Many who watched Attorney General William Barr’s testimony on Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which followed the revelation that the special counsel Robert Mueller had expressed misgivings about Mr. Barr’s characterization of his report, are despairing about the rule of law. I am not among them. I think the system is working, and inching, however slowly, toward justice.
When it comes to investigating a president, the special counsel regulations I had the privilege of drafting in 1998-99 say that such inquiries have one ultimate destination: Congress.
Neal Katyal, New York Times
I wish I could feel so sanguine as Mr. Katyal, but I can’t. In fact, thinking of the frank lawlessness of the Trump administration, I’ve been sitting here wondering if American self-governance has reached a tipping-point. Consider:
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Trump has explicitly ordered his staff to refuse to honor Congressional subpoenas.
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Attorney General Barr unambiguously lied to Congress, repeatedly, and answers to complaint about it with smirks.
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Joseph Goebbels-like, Trump simply makes-up ‘facts’ to suit his needs, and sycophantic 1984-ish media such as FOX News dutifully repeat the lies to millions of Trump cultists.
Bottom line: The country is in the hands of lawless sociopaths who recognize no authority but their own day-to-day needs.
No matter, says Nancy Pelosi. Better, she says, to beat Trump at the ballot-box in 2020 than try to impeach him.
Her reasoning is not difficult to follow, but it rests upon an assumption that can’t be trusted. Why — exactly, please — does she believe that Trump will vacate the office when he is defeated in 2020? (Or, for that matter, upon conviction by the Senate?) I don’t believe for an instant that such an assumption can be relied upon. Contrarily, I don’t have the slightest difficulty imagining that this twisted freak who lied about the crowd-size at his inauguration will summon his legions of overwrought morons to D.C. to protect his occupancy of the White House.