The President vs. Federal Law Enforcement: Trump Attacks Everyone (Benjamin Wittes)

[swag]

https://lawfareblog.com/president-vs-federal-law-enforcement-trump-attacks-everyone

President Trump yesterday issued a stunning vote of no-confidence in basically everyone currently in a leadership position in the Justice Department, the FBI, or the special counsel’s office—in other words, not just some federal law enforcement, but all of it. The President’s rebuke comes in a lengthy interview with the New York Times yesterday, and it reaches everyone from the attorney general to staff attorneys hired by Robert Mueller—whose investigation he pointedly did not promise not to terminate. His complaint? They’re all, in different ways, not serving him. And serving him, he makes clear, is their real job.

It’s a chilling interview—chilling because of the portrait it paints of presidential paranoia, chilling for its monomaniacal view of the relationship between the president and law enforcement, and chilling for what it says about Trump’s potential readiness to interfere with the Mueller investigation.

If Attorney General Jeff Sessions does not resign this morning, it will reflect nothing more or less than a lack of self respect on his part—a willingness to hold office even with the overt disdain of the President of the United States, at whose pleasure he serves, nakedly on the record.
   
The president is evidently distraught at Sessions’s recusal from the Russia investigation “right after he gets the job.” (Sessions recused himself on March 2—three weeks after his swearing-in and fifteen weeks after his nomination.) The Attorney General gave the president “zero” heads up, Trump says. In Trump’s view: “Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else.” He twice describes Sessions’s decision as “unfair to the president,” seemingly unaware that his recusal was almost surely compelled by Justice Department recusal rules. That is, the President is openly expressing bitterness toward his attorney general for following the rules—because the rules don’t favor Trump’s interests. He wants an attorney general who will actively supervise the Justice Department, and the Russia investigation, in a fashion congenial to his interests, and he has no compunction about saying so explicitly. He made perfectly clear that he regrets appointing Sessions. He made equally clear that Sessions’s job is, in his mind, a personal service contract to him and that if Sessions couldn’t deliver on service to Trump, he shouldn’t have taken the position.

To add insult to injury, Trump also heaped scorn on the then-nominee’s inability to give satisfactory answers about his meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during his confirmation hearing—on which he blames the recusal. “Sessions gave some bad answers,” he said. The president went on: “He gave some answers that were simple questions and should have been simple answers, but they weren’t. He then becomes attorney general, and he then announces he’s going to recuse himself. Why wouldn’t he have told me that before?”

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[Moral Compass]

1. Who will stop him?

This is my greatest fear. He is now feeling confident that he can do anything he wants because there is nothing that can stop him.

With the Congress taken out of the mix (if anyone thinks that this Congress will impeach Trump I've got some fine swamp land to sell you) there is nothing standing in his way. The judiciary has been neutered. Just get the case to the Supreme Court and they can be relied upon to render nakedly partisan judgements in Trump's favor. Once Kennedy retires and Trump gets to appoint another partisan jurist then we can expect nothing but the legalization of whatever anti-constitutional action Trump wants.

He can fire anyone else. Mueller? When he fires Mueller who can push back? Anyone? Anything?

The naked, brutal truth is that the Republicans cheated to win the Presidency and, in retrospect, that basic fact seems fairly obvious. But, if you can fire the investigator investigating you and the utterly corrupt party that took you in--well, what's to stop you?

Well nothing. He's essentially asking for the resignation of Sessions (that should only take a couple of days to play out) and when he gets someone more competent into position (that might take a few weeks) the new, un-recused Attorney General will get rid of the entire mechanism of investigation. Mueller, Rosenstein--all of them gone.

What center of power are we to look to? The military? I guess we could hope for a coup, but given the extreme right wing tendencies of the senior leadership of the military that is a frying pan into the fire kind of hope.

Not seeing much hope here. Someone talk me down off the ledge.

[SWBTATTReg]

2. 2018 elections just around the corner

Trump's 12.5% into his term, or, 1/8 is already done, thank god, but still, not fast enough.

Hope is that 2018 elections are almost here, and then, just then, we can all speak up in one voice, no more!

Hang in there!