Wait a minute, Martin said; the DOJ decided an investigation was warranted. That decision included Sessions, even though the attorney general recused himself. Trump keeps saying the whole Russian collusion investigation should not happen in the first place, she said, which is suspect.
"Of course, it's suspect to you," Gingrich said. "But isn't it suspect to you that 97 percent of the donations by people employed at Justice went to Hillary Clinton? And then in terms of Mueller's law firm, it was 99.82 percent went to Hillary Clinton. And in terms of the people he's been hiring, they are paid killers. If you read Sidney Powell's book about the Enron case, you will see these names coming up. These are people who the Supreme Court, on a 9-0 vote, rebuked."
When Martin pointed out that Sessions is no liberal, Gingrich countered that Sessions is not serving Trump by allowing the special counsel to proceed. He went on to say that Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, a career department employee, was running the DOJ.
"The whole point that Trump is making is he [Sessions] stepped aside," Gingrich said. "He's not the leader of the department. A career Justice Department person is the leader of the department. And it's a department whose culture is very liberal, a department whose culture is very anti-Trump."
Martin replied that Gingrich was suggesting the department should be run entirely by Republicans. Shouldn't the DOJ be non-partisan and enforce the laws on the books?
"And if you believe that, you live in a fantasy land," Gingrich interjected. "If you believe the Justice Department does not have a deep cultural bias, and you believe that the average conversation at the Justice Department is not anti-Trump, you're just living in a fantasy land. That's the president's frustration. He doesn't expect the attorney general to single-handedly change everything. He doesn't expect the attorney general to in any way impede the law. But let me go back to the original thing. I am personally appalled as a former Speaker of the House that neither the House nor the Senate Judiciary Committee have asked of Rosenstein, the person that is in charge of this investigation... what is the crime which Mueller is investigating? Tell us what the code is that has been violated that he's investigating. Second, why would he hire only anti-Trump lawyers? These are legitimate questions that need to be answered."
Martin countered that Gingrich cannot prove the DOJ is filled with anti-Trump lawyers.
"Oh, give me a break," Gingrich replied, then saying it didn't matter that Mueller was a Republican because his law firm was filled with people who donated to Democrats. "Yes, and [Mueller] worked in a law firm that gave 99.82 percent of its donations to Hillary. But let me give you an example. One of the first people he hired had worked for the Clinton Foundation -- I love this because it is so ironic -- had worked for the Clinton Foundation fighting against Freedom of Information Act requests. Now would you say that a lawyer who worked for the Clinton Foundation trying to cut off FOIA, which I would assume NPR was very much in favor of Freedom of Information Act requests, would you say that person's suspect? Do you think they probably have a bias?"
The rest of the interview went even further into the guilt-by-association weeds, seeking to turn the focus away from Trump's attacks on Sessions, Comey and Mueller. "If he has nothing to hide, why is he acting like he does?" Martin asked.
Gingrich replied that special counsels are runaway prosecutors who will not quit until they have convicted someone -- this time someone in Trump's orbit.
"Mr. Comey's last independent counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, who Comey got appointed after he knew there was no crime, and after they knew who had leaked the CIA agent's name, and they told the person who leaked to shut up," he said. "And then they went after Scooter Libby who was Dick Cheney's chief of staff because they wanted to get Cheney, and they then locked up a New York Times reporter for 85 days to get her to testify. And you looked at that record... Mueller is going to get somebody."
The interview ended shortly thereafter, with Gingrich conceding that even Rudy Giuliani said he would have recused himself, had he been appointed attorney general. But that's a distraction from what's really going on with Gingrich's attack on Mueller and the entire Justice Department. Gingrich is trying to be Trump's Goebbels.
As Leonard W. Doob wrote in his essay, "Goebbels' Principles of Propaganda," published in Public Opinion and Propaganda, the first two principles were, "Propagandists must have access to intelligence concerning events and public opinion," and "propaganda must be planned and executed by only one authority." Clearly, arch Trump defenders like Gingrich cannot abide by having a special counsel investigation proceed where it cannot influence its scope, censor its findings and shape the publicly reported outcome.
While many political observers have said it is only a matter of time before Trump fires Mueller, what's new and different with Gingrich's latest line of attack is that he's not merely angling to be Trump's top propaganda hitman; he's willing to smear and discredit the Justice Department to protect Trump's presidency, as if Trump's team is above the law and the uppermost federal law enforcement agency's efforts to uphold it.
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