The last stage: I did it and I had every right to do it

Donald Trump’s explicitly declared position in the scandal consuming his presidency is that pressuring a foreign power to “investigate” a leading domestic political opponent absolutely falls within his rightfully exercised authority. Trump has said this, and so has his White House counsel, making this the White House’s official political, substantive and legal position.

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[W]e’re now learning, one after another, that all of the people around him knew that it was grievously wrong — that is, all except for those who were carrying out Trump’s corrupt scheme.

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The latest domino to fall is John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser. The New York Times reports that in July, Bolton grew so alarmed by efforts to pressure Ukraine to launch “investigations” into Joe Biden and his son that he instructed an aide to alert White House lawyers.

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Crucially, this eruption came after a meeting in early July at which Sondland made it clear that the goal of this shadow campaign was to get Ukraine to revive investigations into Burisma, the company on whose board Biden’s son Hunter sat. This confirmed for Bolton that the goal was to leverage Ukraine into acting as Trump’s weapon against Biden — that is, by manufacturing smears designed to debilitate him in the 2020 election.

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It is striking how many people around Trump did not share his view that this conduct was entirely unobjectionable, or, as Trump keeps putting it, “perfect.” The story now is that those ranks are swelling fast.

  WaPo

Won't matter if he controls the DOJ (which he does) and the Supreme Court (which he may), unless Democrats can find 20 honest Republican Senators, and I'm skeptical of that.

Trump’s shamelessness, his brash and open flaunting of his ability to engage in bottomless corruption to rig the next election on his own behalf with impunity, is precisely what’s making it harder for Republicans to distance themselves from it.

But as more and more people around Trump let it be known that they viewed this corrupt conduct with horror, this refusal to condemn that conduct will become impossible to sustain. That will edge those senators into a position where they are acknowledging it’s indefensible while saying it’s not impeachable.

Honestly, I don't think they'll have a problem with that. They're having more of a problem with pulling out of Syria.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.