Trump's Latest Crime Spree

Plus all the links.

If it wasn’t clear before this week…well, that’s not correct. It’s been clear since Day 1 that Donald Trump is abusing his office, particularly the Constitutional requirement to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” But this week highlighted it. The two lead stories at the New York Times as I write this are one about how he’s instructing his flunkies at what’s now laughably called the “Department of Justice” to prosecute his enemies, and one about how he’s making sure that the law doesn’t apply to his friends. Or, of course, himself.

Richard Nixon resigned ahead of certain impeachment and removal in part for a much milder version of all this, one that took place in absolute secrecy and took over a year to uncover. Trump is doing a much worse version. Out in the open. It’s obviously a blatant, massive violation of his oath of office, and John Roberts notwithstanding…well, I’m not a lawyer, but it sure looks criminal to me.

I’ve seen a bunch of people refer to Trump violating post-Watergate rules about interference with the prosecutions, but don’t be fooled by that. Those practices only formalized what people always thought was supposed to be happening all along. We know this because (1) Nixon hid what he was doing, and (2) when Nixon’s interference with the Justice Department was exposed, everyone basically freaked out.

I should say that it’s pretty easy for the president with a compliant Attorney General and FBI Director to prevent crooks they like from being prosecuted, but it’s a lot harder to get convictions, or really even indictments, of people guilty mainly of being the president’s political opponents. Or just annoying him. Of course, it’s also a gross abuse of power to even start investigations because on “the president wants it.” And that kind of government harassment, even without an eventual formal charge, has no place in a republic governed by the rule of law.

I’ll also say that in addition to forcing out a prosecutor over this and publicly insisting on indictments, Trump this week also declared that it should be illegal to criticize him. And he’s now pushing to, perhaps, re-invade Afghanistan. I’ve thought we were in Bananas territory for some time, but it sure seems to me that it’s getting worse. The old Herbert Stein adage is that ““If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” It’s hard to imagine this going on forever, but it’s also not clear what would end it. This Congress is certainly not about to fulfill its Constitutional responsibilities and impeach and remove this rogue president. But it obviously should.

And the links:

1. Matt Glassman has more against a Democratic shutdown-by-filibuster..I can’t disagree with his continued argument that shutdowns, especially in these circumstances, just don’t work: Democrats are close to certain to be blamed, and therefore will find it hard to stick together. Shutdowns eventually end, and if Democrats don’t have a winning endgame it’s a pretty good argument against starting it.

2. Norm Ornstein makes the case for shutdown. This is the strongest argument for it: How can you make a deal when the other side has practically promised that they won’t keep their side of the bargain? That’s why I’ve leaned towards a shutdown as the least-worst option. It’s not really solved by my notion of a protest, fixed-limit shutdown, but that’s more or less where I’ve ended up.

3. Natalie Jackson on young people.

4. Isabelle DeSisto at Good Authority on demographics and the war in Ukraine.

5. Matt Grossmann talks with Eric McGhee on the redistricting wars.

6. Seth Masket on Jimmy Kimmel.

7. And Henry Farrell on absolute power.