a missing box of staples might have been enough to launch 100 subpoenas and months of hearings
Why Trump gets away with everything
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-trump-gets-away-with-everything/2019/09/22/3b883b6a-dbe3-11e9-ac63-3016711543fe_story.html?wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1Why Trump gets away with everything
A depressing mystery hangs over our politics: Why is it that when we have a president whose behavior puts our security interests in peril, our political parties cant confront the threat together?
Here we have a whistleblower from the intelligence community who, as The Post reported, found a promise that President Trump made to a foreign leader so alarming that the official who had worked at the White House went to the inspector general of the intelligence community.
If what Trump did is entirely innocent, youd assume the White House would want everything to become public so the president could be cleared of suspicion. After all, Trump tweeted on Friday that he had had a perfectly fine and respectful conversation and that there was nothing said wrong, it was pitch perfect! Further, he accused the whistleblower of being highly partisan.
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Instead, the White House and Justice Department are stonewalling, thus ripping apart systems of accountability that were put in place to prevent the abuse of the substantial powers we have given our intelligence services. This is part of a larger undertaking by Trump and his minions to block Congress from receiving information or hearing from witnesses, which is part of Congresss normal and constitutionally sanctioned work of keeping an eye on the executive branch.
When Republicans held Congress during President Barack Obamas administration, it seemed that a missing box of staples might have been enough to launch 100 subpoenas and months of hearings. Now, the GOP is going along with a president whose lawyers in a court filing trying to block the Manhattan district attorney from getting Trumps tax returns are asserting that a sitting President of the United States is not subject to the criminal process while he is in office. It is a sweeping and astonishing assertion that a president is above the law as long as he sits in the White House, no matter which level of government might be investigating him.
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