Trump Warns Very Clearly He'll Abandon Rule of Law

Is this what it feels like to lose a democracy?

It seems as if each week – sometimes each day, or each page of the newspaper – brings a new statement or action that makes it abundantly clear that Mr. Trump has no regard for our laws, our traditions, our sense of justice, or our Constitution – and that if he can, he will rule as a dictator, as whim-driven as any we've seen in history.

How much clearer can he make it than his current attacks on Jeff Sessions? Sessions was a far-right senator whom many consider a racist. He was one of Trump's early supporters. However, he's also a lawyer, and has some concern that if we abandon the rule of law, we abandon what is beat in our country. (Or perhaps Trump's personal attacks have awakened him – either to the danger or to an impulse to defend himself.)

As Trump notes, “Two long running . . . investigations of two . . . Republican Congressmen were brought to a well-publicized charge . . . by the Jeff Sessions Justice Department. The two are U.S. Reps Chris Collins of New York and Duncan Hunter of California. They are under indictment for offenses (insider trading / securities fraud for Collins; misusing campaign funds and falsifying federal records for Mr. and Mrs. Hunter, who allegedly used people's campaign contributions for travel for releatives, children's tuition, golf outings, and other personal purposes) that are based in personal greed, not in politics. 

Both, like Sessions, were early Republican supporters of Trump. Sessions has no reason to be prejudiced against them, nor does the Justice Department. There is no evidence of anything unfair in the investigations, nor does Trump allege any. (He contents with snidely referring to them as “Obama era” investigations, as if Obama had some involvement.)

We laugh or shudder when we read about such matters in Stalin's Russia or some banana republic, where the dictator's friends and family happily loot the country without fear of arrest while the dictator also points at opposition figures and “disappears” them at will. Trump is publicly angry that Sessions did his job, or allowed others to do theirs, and indicted two men based on very thorough investigations. How much clearer can he make it that if he had his way – as he promises he soon will, by firing Sessions – the Justice Department will drop indictments against his friends and supporters; and his frequent shouts of “Lock her up” suggest that the next step could be arresting Hillary and other political opponents on trumped-up charges.

What's amazing is, this ain't me making wild charges against Donald Trump. This ain't some far-left publication publishing half-truths – or even the mainstream newspapers, which are also under attack for their independence from Mr. Trump. 

This is Donald Trump, in his own words, telling you frankly what he'll do if he can. Telling you frankly that if he can free himself and his friends from the rule of law, he'll do so. Unambiguously.

Don't say you weren't warned. 

There is a little push-back from Republicans. 

Mr. Trump leaves no doubt of his intentions for the Justice Department: he wants these indictments dropped because the indicted men had good chances of winning re-election, and is meanwhile demanding that Sessions push to prosecute Democrats.

Sessions says he will “not be improperly influenced by political pressure. Arizona U.S. Senator Jeff Flake condemned Trump's effort to use the Justice Department to “settle political scores.” He added that Trump shouldn't criticize Sessions for not letting political considerations sway him from warranted indictments, adding, “This is not the conduct of a President committed to defending and upholding the constitution.

Meanwhile, Brit Hume from Fox News, more or less a house organ for the Republican Party, asked, “Will DJT never learn that an attorney-general's job is not to play goalie for a president or his party, or any party for that matter?”

But Sessions will be gone after November. Flake will be gone in January. Hume will do what he's told, most likely.

So here's one more clear warning. Of course, I thought watching Trump in Helsinki would wake up a whole lot more people than it did.

Watching Trump was like the time we watched Barack Obama meet publicly with the leader of ISIS and announce that he believed the Caliph, not the FBI, CIA and fifteen other U.S. intelligence agencies. Oops. Wait a moment. That didn't happen, except maybe in some pretty loony imaginations. In fact, sane people would have a hard time imagining such a scene with Obama.

need to get laid or his perjury or some of his political decisions. But I don't remember him trying to fire Kenneth Starr. Or demanding his attorney-general stop criminal investigations of Democrats in Congress because indicting them would be politically inconvenient.

Trump has warned us, yet again, loudly and clearly – with conduct and statements that would have shocked us in any previous president. 

One problem with cheering him on, or saying nothing, merely because he's on your team is that if you ever disagree with him, you could get the same unjust treatment he wants to free the DOJ to mete out to Democrats. But maybe you'll never disagree.

Will we lose our democracy? I don't know. I know it's in danger. I know Trump doesn't understand or respect it, and that now that he's finding the rule of law inconvenient, he's resolving to knock it out of the way as soon as he can. What I don't know is how far he can go. But I sure don't see Republicans stopping him; and it ain't gonna get any easier for them as he consolidates power. 

                              -30-

Note: the day after I posted this, an article on theHill.com stressed the silence of Congressional Republicans and noted, "Trump's Labor Day tweet may represeent the most egregious example to date of the president enterfering with ongoing Department of Justice (DOJ) investigations and engagin in what many are calling blatant obstruction of justice.
The piece quoted legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin as something that i wondered about too: "This tweet alone may be an impeachable offense." 
Former U.S. Attorney-General Eric Holder termed the tweet "so dangerous and stupid it's mind-boggling.  This is a fundamental threat to the rule of law." 
Ian Prior, a former Justice Department spokesman in the Trump Administration, commented, "That's just not how the Department of Justice works."  He added that the kind of selective prosecution based on people's political offenses that Trump was recommending results in cases that get thrown out of court.
Of course, as more Tumpian judges try cases, that could change.