Ex-Prosecutor Draws Dark Historical Comparison Over Trump’s ‘I Am A King’ Moment
Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann on Monday slammed the Trump White House’s reported purging of Justice Department leadership.
It “violates the civil service rules and the protections of them,” Weissmann told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace.
Weissmann referenced the so-called “Saturday Night Massacre” of October 1973, when then-President Richard Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox in a desperate bid to thwart the investigation into the Watergate scandal that ultimately sunk his presidency.
“I’m old enough to remember the ‘Saturday Night Massacre,’ and I want people to understand, you might be thinking this is a story just about the FBI. It is not,” said Weissmann.
“It is enough that it’s about the FBI,” he continued. “But I want to make people understand it is far more egregious than what Nixon tried to do by just removing the special counsel to say, ‘I shouldn’t be investigated.’”
With Trump, Weissmann argued: “This is saying, ‘I am a king. I can disobey all civil service rules.’ He has the No. 2 at the Justice Department agreeing. So this is unlike what happened in the ‘Saturday Night Massacre,’ where the Justice Department was saying, ‘Fire me because I’m not doing something that’s illegal.’”
Watch Weissmann’s full analysis here:
