If Republicans won’t do their job, the United States has no protection from Trump firing Mueller and pardoning himself. Checks and balances do not execute themselves. They require and depend upon patriots upholding their oath of office. Thus, we face a new level of crisis.
Months ago after President Trump crossed the “once unthinkable red line” of firing James Comey, former Justice Department Spokesperson Matt Miller asked who would stand up to Donald Trump.
“The institutional checks necessary to constrain a president such as Trump are failing before our eyes. If we can no longer count on an independent Justice Department or legitimate oversight from Congress, we are left with one overarching question: Who will stand up to Donald Trump?” Miller wrote ominously in The Washington Post.
This question remains unanswered today, as Trump and his administration reportedly mull over how to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating the President and his team for possible collusion with Russia over the 2016 election.
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Miller wrote in May, “But beyond even the Russia investigation lie troubling concerns about the rule of law. The president just fired an official investigating his campaign and associates, crossing a red line once unthinkable in this country. The attorney general quiescently went along. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said that critics should ‘suck it up and move on.’ The Senate majority leader excused it all in a speech on the Senate floor.”
The former DOJ spokesperson reiterated this crucial question on Friday, the morning after The Post revealed that Trump was seeking ways to pardon himself and his family.
Day after Trump fired Comey, I asked this q in a @PostOpinions piece. Two months later, still looking for an answer. https://t.co/MCCE2GwtO1 pic.twitter.com/guT8NpIKXD
— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) July 21, 2017
“This is not about being ‘fair’ to the President; it is about being true to the system of checks and balances and following the law,” the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee Rep. Adam Schiff said on Friday in a statement sent to PoliticusUSA.
Republicans may or may not have private issues with what their President is doing to the rule of law and to basic trust in the tenets of democracy. But they are not speaking up or publicly seeking to hold him accountable, and their public behavior is all we have to go on.
Republicans control both chambers of Congress, and so it is up to them to uphold the oath of office they took to protect this country from all enemies foreign and domestic, and will do so without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion.
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
Without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion.
Which Republicans can say they have upheld their oath in whole, when faced with the challenge of Donald Trump, a Republican president who may or may not have collaborated with a hostile foreign power against his own country, but surely is as we watch destroying the underpinnings of freedom by attacking the rule of law.
While we can take small solace in the fact that Trump is so incompetent that he thus far hasn’t managed to pass any legislation of note, he is still managing to undermine our country and our standing in the world, with a huge assist from Congressional Republicans.
Is it really this bad, we ask ourselves in an attempt to stave off the panic. Sadly, it appears to be so. Pardons are not public. We have no way of knowing who Donald Trump might have pardoned already.
There should be no doubt that many Congressional Republicans are privately horrified by what Donald Trump is doing. But who among them has the political and personal courage to do the right thing. We are long past the first moment, and no one has their hand up.
Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily newsletter podcast here.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
