Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNo, Mr. President -- We Won't Have Any Putinism Here - Gene Lyons
June 6, 2018 5:00 am
So this is what Republican conservatives prating about limited government have brought us: an authoritarian cult of personality, the braggart crybaby in the White House insisting hes above the law. La etat, cest moi, in King Louis XIVs (1643-1715) epic formulation: I am the state.
President Trump tweets that he has an absolute right to PARDON myself although he insists hes done nothing wrong. Absolute, mind you. Hes the monarch of all he surveys. Anybody who thinks otherwise is treating him, unfairly, one of the persecuted chief executives favorite words. Heartbreaking, aint it? Meanwhile, in a remarkable memo sent to Special Counsel Robert Mueller and leaked to theNew York Times, Trumps lawyers have declared that the president literally cannot commit the crime of obstruction of justice.
The President not only has unfettered statutory and Constitutional authority to terminate the FBI Director, he also has Constitutional authority to direct the Justice Department to open or close an investigation, and, of course, the power to pardon any person before, during, or after an investigation and/or conviction, they wrote. According to his lawyers, Trump is literally outside the law, free to govern by presidential diktat. If he wanted to sack Robert Mueller and direct the Justice Department to arrest Hillary Clinton, nobody could stop him: the President has exclusive authority over the ultimate conduct and disposition of all criminal investigations and over those executive branch officials responsible for conducting those investigations.
It was left to the inimitable Rudy Giuliani to suggest that Trump could literally murder former FBI director James Comey with impunity. He appeared to be joking.
Evidently, these boys failed to ponder the clause in Article II of the Constitution mandating that the president shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed. The chief executives oath of office also explicitly requires him to do exactly that. The law, like the Constitution itself, being by definition antecedent to the president, and not vice versa. So no, Trump cant get away with pardoning himself, nor with declaring investigations of his own suspect conduct null and void. For all the boasting and bitching, his failure to act on such claims makes it appear that he knows it. The reason theres no specific case law on self-pardoning, for example, is that even Richard Nixon was too much of a patriot to try it. The United States is a nation of laws, and were going to stay that way whether Trump likes it or not. Anyway, never mind Louis XIV, what we have here is Putinism-litethis presidents envy of the Russian dictator whose machinations did so much to install him in office. But Americans arent Russians, heirs to centuries of political repression, secret police, concentration camps and state murder.
Unlike Vladimir Putin, Trump cant order his opponents jailed or journalists flung off balconies. All he can really do to retain the support of his enraptured base is continue to spin persecution fantasies.
Indeed, his own attorneys memo catches Trump in a convoluted fabrication of his ownbasically a lie about a lie regarding the forbidden topic of collusion with Russian spies. Possibly you recall the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump, Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner, campaign director Paul Manafort and a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton. Trumps lawyers now concede that when the press first asked about it in July 2017 the president himself dictated a short but accurate response to the New York Times basically claiming it was all about adopting Russian childrenthe very topic Trump supposedly discussed with Putin himself at the G7 summit.
Make that a short but inaccurate response. See, what the White House didnt know was that The Times already possessed copies of Trump, Jrs emails making the true purpose of the Trump Tower gathering clear.
If its what you say, I love it, hed responded to the promise of hurtful Russian intelligence against Clinton. Its cover blown, the White House retreated to a second falsehood: Don Jr., not his father, had written the bogus adoption claim. White House spokesman Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared that Trump certainly didnt dictate, but he weighed in, offered suggestion, like any father would do.
Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow doubled down. The president was not involved in the drafting of that statement, he stated. Giuliani concedes that Sekulow, one of the inculpatory memos authors, may have been mistaken. Or maybe his client deceived him. Some speculate that the original author of the bogus adoption story may have been Vladimir Putin himself. So why come clean to Mueller? Presumably, because the special counsel had already taken the testimony of White House aides who were there on Air Force One when Trump dictated the fake alibi. Mueller already knew the score.
But it cant be felony obstruction or witness tampering, see, because Trumps above the Constitution and outside the law.
###
http://www.nationalmemo.com/no-mr-president-we-wont-have-any-putinism-here/
Full article posted with the permission of the author -- Don
InfoView thread info, including edit history
TrashPut this thread in your Trash Can (My DU » Trash Can)
BookmarkAdd this thread to your Bookmarks (My DU » Bookmarks)
0 replies, 649 views
ShareGet links to this post and/or share on social media
AlertAlert this post for a rule violation
PowersThere are no powers you can use on this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
ReplyReply to this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
Rec (4)
ReplyReply to this post