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President & Chief Correspondent
Feature Story News
1730 Rhode Island Ave NW, Suite 405
Washington DC 20036 USA
Phone: + 1 202 296 9012
Websites: www.featurestory.com and www.simonmarks.com
Twitter: @simonmarksfsn <http://www.twitter.com/simonmarksfsn>
President Trump is accusing officials within his own Department of Justice of "illegal and treasonous" activity after it was claimed they considered trying to oust him from office.
The former Acting Director of the FBI says officials discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution, which allows the Vice President and Congressional leaders to force an incapacitated President from office.
Our Washington Correspondent Simon Marks reports.
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It is the Presidents Day holiday here in the United States…..a bank holiday marking the birthday in 1732 of George Washington….America's first President who - as all Americans learn at school - was so honest and clean-cut he couldn't even lie to his parents about chopping down a cherry tree.
Sitting in Washington's Presidential chair today….a man who has told literally thousands of falsehoods since he was elected in 2016….and who isn't taking a break from that unprecedented streak on this national day off.
The target of President Trump's Twitter fulminations is Andrew McCabe….the former Acting Director of the FBI.
In an interview with CBS Mr McCabe says his boss, the Deputy Attorney General, was so rattled by the President's behavior that he proposed secretly recording his conversations with Donald Trump.
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Now if that all sounds - as the President claims - "illegal and treasonous"….as a matter of basic legal fact, it isn't.
The Deputy Attorney General saw his offer as part of a move to invoke the 25th Amendment to the American constitution.
It legally allows the Vice President, members of the Cabinet and Congressional leaders to dump any President if they think he's nuts….or in hock to a foreign power like Russia.
And Mr. McCabe says leading figures around Donald Trump certainly thought in the middle of 2017 that his behavior might fit the bill.
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And it wasn't just the President's decision to fire FBI Director James Comey - a move designed to head off the inquiry into ties between the Trump campaign and the Russians - that unnerved Justice Department officials.
Mr. Cabe described one briefing about North Korea's nuclear capacity, in which President Trump dismissed claims that Pyongyang's nuclear weapons could reach US territory…because he'd been told differently by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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All of these claims are contained in Andrew McCabe's new tell-all book, and he's giving a raft of interviews that - in turn - are giving President Trump political indigestion over the all-you-can eat holiday buffet at the Trump Organization's golf club in Florida.
The President says present and former Department of Justice officials have a lot of explaining to do.
His loyal Republican supporter, Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, agrees.
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But those hearings would give Democrats like Senator Chris Coons of Delaware a chance to question the protagonists…..something they are equally eager to do.
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With every Presidential Tweet, Andrew McCabe's book continues to soar up America's best-seller lists.
And on this Presidents Day holiday serves once again to underscore the fact that the current occupant of the Oval Office is not like any of his predecessors…and cannot trust the very men and women he's appointed to senior positions to his own government….knowing that at least some of them have privately discussed ousting him from power.
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