I have a major bone to pick with the Post-Gazette’s April 11 editorial “What Next? Raid on Trump’s Lawyer Legal But Disturbing.”
“What next?” can really only be answered by the current president’s “alternative facts,” his paranoid and arbitrary actions, and the sordid and back-alley past that has followed him to the White House. The editorial says, “It has never happened to a president and his lawyer before.” We have never had a man in the White House like this before, nor a personal presidential fixer like Michael Cohen.
I am a registered Democrat but can assure you that if Barack Obama had pulled any of the emolument illegalities and corrupt shenanigans that Mr. Trump has established as the norm on a daily basis, not only would impeachment proceedings have begun a long time ago, I would be rooting for a thorough investigation, no matter his policy leanings.
The editorial goes on to say that if the FBI “did act this dramatically without a very good reason, the FBI’s already damaged credibility will be forever destroyed.” The FBI’s credibility has suffered way more damage from the unearned constant barrage by the president, congressional Republicans and right-leaning press sources like the current PG editorial board, trying to paint the FBI as the enemy—all because it is investigating an administration that reeks of scandal and impropriety.
“Hence, a possible cover-up of consensual sex—and unseemly and unfaithful behavior—may accomplish what the search for Russian collusion could not,” the editorial says. The special counsel’s report has not yet been finalized, and an investigation of this magnitude takes enormous time and resources, so don’t jump the gun. And when the editorial says, “It is possible that, even if [Robert] Mueller, various New York prosecutors and the FBI are acting in good faith,” the PG is questioning the veracity and purity of the entire Justice Department’s mission for no evident reason.
“It is essential for the republic to endure,” the editorial says. But that truly can happen only if the investigation is allowed to continue and the truth comes out, whatever it may be. Otherwise bedrocks of our republic—justice and the rule of law—will be forever broken.
DOUG ALPERN
Sewickley
