Pierce: Trump Might Hold the Constitution Over a Paper Shredder This Weekend

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a16025513/trump-russia-fbi-constitution/

Trump Might Hold the Constitution Over a Paper Shredder This Weekend

Who's going to stop him?
By Charles P. Pierce
Feb 2, 2018

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It is entirely possible that this will be the weekend on which the president* holds the Constitution above the mouth of the paper shredder and dares anyone to stop him. The recklessly spurious Nunes memo is his last chance. Remember the great Conrad cartoon of Nixon on a cross, driving nails into his own hands? That’s the Nunes memo. Well, that, and the fauxtrage that will be ginned up by the usual suspects upon its release. The problem for the rest of us is that his last chance isn’t that much of a long shot. The waters have been so muddied with deliberate conservative misinformation and legislative cowardice that it’s entirely possible that any institutional safeguards have been rendered blind.

Right now, the leadership of the law enforcement institutions are the only ones standing in his way. The Congress has abandoned its function as a co-equal branch of government. The people themselves have no real recourse until next November, by which time it may be too late. Mueller’s renowned implacability as an investigator is going to be tested more severely than it ever has been before.

However—because, there’s always a however—other gears are moving in the big machine. It appears that a permanent split has developed between Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, against whom Mueller already has won indictments. From Politico:



If Mueller has flipped Gates, that changes the game. Gates is, you will pardon the expression, Mueller’s gateway to Manafort, and Manafort is the keeper of many of the Trump family jewels as regards the Russian chicanery that Mueller is investigating. All of this may come to some kind of a head before Monday morning. Nobody gets a day off.