Matt Yglesias underlines the dangers in what Trump’s legal muscle says.

The key passage in the memo is one in which Trump’s lawyers argue that not only was there nothing shady going on when FBI Director James Comey got fired there isn’t even any potential shadiness to investigate because the president is allowed to be as shady as he wants to be when it comes to overseeing federal law enforcement. He can fire whoever he wants. Shut down any investigation or open up a new one.

Indeed, the President not only has unfettered statutory and Constitutional authority to terminate the FBI Director, he also has Constitutional authority to direct the Justice Department to open or close an investigation, and, of course, the power to pardon any person before, during, or after an investigation and/or conviction. Put simply, the Constitution leaves no question that the President has exclusive authority over the ultimate conduct and disposition of all criminal investigations and over those executive branch officials responsible for conducting those investigations.

This is a particularly extreme version of the “unitary executive” doctrine that conservative legal scholars sometimes appeal to (especially when there’s a Republican president), drawing on the notion that the executive branch of government — including the federal police agencies and federal prosecutors — are a single entity personified by the president.

What does that sound like? Oh yes, an absolute monarchy. Let’s not go that way.

(Mind you, even Priss Choss would be an improvement on the greedy abusive pig we’re stuck with at the moment.)

But to push that logic into this terrain would not only give the president carte blanche to persecute his enemies but essentially vitiate the idea that there are any enforceable laws at all.

Consider that if the memo is correct, there would be nothing wrong with Trump setting up a booth somewhere in Washington, DC where wealthy individuals could hand checks to Trump, and in exchange Trump would make whatever federal legal trouble they are in go it away. You could call it “The Trump Hotel” or maybe bundle a room to stay in along with the legal impunity.

He’d do it, too. He’d be happy to do it. The checks of course would have to be enormous, but he’d do it.

Of course, as the memo notes, to an extent this kind of power to undermine the rule of law already exists in the form of the essentially unlimited pardon power. This power has never been a good idea and it has been abused in the past by George H.W. Bush to kill the Iran-Contra investigation and by Bill Clinton to win his wife votes in a New York Senate race. Trump has started using the power abusively and capriciously early in his tenure in office in a disturbing way, but has not yet tried to pardon his way out of the Russia investigation in part because there is one important limit on the pardon power — you have to do it in public. The only check on pardons is political, but the political check is quite real (which is why both Bush and Clinton did their mischievous pardons as lame ducks) and the new theory that Trump can simply make whole investigations vanish would eliminate it.

I followed that link on the Bill Clinton item, which was unfamiliar to me, and I’m not convinced…but on the other hand his pardoning of Marc Rich is as disgusting as it ever was, so the point is much the same.

And just imagine what Trump will do with that pardon power if he does get another term and thus as a lame duck doesn’t need to care what the public thinks.

The Times published the whole letter with annotations. It’s a lot.

To take one item at random…

It is also worth responding to the popular suggestion that the President’s public criticism of the FBI either constitutes obstruction or serves as evidence of obstruction. Such criticism ignores the sacred responsibility of the President to hold his subordinates accountable — a function not unlike public Congressional oversight hearings. After all, the FBI is not above the law and we are now learning of the disappointing results of a lack of accountability in both the DOJ and FBI.

And that’s what Trump is doing, is it? Performing his sacred responsibility to hold his subordinates accountable? By screaming insults at them on Twitter every day? That’s how that’s supposed to be done?

Nixon too tried to “hold the FBI accountable” by telling Haldeman to tell the CIA to tell the FBI to drop its investigation of the Watergate break-in. The CIA did what it was told and that’s why Mark Felt talked to Bob Woodward.

Also what they say there ignores what we’ve been told a million times by now: that the White House is not supposed to meddle directly with the FBI or the DoJ, lest it appear to be interfering with law enforcement. That’s part of the president’s “sacred responsibility” too, we are told.

Mind you, all this does underline what a shit system we turn out to have, when a reckless criminal lunatic like Trump cannot be stopped.

Trump’s lawyers are seriously arguing, in a long memo to Mueller, that Trump can’t obstruct justice because as president he is justice himself.

President Trump’s lawyers have for months quietly waged a campaign to keep the special counsel from trying to force him to answer questions in the investigation into whether he obstructed justice, asserting that he cannot be compelled to testify and arguing in a confidential letter that he could not possibly have committed obstruction because he has unfettered authority over all federal investigations.

Including federal investigations into his own crimes. So a president can do anything at all and then simply shut down or forbid all federal investigations because his authority is that absolute.

So they’re saying presidents are dictators.

In a brash assertion of presidential power, the 20-page letter — sent to the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and obtained by The New York Times — contends that the president cannot illegally obstruct any aspect of the investigation into Russia’s election meddling because the Constitution empowers him to, “if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon.”

[Read the Trump lawyers’ confidential memo to Mr. Mueller here.]

Other lawyers don’t agree.

Trump is saying he can put an end to any criminal investigation he & he can pardon anyone he wants to. In other words, he can insulate himself & his family if a jury votes to convict them. No other President has successfully set himself above the reach of the law until now. https://t.co/YN3r7Rc2Xn

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) June 2, 2018

The President’s legal arguments would render whole sections of the Constitution moot, and allow a president to engage in any form of criminality and obstruct an investigation into his own wrongdoing. Nobody is above the law. Not this President. Not any president. https://t.co/DKpZizrpKl

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) June 2, 2018

This would be a valid legal argument — if our government were a dictatorship. Fortunately, we are a government of laws, not men. And in America, no one is above the law, including the president. https://t.co/yxtu9HUUkz

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) June 2, 2018

(I don’t know that Schumer is a lawyer. Whatever.)

The attempt to dissuade Mr. Mueller from seeking a grand jury subpoena is one of two fronts on which Mr. Trump’s lawyers are fighting. In recent weeks, they have also begun a public-relations campaign to discredit the investigation and in part to pre-empt a potentially damaging special counsel report that could prompt impeachment proceedings.

They have begun a public-relations campaign to discredit the investigation and the FBI and the Justice Department, all in the effort to shield the guy who is supposed to be working for the good of the country as a whole (and its people), not for himself.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers are gambling that Mr. Mueller may not want to risk an attempt to forge new legal ground by bringing a grand jury subpoena against a sitting president into a criminal proceeding.

“Ensuring that the office remains sacred and above the fray of shifting political winds and gamesmanship is of critical importance,” they wrote.

How can the office remain “sacred” when it’s occupied by that dreadful vulgar monster? He cheapens it with every word, every look, every gesture, every action, every photo op, and god knows every tweet.

“The president’s prime function as the chief executive ought not be hampered by requests for interview,” they wrote. “Having him testify demeans the office of the president before the world.”

That ship has sailed. That ship has made multiple circumnavigations of the globe; Trump himself demeans the office constantly. Having him testify would do a little bit to repair the damage he’s done by showing he’s not free to commit crimes and then laugh in our faces.

They also contended that nothing Mr. Trump did violated obstruction-of-justice statutes, making both a technical parsing of what one such law covers and a broad constitutional argument that Congress cannot infringe on how he exercises his power to supervise the executive branch. Because of the authority the Constitution gives him, it is impossible for him to obstruct justice by shutting down a case or firing a subordinate, no matter his motivation, they said.

If they’re right about it then this is a dictatorship. They’d better not be right.

Tom McCarthy at the Guardian talks to a couple of legal boffins about Trump’s erosion of democratic and legal norms.

“We’ve never had a president attack the intelligence and law enforcement agencies that work for him in this way,” Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor and former assistant attorney general under George W Bush, said in an email. “He’s attacking them in order to discredit the Mueller investigation. But the baleful impact on those agencies’ morale and on public trust in them unfortunately extends far beyond that investigation.”

While whispers of a “constitutional crisis” are in the air, many mainstream analyses reject that idea, pointing out among other things that the Mueller investigation continues full steam ahead, no matter how much Trump might whine about it.

So far, it does. That could change. “So far so good” is not all that comforting given the maniac in the Oval Office who will bring it all down if he can.

The bad news is that it doesn’t take a constitutional crisis to constitute a national emergency, said Eric Posner, a University of Chicago professor specializing in constitutional law.

“I think the problem with thinking about this in terms of crisis is that we should be concerned about what Trump is doing whether or not there ever is a crisis,” Posner said. “It’s perfectly possible, for example, that Trump could undermine Mueller’s investigation without causing a constitutional crisis.”

Plus he could and can undermine a great deal more than Mueller’s investigation; he’s doing it every day. This is the crisis; we’re in it, we’ve been in it for months; it’s not one loud bang but an hourly onslaught.

“I think what people are worried about, when you look at other countries that have slid into authoritarianism, what has happened is that the leaders of those countries have proceeded incrementally, and so when he does some things initially that people didn’t resist, that enhances his power. Once he has more power he can do more things, take more action.

“And you could slide into an authoritarian regime without a real crisis ever taking place, and I think that’s what people should be focusing on.”

Especially since it’s already happening, it’s been happening since the day Obama left.

Shortly after Trump’s election, Amy Siskind, a former Wall Street executive, started a website called The Weekly List, seeking to catalogue news stories documenting “eroding norms under the current regime”.

The site, which Siskind said gets up to a million visitors a week and which this year produced a book blurbed by current Trump target Samantha Bee, bears this tagline: “Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you’ll remember.”

That’s pretty much why I’ve been focusing so obsessively on Trump (along with the fact that I can’t look away). I feel a need to document it, to keep track.

Trump loves Kim again.

.@realDonaldTrump is smiling next to a man who runs a gulag jailing some 200,000 North Koreans and who oversaw the sinking of a South Korean Navy ship killing 46 & the hacking of Sony North America. pic.twitter.com/1sH5S9LbVa

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) June 2, 2018

This is exactly the kind of smiling photo op, tailor-made to serve as propaganda for a repressive regime, that diplomats in previous administrations worked hard to avoid. https://t.co/96asv0lRSP

— Ronan Farrow (@RonanFarrow) June 2, 2018

Trump has agreed to meet with the North Koreans — something they’ve been dying to do for years — in exchange for nothing

Also, we have to figure out how to pay for luxury hotel rooms for Kim Jung Un and his entourage

World’s Greatest Negotiator

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) June 2, 2018

Rachel Maddow did a brilliant cold open last night about Trump and pardons and Nixon and Haldeman and criminal obstruction of justice. Her opening segment sometimes loses me, but this one was genius.

One part of it was about Camp David (complete with photos of various buildings there and explanation that they are named after trees and that the presidential building is called Aspen and sometimes people talk about the president at Aspen and they don’t mean the one in Colorado), and the fact that Bob Haldeman made a recorded diary entry at the end of every day as Chief of Staff, and he made one after a conversation with Nixon at Aspen right before the indictments and firings. It’s quite incriminating in places yet Haldeman dutifully described the whole thing on the tape, Maddow said in wonder.

Then the indictments came down. She showed us the Times headline for that day and said if anyone wanted to needlepoint her a Times headline that’s the one she would choose.

One evening in May Nixon called Haldeman on the phone (the one that recorded his phone calls).
The Times published part of the transcript of that conversation in 1997:

What better way to mark the anniversaries of Richard Nixon’s resignation (Aug. 9, 1974) and pardon by Gerald Ford (Sept. 8, 1974) than with this never-before-published transcript. The scene: Nixon’s Executive Office Building hideaway, May 18, 1973, the day after the Senate Watergate Committee’s televised hearings began. John Dean will soon testify that Nixon committed high crimes, and the long slide toward resignation will accelerate. As the final Watergate tapes released by the National Archives reveal, Nixon wanted to give three of his allies — H.R. (Bob) Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and John Mitchell, who had all resigned by then — the greatest gift a President can bestow: a blanket pardon. According to Samuel Dash, chief counsel of the Senate Watergate Committee, this exchange, if known to the committee at the time, would have justified a separate article of impeachment all by itself. ”Even Haldeman,” he says, ”was trying to shut him up.”

According to Samuel Dash, chief counsel of the Senate Watergate Committee, this exchange, if known to the committee at the time, would have justified a separate article of impeachment all by itself. Maddow repeated that at least three times.

What better way to mark the anniversaries of Richard Nixon’s resignation (Aug. 9, 1974) and pardon by Gerald Ford (Sept. 8, 1974) than with this never-before-published transcript. The scene: Nixon’s Executive Office Building hideaway, May 18, 1973, the day after the Senate Watergate Committee’s televised hearings began. John Dean will soon testify that Nixon committed high crimes, and the long slide toward resignation will accelerate. As the final Watergate tapes released by the National Archives reveal, Nixon wanted to give three of his allies — H.R. (Bob) Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and John Mitchell, who had all resigned by then — the greatest gift a President can bestow: a blanket pardon. According to Samuel Dash, chief counsel of the Senate Watergate Committee, this exchange, if known to the committee at the time, would have justified a separate article of impeachment all by itself. ”Even Haldeman,” he says, ”was trying to shut him up.”

Nixon: What I mean to say is this — talking in the confidence of this room … I don’t give a (expletive) what comes out on you or John (Ehrlichman) — even that poor damn dumb John Mitchell. There is gonna be a total pardon.

Haldeman: Don’t — don’t — don’t even say that.

Nixon: You know it. You know it and I know it.

Haldeman: Nope. Don’t say it.

Nixon: Forget you ever heard it.

Nope. Don’t say it. Why not? Because, Maddow said, it’s criminal obstruction of justice. That’s why not.

Trump met yesterday with families of the people killed in the Santa Fe school shooting slaughter.

One mother said he showed sincerity and compassion. Another, not so much.

Rhonda Hart, whose 14-year-old daughter, Kimberly Vaughan, was killed at the school, told The Associated Press that Trump repeatedly used the word ‘wacky’ to describe the shooter and the trench coat he wore. She said she told Trump, “Maybe if everyone had access to mental health care, we wouldn’t be in the situation.”

Hart, an Army veteran, said she also suggested employing veterans as sentinels in schools. She said Trump responded, “And arm them?” She replied, “No,” but said Trump “kept mentioning” arming classroom teachers. “It was like talking to a toddler,” Hart said.

But without the cuteness factor.

Trump then headed to a fundraiser at a luxury hotel in downtown Houston, the first of his two big-dollar events in Texas on Thursday. A White House official did not immediately respond to requests for details about how much money was to be raised, and who was benefiting, from the fundraising events.

After 17 teachers and students were killed during a February shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Trump said he would work to improve school safety, but has not called for new gun control legislation. He created the commission to review ways to make schools safer.

Not including gun control.

As the Parkland students became vocal advocates for gun control, embracing their public positions as few school survivors had before, Trump quickly became a focal point for their anger. In Trump’s visit to Florida after the shooting, aides kept him clear of the school, which could have been the site of protests, and he instead met with a few victims at a local hospital and paid tribute to first responders at the nearby sheriff’s office.

There has yet to be a similar outcry for restrictions on firearms from the students and survivors in deep-red Texas.

In Texas school shootings are just The Price of Freedom, I guess. We take the risk of driving in cars, and the same applies to attending school in a country overflowing with guns.

Displaying empathy does not come naturally to Trump, who has been criticized for appearing unfeeling in times of tragedy, including when he sharply criticized a mayor in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of a deadly hurricane and fought with a Gold Star military family.

The reason displaying empathy does not come naturally to Trump is because empathy itself does not come naturally to Trump. He can’t display it because he doesn’t feel it. This isn’t an issue of a feeling man rendered awkwardly mute by his stoic character or his reluctance to speak up. This is an issue of a man who is entirely indifferent to everyone on the planet who is not himself.