Trump is not helping himself

United States President Donald Trump has seemingly confirmed to the world that he is under investigation for his alleged role in Russian meddling into the US election last November. In a tweet, he lashed out at a Washington Post report which stated that he is under investigation for alleged obstruction of justice. Trump called it a "witch hunt" and said that even after seven months of investigations nobody had been able to prove that he colluded with Russia. "I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt," Trump tweeted, referring to his decision to sack James Comey. Last week, Comey had told a high-level US Senate committee that the US President had fired him to undermine the Federal Bureau of Investigation's probe into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign team. Comey testified that Trump asked him in February to drop an FBI investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn reported ties with Moscow and possible acts of collusion. The former FBI Director said it would be up to Mueller to decide whether Trump's action amounted to obstruction of justice, an act one could cite in any effort in the Republican-led Congress to impeach him and eject him from office. Although Trump does have a point about the lack of ant concrete evidence, he has not helped his case one bit. When Comey was sacked, the initial reaction of the White House was that the decision was made because of his poor handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server. Admittedly, not many of his critics bought the argument, but Trump was on surer foot. However, Trump later contradicted his administration and cited "this Russia thing" as the reason for his decision to fire the former FBI director, who was overseeing investigations into possible Russian interference in the recent presidential elections. Trump had, in fact, consistently sought to reiterate that he was not personally under investigation in the early stages of the Russia probe. Comey was reportedly under pressure from the US President to state that fact publicly but refused because of the possibility that the investigation could expand further include Trump personally. The decision to fire Comey soon after was taken entirely at Trump's discretion, leading to the current state of affairs, where he is personally under investigation for obstruction of justice. In other words, Trump couldn't have done more to put himself in the spotlight.

"So Trump, in his zeal to show he wasn't being personally investigated and rid his administration of a troublesome probe, made himself the focus of an investigation and created a much more troublesome probe for his administration. "They" didn't do this to Trump. Trump did this to Trump. But Trump doesn't seem to understand what he did, or how his actions led to his current problems," writes Ezra Klein, editor-in-chief of vox.com, a reputed American news website. "Earlier this week, reports emerged that Trump was thinking about firing Mueller, too — an act that would likely lead to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's resignation, and perhaps a governmental crisis. Trump was eventually talked down by his staff, but no one knows if Trump will stay talked down. His resistance to taking responsibility for his actions is perhaps the single greatest threat facing his Presidency," Klein adds. Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner is also in the crosshairs of investigators. He had allegedly in December 2016 proposed to discuss with Russian Ambassador to America Sergei Kislyak the possibility of creating a "secret communication channel" between the Trump's campaign team and Moscow, bypassing US intelligence. During the meeting, Kushner is believed to have proposed the idea of using Russian diplomatic facilities to protect their discussions from monitoring by American investigative agencies Kushner is now under the scrutiny of the FBI. Last week, the US Attorney General Jeff Sessions testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee, and called accusations that the Trump campaign had colluded with the Kremlin during the US Presidential elections a "detestable lie". Despite putting up a brave front, Sessions refused to answer a whole host of questions, including one on whether he spoke privately to US President Donald Trump about the inquiry. The US Attorney General was also evasive about his interactions with Comey, who reported directly to him while he was FBI director. Sessions had to recuse himself from investigating the Trump campaign's alleged connections with Moscow after failing to disclose his meetings with the Russian Ambassador. That is, he had lied under oath during his confirmation hearings in the Senate. While Sessions had no problem in recusing himself from the investigations, he had no trouble helping Trump fire the FBI director. If the FBI investigation indeed finds concrete proof that the Trump campaign had coordinated with Moscow, it would end up as a kind of scandal that could render the US President vulnerable to impeachment. Herein lies the catch. There is yet no concrete proof to definitively suggest that the Trump campaign team, aided and abetted by the Moscow, undermined the US Presidential elections. As some supporters of the Trump administration suggest, this could be a case of unelected officials hiding behind the veil of 'national interest' trying to boot out an elected government. Trump did not help his case when he admitted to firing Comey with "this Russia thing" on his mind. Both Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon had faced impeachment proceedings for obstruction of justice.