Harvard professor of constitutional law Noah Feldman says no, Trump can’t pardon himself, not because it would break a rule but because it would be the end of the US.

Here’s some unsolicited advice for President Donald Trump: Don’t listen to any lawyers who might tell you that you can pardon yourself, or even that it’s a close legal question. You can’t — and no court is going to rule otherwise.

There’s a decent historical argument about why, but it’s beside the point. The bottom line is that if the president could pardon himself, we would no longer have a republic — nor a government of laws rather than men. We would be a dictatorship, not a democracy.

Trump was busy this morning.

A new INTELLIGENCE LEAK from the Amazon Washington Post,this time against A.G. Jeff Sessions.These illegal leaks, like Comey's, must stop!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2017

A couple of days ago he was hanging Sessions out to dry; now he’s all indignant that a major newspaper dares to report his lies about contacts with Russia. He gets to shit on his people but no one else does, I guess.

The Failing New York Times foiled U.S. attempt to kill the single most wanted terrorist,Al-Baghdadi.Their sick agenda over National Security

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2017

The “failing” New York Times that he spilled his guts to a few days ago. Ok … Read the rest

As many people have been noticing, this situation exposes a certain flaw in the US Constitution – one that can be boiled down to: what happens if the president turns out to be a shameless crook?

CNN looks at how difficult it would or wouldn’t be for Trump to fire Mueller and then the constitutional issue.

Even if Trump cannot dispense with Mueller easily, the very idea that he might try exposes an inherent flaw in the US Constitution’s design, says Harvard Law School Professor Noah R. Feldman.

Feldman points out that the president is ultimately in charge of law enforcement as the head of the executive branch — a structural arrangement that works just fine until the president or

Brian Beutler at the New Republic sums it all up chillingly: it’s an authoritarian crisis waiting to happen.

The scope of that crisis is much clearer now that the Washington Post is reporting that Trump is discussing the possibility of pardoning himself, his family, and his closest aides to short-circuit the sprawling investigation of his campaign’s complicity in Russia’s subversion of the 2016 election. Trump’s team is also, according to the Post and another Times story, digging up dirt on the special counsel investigators in an attempt to discredit them.

It’s not Sessions, he says, it’s Mueller, and Trump’s telling the Times he thinks Mueller’s investigating his financial doings crosses a line.

In a more rule-bound environment, Mueller’s

Spicey has had enough.

 Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, resigned on Friday morning, after denouncing chaos in the West Wing and telling President Trump he vehemently disagreed with the appointment of the New York financier Anthony Scaramucci as communications director

Mr. Trump offered Mr. Scaramucci the job at 10 a.m. The president requested that Mr. Spicer stay on, but Mr. Spicer told Mr. Trump that he believed the appointment was a major mistake, according to person with direct knowledge of the exchange.

Scaramucci is a finance person and a commentator on Fox News.

His resignation is a serious blow to the embattled White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, the former Republican Party chairman who brought Mr.

The Times reports high anxiety in the White House.

The effort to investigate the investigators is another sign of a looming showdown between Mr. Trump and Mr. Mueller, who has assembled a team of high-powered prosecutors and agents to examine whether any of Mr. Trump’s advisers aided Russia’s campaign to disrupt last year’s presidential election.

Some of the investigators have vast experience prosecuting financial malfeasance, and the prospect that Mr. Mueller’s inquiry could evolve into an expansive examination of Mr. Trump’s financial history has stoked fears among the president’s aides. Both Mr. Trump and his aides have said publicly they are watching closely to ensure Mr. Mueller’s investigation remains narrowly focused on last year’s election.

Yes well see this … Read the rest

Benjamin Wittes analyzes Trump’s horrifying interview with the Times.

He says Sessions should resign, because he shouldn’t stay in the office with Trump’s naked disdain for him on the record.

The president is evidently distraught at Sessions’s recusal from the Russia investigation “right after he gets the job.” (Sessions recused himself on March 2—three weeks after his swearing-in and fifteen weeks after his nomination.) The Attorney General gave the president “zero” heads up, Trump says. In Trump’s view: “Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else.” He twice describes Sessions’s decision as “unfair to the president,” seemingly

Trump told the Times that he simply went to say hi to Melania at that dinner, and then had a few words with Putin who just happened to be sitting there too oh gee Vlad I didn’t even know you were there.

Starting at 47 seconds you can watch Trump signaling to someone – witnesses say it was Putin – in schoolboy gesture language: You, me, we talktalk? You want to? Me, you? Ok?

… Read the rest

There’s also Deutsche Bank.

Most banks steer clear of Trump; Deutsche Bank is the big exception.

Regulators are reviewing hundreds of millions of dollars in loans made to Mr. Trump’s businesses through Deutsche Bank’s private wealth management unit, The New York Times reported, citing three people briefed on the review. The regulators are examining whether the loans might expose the banks to heightened risks.

New York regulators have paid particular attention to personal guarantees Mr. Trump made to obtain the loans.

There is no formal investigation of the bank, and personal guarantees are often required for big loans from wealth managers. The regulators are focused on whether these guarantees could create problems for Deutsche Bank should Mr. Trump

Linda Qiu points out some of Trump’s lies and buffoonish errors in his interview with the “failing” Times. My favorite is the last item, to do with Napoleon and Paris.

Mr. Trump may have been confusing Napoleon Bonaparte with his nephew, Louis Napoleon or Napoleon III, when he claimed that Napoleon “designed Paris.” In 1853, about 30 years after the first Napoleon died, Napoleon III appointed Georges-Eugène Haussman to carry out his reconstruction project, envisioned to accommodate rapid population growth and to discourage future revolutions, according to the Museum of the City.

“His one problem is he didn’t go to Russia that night because he had extracurricular activities, and they froze to death,” Mr. Trump continued.

Quite right! He … Read the rest

Oof, he’s landed us with a whole new plateful of headlines.

He sat down for a cozy chat yesterday with the “failing” “fake news” New York Times. He said he was very very mad at Jeff Sessions for recusing himself, and that he never would have given him the job if he’d known he was going to recuse himself for cryin out loud. He seems to think Sessions knew all along that he’d be recusing himself, that it was a plan, like planning to go to Hawaii on vacation next year.

In a remarkable public break with one of his earliest political supporters, Mr. Trump complained that Mr. Sessions’s decision ultimately led to the appointment of a special counsel that