https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/09/this-is-constitutional-crisis-we-feared/

By Paul Waldman Opinion writer

Oct. 9, 2019 at 1:02 p.m. EDT

For nearly three years, President Trump’s critics have warned that there may come a point when we face a genuine constitutional crisis, one that threatens our very Democratic system. That constitutional crisis has arrived.

The White House has released an extraordinary letter from White House Counsel Pat Cipollone to congressional Democrats, a document that will live on in infamy from this day forward as evidence of how profoundly Donald Trump corrupted the office of the president and everyone around him.

Despite the fact that it appears under the signature of the chief lawyer of the White House, the letter reads like some combination of a deeply misinformed seventh-grader’s social studies paper and a rant from Sean Hannity, randomly tossing around terms like “civil liberties” and “separation of powers” without any apparent understanding of what they mean.

Boiled down to its essence, the letter asserts that Trump is beyond the reach of oversight, of impeachment, and of any checks and balances from the legislative branch. Because he thinks Congress is not treating him “fairly” (the word “fair” appears eight times in the letter), Trump has decided that he can issue a blanket refusal to “participate in your partisan and unconstitutional inquiry.” All requests for documents and testimony will be rejected, and all subpoenas will be thrown in the trash.

To put this in context, there are regular disputes between Congress and the executive branch over particular subpoenas or other ways Congress exercises its oversight power.

“The executive rarely if ever is willing to give up everything Congress wants on the terms that Congress wants,” Professor Melissa Murray of New York University Law School told me. But the usual procedure is that after some negotiation, “they reach some compromise that’s mutually acceptable. And when they can’t, they will then go to the courts.”

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