THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Even the most notoriously reticent group like former federal law enforcement personnel will respond. And they will respond with facts, having spent their working lives seperating the wheat from the chaff.

Usually, top intelligence and law enforcement officials withdraw to lives of tight-lipped relative anonymity after their careers end. (Suffice it to say, they are not exactly known for viral Twitter battles.)

But as President Trump has voiced his grievances against the F.B.I. with a series of insult-laden tweets, his targets have responded nearly in kind, turning a conflict that would in the past have stayed behind closed doors into a brawl for all to see.

Throughout the weekend, the president attacked “lying James Comey,” the F.B.I. director he fired last year. He also celebrated the dismissal of Mr. Comey’s onetime deputy, Andrew G. McCabe, calling it on Friday “a great day for Democracy.”

Mr. Comey struck back on the president’s preferred digital soapbox. “Mr. President, the American people will hear my story very soon,” he wrote on Twitter on Saturday, in what was most likely a reference to his coming book. “And they can judge for themselves who is honorable and who is not.”

Mr. McCabe, through his lawyer, tweeted a similar message, though with a biting flourish. “We will not be responding to each childish, defamatory, disgusting & false tweet by the President,” said the lawyer, Michael R. Bromwich. “The whole truth will come out in due course.”

Other former officials who have been the subject of the president’s taunts have also had choice words for him on Twitter. John O. Brennan, a former C.I.A. director who now refers to himself as “a nonpartisan American who is very concerned about our collective future,” attacked the president’s character on Saturday.

“When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history,” wrote Mr. Brennan, whom Mr. Trump once called “one of the biggest liars and leakers in Washington.” “You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America...America will triumph over you.”

Throughout history, presidents have found themselves in private conflict with members of law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Bill Clinton clashed with Louis J. Freeh, who oversaw the F.B.I. during the Lewinsky scandal. Richard M. Nixon fired the independent special prosecutor in the “Saturday Night Massacre,” and his attorney general and deputy attorney general resigned in protest.

But those tense interactions, experts say, seem almost quaint compared to the public mudslinging unfolding now.

“We’ve never had anybody so blatantly go after a president before,” Gary J. Schmitt, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who was once an intelligence adviser to President Ronald Reagan, said in an interview. “It’s also unprecedented to have a president so overtly going after various intelligence officials.”

He added, “It’s a race to the bottom.”

The president, who has no qualms about publicly attacking individuals as well as institutions, has grown only more frustrated as the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia continues well beyond the timeline given to him by his lawyers. On Saturday, one of them, John Dowd, said that he thought the investigation was baseless and should end.

Obviously Putin's Pet Monkey is upset at being investigated for what he considers his private and personal crimes, but attacking a group of straight arrows who, despite some mistakes, have a better reputation for honesty and integrity could be a serious problem for the orange poo flinger. If nothing else, it opens up all manner of stuff to further investigation.