By Rebecca Harrington
After President Richard Nixon resigned because of the scandal, President Jimmy Carter sought to give the Justice Department as much insulation from politics as possible, to keep investigations independent of meddling from the White House or Congress.
Other administrations have since strengthened this distinction, explicitly outlining what officials can and cannot do in Department of Justice memoranda.
But President Donald Trump's administration appears to have flouted this longstanding ethical protocol, experts and former FBI and Justice Department officials say, prompting new questions about the impartiality of the FBI's look into Trump and his associates' ties to Russia.
CNN reported Thursday that the FBI (which is housed within the DOJ) rejected a White House request to publicly shoot down a New York Times story reporting repeated communications between Russian operatives and the Trump campaign....
What would Bernard Shaw say about speaking to power?
By Gabriel Sherman
At his press conference last week, (click here) President-elect Trump refused to take a question from CNN reporter Jim Acosta, denouncing the network as a purveyor of “fake news.” Trump’s ire was in response to CNN’s explosive report that U.S. intelligence chiefs had briefed Trump on claims that the Kremlin had collected compromising information on him. In the wake of CNN’s report, BuzzFeed published the unedited, and unverified, opposition-research dossier referenced in the intel briefing, which included lurid allegations about Trump’s behavior and his campaign’s ties to Russia.
On Tuesday morning, I sat down with CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker for a wide-ranging discussion about that controversial scoop, Trump’s threat to press freedom, and why he’s not worried about losing access to the White House....
By Gabriel Sherman
At his press conference last week, (click here) President-elect Trump refused to take a question from CNN reporter Jim Acosta, denouncing the network as a purveyor of “fake news.” Trump’s ire was in response to CNN’s explosive report that U.S. intelligence chiefs had briefed Trump on claims that the Kremlin had collected compromising information on him. In the wake of CNN’s report, BuzzFeed published the unedited, and unverified, opposition-research dossier referenced in the intel briefing, which included lurid allegations about Trump’s behavior and his campaign’s ties to Russia.
On Tuesday morning, I sat down with CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker for a wide-ranging discussion about that controversial scoop, Trump’s threat to press freedom, and why he’s not worried about losing access to the White House....
