President Trump’s opponents will try to oust him from office by insisting he’s become incapacitated by Alzheimer’s disease, according to his former campaign adviser.
Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative and once a member of Mr. Trump’s 2016 White House run, predicted the alleged plan to impeach the president in a YouTube video uploaded Monday evening amid an avalanche of damaging new reports involving the Trump administration, its relationship with Russia and a related FBI probe.
“They are going to claim that Donald Trump has Alzheimer’s and that it is progressive and that is the source of his insanity,” Mr. Stone said. “I have talked to the president fairly recently. He is as sharp as a tack. There is no evidence of any deterioration in his thought process.
“This is completely bogus, but under the 25th Amendment, if a majority of the Cabinet, plus the vice president, agree that the president is incapacitated, well then, he is removed, and if he seeks to fight the charges, it goes to the U.S. House of Representatives, where erosion among Republicans could destroy the Trump presidency,” Mr. Stone added.
Indeed, Democrats and Republicans alike have distanced themselves from the White House in recent days following Mr. Trump’s abrupt firing of former FBI Director James Comey on May 9 amid the latter’s role in investigation allegations of possible collusion between the Russian government and Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
While Mr. Comey’s termination quickly raise suspicions on both sides of the aisle, potentially term-ending accusations involving the Trump team and Russia have surfaced repeatedly in the days since the former FBI’s director sudden firing: On Monday, The Washington Post reported that Mr. Trump shared highly classified intelligence during an Oval Office meeting last week with Russian diplomats, and The New York Times reported Tuesday that Mr. Trump asked Mr. Comey in February to halt an ongoing FBI investigation surrounding the president’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and his connections to Russia.
“After watching the Clinton impeachment I thought I’d never see another one, but I think we’re in impeachment territory now for the first time,” David Gergen, a former adviser to four U.S. presidents, Republican and Democratic, told CNN late Tuesday.
Wednesday morning, meanwhile, Rep. Al Green, Texas Democrat, formally called for Mr. Trump’s impeachment, insisting recent news reports involving his firing of Mr. Comey suggest the president committed obstruction of justice.
The U.S. intelligence community has concluded Russia’s military intelligence agency, GRU, used state-sponsored hackers to infiltrate Democratic targets prior to last year’s election during the course of an interference campaign waged against Mr. Trump’s former opponent, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
While the Trump administration has denied colluding with Russia, the president’s former campaign adviser told The Washington Times earlier this year that he engaged privately with a persona directly implicated in the state-sponsored hacking campaign, an entity known as “Guccifer 2.0.”
The president, on his part, distanced himself from Mr. Stone last week amid reports suggesting his former adviser influenced his decision to fire Mr. Comey.
“The Roger Stone report on @CNN is false - Fake News. Have not spoken to Roger in a long time - had nothing to do with my decision,” Mr. Trump tweeted May 10.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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