Who Says Trump Wants a New FBI Director?

Democrats in Congress may be outsmarting themselves.

So, Democrats are hinting to President Donald Trump, want a new FBI director? Then agree to an independent investigation of your campaign’s possible ties to Russia.

Democrats control only 48 Senate seats, meaning they need to pull three Republicans over to their side. The bipartisan angst over the abrupt firing of James Comey on Tuesday could give them the leverage they badly need.

They want a special prosecutor, or perhaps a special panel, to investigate allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Republican leaders oppose an independent probe, but some GOP senators are sympathetic.

Say that one of Trump's goals is making the Russia probe go away. What's more effective in attaining that goal: agreeing to a semi-permanent institution like a special prosecutor, or allowing your opponents to make sure the FBI remains headless?

If you really think there's something to all this, as Democratic leaders claim to do (although even Chairman Grassley concedes that the President is right to say that he isn't personally under investigation), why would you offer this deal? If Trump turns it down, he can charge you with being the ones who are 'obstructing justice' by playing politics with a major police agency. You, by contrast, will be in the difficult position of claiming that (a) 'serious crimes have been committed!' but also that (b) 'Therefore, we must refuse to appoint a new head of the bureau that would investigate such crimes.'

All this chaos is good for somebody, but I'm not sure that somebody is any of us.