So impeach already

Buried behind our president’s endless stream of lies and malicious self-serving remarks are actions that far transcend any reasonable understanding of his legal authority. Donald Trump disdains, more than anything else, the limitations of checks and balances on his power. Witness his assertion of a right to flout all congressional subpoenas; his continuing refusal to disclose his tax returns, notwithstanding Congress’s statutory right to secure them; his specific actions to bar congressional testimony by government officials; and his personal attacks on judges who dare to subject the acts of his administration to judicial review. More blatant yet are his recent assertion of a right to accept dirt on political opponents from foreign governments, and his declaration of a national emergency, when he himself said he “did not need to do this,” he just preferred to “do it much faster.”

  The Atlantic

Yes, we know! So why isn't Congress trying to stop him? For everything he does, they are complicit.

[I]n securing his confirmation as attorney general, [William] Barr successfully used his prior service as attorney general in the by-the-book, norm-following administration of George H. W. Bush to present himself as a mature adult dedicated to the rule of law who could be expected to hold the Trump administration to established legal rules. Having known Barr for four decades, including preceding him as deputy attorney general in the Bush administration, I knew him to be a fierce advocate of unchecked presidential power, so my own hopes were outweighed by skepticism that this would come true. But the first few months of his current tenure, and in particular his handling of the Mueller report, suggest something very different—that he is using the office he holds to advance his extraordinary lifetime project of assigning unchecked power to the president.

You think? And didn't everyone know this about him when they confirmed him?

Those who were most hopeful that Barr would restore some regularity to our government are among those most puzzled by recent events, since there is no imaginable reason for Barr to seek such a disreputable role for himself. At his stage of life, after a successful legal career and distinguished government service, why would he accept the job of lying to defend the president? And, especially, why would he go to such extraordinary and unconventional lengths to pursue the position by submitting, on June 8, 2018, a lengthy and apparently unsolicited memorandum attacking the Mueller investigation?

There can be no doubt that the primary effect of Barr’s conduct to date has indeed been to befuddle and mislead, and create a public misimpression, for those who have not read Mueller’s report, that the president may not have interfered with the investigation. But Barr never said that the president did not in fact interfere, only that there is no basis in fact and law to support a finding of criminal obstruction. Indeed, a careful review of Barr’s conduct suggests that his mission is far more grandiose that just misleading people about the facts.

[...]

But the most compelling source for present purposes is Barr’s memorandum submitted just a year ago.

[...]

The vehemence of Barr’s memo is breathtaking and the italics are all his: “Constitutionally, it is wrong to conceive of the President as simply the highest officer within the Executive branch hierarchy. He alone is the Executive branch. As such he is the sole repository of all Executive powers conferred by the Constitution.”

Thus, “the Constitution vests all Federal law enforcement power, and hence prosecutorial discretion, in the President.” That authority is “necessarily all-encompassing,” and there can be “no limit on the President’s authority to act [even] on matters which concern him or his own conduct.” Because it would infringe upon the total and utterly unchecked discretion that Barr believes Article II confers on the president, “Congress could not make it a crime for the President to exercise supervisory authority over cases in which his own conduct might be at issue.”

And they all knew about that memo when they confirmed him.

The facts simply don’t matter under Barr’s understanding of the Constitution, in which “the President alone is the Executive branch … the sole repository of all Executive powers conferred by the Constitution,” and Congress may not restrict his exercise of discretion in using those powers. Why worry about facts if, as Trump has claimed repeatedly, the president has unlimited power to direct or terminate any investigation, including of himself?

[...]

Finally, this view of Barr’s conduct sheds a new light on why he not only accepted but sought out—indeed, may have craved—the opportunity to serve as attorney general under Donald Trump. Eighteen months serving under the sedate George H. W. Bush afforded him little opportunity to seriously contend that the president is the executive branch, or otherwise argue for almost unlimited presidential powers.

[...]

Trump and his endless assertions of power offer countless opportunities to pick and choose those executive-power claims with the best chance to succeed in court. Thus, in the Trump administration, Barr may have found the ideal setting in which to pursue his life’s work of creating an all-powerful president and frustrating the Founders’ vision of a government of checks and balances.

His life's work - to thwart the Constitution. And yet, he was confirmed. Twice.

His strange pursuit of an investigation of the investigators—on the supposition that the FBI may have been improperly “spying” on the Trump campaign when they investigated Trump associates who were found to have met with various Russians—may be the opening public chapter in that endeavor.

There's a remedy. Impeach.