The U.S. has no rules for when the president is a national security threat

[Zorro]

On the surface, the latest confrontation between Congress and the White House involves the Trump administration’s refusal to hand over to the House Intelligence Committee a whistleblower complaint deemed an “urgent concern” by the inspector general for the U.S. intelligence community.

But the showdown is really about the government’s inability to cope with an unprecedented problem: what to do when the president of the United States poses a national security threat.

The case involves a complaint by an intelligence official about communications between President Trump and a foreign leader and a “promise” Trump made, which the intelligence official found alarming enough to notify the inspector general about it. People familiar with the case told The Washington Post that it centers on Ukraine, whose president, Volodymyr Zelensky, spoke with Trump two and a half weeks before the complaint was filed. Trump, reportedly, pressed Zelensky to investigate former vice president Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden, at a time when the U.S. was weighing whether to send millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine, though the aid allegedly didn’t come up on the call.

Presidents have, of course, acted inappropriately in the past, and our constitutional system has a framework in place for addressing misconduct by the chief executive. But it’s designed to deal with straightforward criminal activity, not national security threats. The special counsel regulations, for example, were created to deal with a Watergate-like situation as a worst-case scenario. So they take into account the need for an investigation insulated from political influence and give special counsels the ability to make prosecutorial decisions independently of the rest of the Justice Department or the attorney general. The rules even envision a report that might be made public.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-us-has-no-rules-for-when-the-president-is-a-national-security-threat/2019/09/20/68c84412-dbac-11e9-bfb1-849887369476_story.html

[amcgrath]

1. They took Al Capone of the streets for tax fraud

[Haggis for Breakfast]

2. When this incompetent and dangerous snizzwad

is finally out of office - however that comes to pass - I expect to see AN AVALANCHE of new rules signed into law. Maybe even a constitutional amendment or two.

We can NEVER allow this kind of threat to our values, our markets (Look at how many times some unhinged comment from him has caused the markets to plunge.), our environment (clean water, air, safety standards) our national security, our people or our nation to occur again.

This type of paralyzing stupidity and arrogance cannot be tolerated. If we fail to take steps to prevent such, I don't think we could survive a second assault of this magnitude.