By Michael Woyton
Kudos to CBS News and its flagship 60 Minutes program for continuing to report on President Donald J. Felon.
In spite of the fact that the adjudicated rapist has sued CBS for $20 billion because he didn’t like an interview with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris, Sunday’s lede story “labeled Trump a threat to the legal system, election system and the rule of law itself,” according to reporting from Fox News.
Scott Pelley opened the program by saying, “It was nearly impossible to get anyone on camera for this story because of the fear now running through our system of justice.”
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One person who did appear on camera was Marc Elias. He was Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign general counsel and was a partner at the law firm Perkins Coie, before leaving to found Democracy Docket, a voting rights and election litigation website.
For background, on March 6, the mayor of Mar-a-Lago signed an executive order calling Perkins Coie “dishonest and dangerous,” in part for representing Hillary Clinton and working with “activist donors including George Soros.”
The order also suspended active security clearances held by employees at Perkins Coie and basically prevented any federal agency from hiring anyone employed by the firm.
Other law firms that have bowed down to the golfer-in-chief’s threats have agreed to provide millions of dollars worth of legal advice to the administration.
In an email from Democracy Docket Monday, Elias wrote about appearing on 60 Minutes.
He said, several weeks ago, a producer of the program contacted him to say they were working on a story about the president targeting law firms.
While he was initially unsure about agreeing to appear on camera, he “quickly learned that few other lawyers — particularly partners at large law firms — were willing to speak on television. The same fear that had prevented Big Law firms from standing up to Trump was now making their partners unwilling to speak out publicly.”
Elias eventually agreed to be interviewed and promised himself he would not pull any punches.
He had no idea if or when his interview would air until the program began at 7 p.m. Sunday.
“As the minutes ticked by, it became clear that 60 Minutes had pulled no punches,” Elias wrote. “Through interviews with me and others, Pelley painted a damning picture of a president out for retribution and a legal industry too cowardly to stand up to him.”
Also on the program were Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration, San Francisco attorney John Keker and lawyer Brenna Frey, who left Skadden, Arps to protest its capitulation to the president’s demands.
Ayer called the president’s executive order “a direct attack on the whole functioning of our judicial system.”
Keker, who has been recruiting law firm to oppose the grifter-in-chief’s demands, compared what the president is trying to do with what is happening in China and Russia.
“These are legal systems that look like legal systems, but in fact are controlled by a dictatorship,” he said during the program.
Interestingly — to me — at no point during the story as broadcast did Pelley offer any one speaking in favor of the president’s actions.
There’s no way to know if this will be a trend on the part of 60 Minutes or CBS News.
There is, after all, the likelihood that Paramount’s board will settle with the cry-baby-in-chief over his lawsuit against 60 Minutes for the Harris interview.
Paramount wants to merge with Skydance Media, and the companies need the FCC on their side. $28 billion is at stake, money talks.
But at least we got a no-holds barred look at another way the felon-in-chief is trying to consolidate more power and in his goal to become a dictator.
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That was The Philadelphia Inquirer’s placement of the story that the president said on television he didn’t know if he has to uphold the Constitution.
In the New York Times Monday, its story was on page A13, but there was a teeny tiny mention at the bottom of page A1 where the article could be located. Shame on them.
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Lead art: Screen grab from CBS via YouTube.
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