Rep. Gaetz Warned of ‘Coup d’Etat’ Against Trump; Hammers Rosenstein on Mueller Team’s Coup-Plotting

PRESS RELEASE

Rep. Gaetz Warned of ‘Coup d’Etat’ Against Trump; Hammers Rosenstein on Mueller Team’s Coup-Plotting

Dec. 13, 2017 (EIRNS)—In early November, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), said on the House floor that Special Counsel Robert Mueller should be removed from his position, and warned that otherwise,

“we are at risk of a coup d’etat in this country if we allow an unaccountable person with no oversight to undermine the duly-elected President of the United States.”

In a phone interview with Politico, reported yesterday, Gaetz discussed the conversation he had with the President last week during a flight to Pensacola on Air Force One, and while he didn’t recommend that Mueller be fired during that conversation, he did tell the President that Mueller’s legal team is “infected with bias.” When he told Trump that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would be testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, he said that Trump emphasized how important it is that “you guys do your job” in terms of oversight responsibilities.

And, indeed, Gaetz did precisely that when he relentlessly questioned Rosenstein in today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on the sordid relationships among DoJ high official Bruce Ohr, his wife Nelli who was hired by Fusion GPS, and Glenn Simpson, Fusion GPS’s co-founder. He pummeled Rosenstein with questions as to when the DOJ learned that Nelli Ohr was employed by Fusion GPS, when the DOJ learned of Bruce Ohr’s contact with MI6 agent Christopher Steele during the 2016 campaign, and when did it learn of Ohr’s contact with Glenn Simpson after the election. When Rosenstein replied that he didn’t really know the answers, but would try to get them, Gaetz asked why this wasn’t the highest of the DOJ’s priorities to have this information already available.

The wife of a top DOJ counterintelligence official was working for the company “that was the pass-through” for money from the DNC “to get dirt to discredit Trump before and after the elections,” and the DOJ didn’t know this? Ohr was working at the DOJ, his wife was working at Fusion GPS, and during the campaign, they were meeting with the author of the “salacious and unverified dossier.” Why isn’t that information available now? Gaetz asked. He also sharply criticized Rosenstein’s claim that members of Mueller’s team were merely “expressing their political views’ in anti-Trump texts, “not showing prosecutorial bias” or “taking actions.”

Gaetz challenged this. When Agent Peter Strzok changed the wording on the FBI statement on the Hillary Clinton email investigation (from “criminally negligent” to “extremely careless”) that was an action, not an opinion, Gaetz said. Moreover, if a dossier is “dressed up” to be presented to the FISA court to surveil the President’s team, “that wasn’t belief, that was action.” And, the meetings among Ohr, Steele and Simpson “weren’t beliefs, but actions.” Likewise with the DOJ’s Andrew Weissman, who used official DOJ email to congratulate Sally Yates for defying the President of the United States. “These are the actions of people,” said Gaetz, and their “demonstrable bias” demands the appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate them. Rosenstein punted, saying that the DOJ’s Inspector General is looking into this and would conduct a competent investigation.