evidence of bias against President Trump in the DOJ and FBI during the 2016 election.
The DOJ and the committee reached an agreement for Ohr to appear before the committee on Aug. 28, DOJ
Trump has posted a stunning number of tweets this week threatening Ohr, which became the subject of Abramson’s analysis. We have listed each tweet from his thread as a separate bullet point for clarity:
- As to Bruce Ohr, who is currently employed by the federal government, Trump’s THREAT to revoke his security clearance—which would make him doing his job impossible, and might lead to his termination—is, given the “grounds” Trump has spoken of on Twitter, WITNESS TAMPERING. [emphasis added]
- Trump is AWARE that Bruce Ohr is about to testify before House Republicans and he is seeking to INFLUENCE his testimony, as his statements on Twitter make clear, with this THREAT against him. Mueller will undoubtedly investigate this.
- A key national security expert for MSNBC just said on-air, “This is quite clearly designed to send a chilling effect to all of those who would criticize Donald Trump or his administration that this will not be tolerated.” Do people realize that, as to Ohr, that’s a CRIME? [emphasis added]
Abramson’s next tweet in the series was directed to an August 14, 2018 tweet by Trump in which he stated “Bruce Ohr of the ‘Justice’ Department (can you believe he is still there) is accused of helping disgraced Christopher Steele ‘find dirt on Trump.’ Ohr’s wife, Nelly, was in on the act big time – worked for Fusion GPS on Fake Dossier.”
Returning to his analysis, Abramson responded directly to that tweet – stating:
- This tweet is now evidence of a federal felony. [emphasis added]
Abramson concluded his thread tweeting:
- People do not yet realize—but soon will—that Trump has just made as big a mistake as he made in firing Comey. You *cannot* threaten the job of a witness against you in a federal investigation and SAY ON TWITTER that your reason is that he will offer testimony against you. [emphasis added]
Abramson also weighed on the news that Trump had revoked the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan, tweeting:
- BREAKING: Trump revokes former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance in a lengthy statement that attacks Brennan’s “erratic” behavior and lack of “credibility” in a TRANSPARENT attempt to damage his professional reputation in advance of him being a witness against Trump. source [emphasis added]
- This pretextual action echoes the firing of Jim Comey: termination of a long-serving public servant’s authority and/or access to information solely on the basis of that public servant’s positioning in the Russia probe with respect to Trump and his aides, allies and associates. source
Continuing, Abramson pinned a new tweet to the top of his Twitter feed on Friday, reminding people that Trump’s actions regarding Brennan are a crime.
- It borders on scandalous how the media treats what Trump did to Brennan—and now implies he’ll shortly do to others—a *political* move. In fact, these are *witnesses against him in a federal case*—and he’s trying to intimidate and silence them. This is a *crime* source [emphasis added]
And just to remove any doubt. Trump himself admitted to the crime while speaking to The Wall Street Journal in an impromptu interview published this week.
Although the White House claimed national security concerns prompted the decision, Trump himself quickly contradicted that position – telling The Wall Street Journal that he had targeted Brennan regarding his role in creating the Russia investigation.
Kyle Griffin, producer of MSNBC‘s “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell,” posted a link to the interview, tweeting:
Trump now explicitly says that he's targeting Brennan and others for their roles in the Russia investigation.
"I call it the rigged witch hunt," Trump told the WSJ. "And these people led it!" He added: "So I think it's something that had to be done."https://t.co/PG7iWA7PQp
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) August 16, 2018
If you are interested in reading more or Abramson’s work, Twitter user @chicken_afraido created a document linking to every Trump-Russia thread published by Abramson going back to autumn of 2016. The document begins with his updated bio from 8 December 2017, but then hops to his latest threads and works in reverse chronological order. He also has a web page linking to Abramson’s threads using category listings for those interested in a breakdown by topic.
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