Former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele blamed GOP lawmakers for President Donald Trump's destruction of constitutional norms.
Steele appeared Friday morning on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," where host Joe Scarborough hammered the president for undermining the special counsel investigation into his campaign ties to Russia.
"This is the president of the United States lying about what the FBI has been doing," Scarborough said. "Lying about what the Republican FISA court judges have been doing, lying about what the Justice Department has been doing -- lying, lying, lying. Then battering the Justice Department and the FBI to have a briefing, because there were supposedly, quote, spies in his campaign and then they go ahead and have that briefing and his criminal lawyer turns up. His criminal lawyer turns up to figure out who informants are and to further expose the methods of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the intel community, in general."
Steele urged anyone under investigation by the FBI to try the same gambit, which was pushed along by House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA).
"This is my recommendation to everyone who is currently under investigation by the FBI," he said. "The next time they have a meeting, you make sure you have your folks show up and get all that intel, as well, because what the president's team did yesterday is something no other citizen in this country would be permitted to do, and that's to have their counsel and their executive chief officer from their business, if you will, inside a meeting."
Scarborough said attorney Emmet Flood was sent by the president to determine what evidence the FBI had against Trump and his associates, and Steele blasted the Republican lawmakers who took part in the scheme.
"This is what twists my stuff in a knot," Steele said, "is that Republicans are complicit in this crazy, and they're sitting here now and dumbing down the system, disintegrating the very pillars of justice in this country by going after those institutions like the FBI and the DOJ. (They're) permitting the president to behave in a way in which no other American citizen -- and they know damn well this is true -- would be able to behave."
