A Mob Boss with the DOJ in his pocket

“Repeatedly pressuring the leader of a foreign nation to investigate a political opponent is behavior you’d expect from an incompetent mobster — not the President of the United States” - @GovernorBullock

— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) September 20, 2019

It's typical of the maelstrom of malfeasance that is Trump's mis-administration that I can't now remember the cases pushing through the courts in New York and Maryland awhile back. One went to the Supremes and was sent back down, and shortly after the government folded its tents and conceded the field. Something was going on feverishly behind the scenes because more than one DOJ lawyer withdrew from the case as Trump fulminated about how he would fight forever. The judge spoke if imposing fines, and in general it was not the way government lawyers are supposed to try cases in court.

Part of the problem was the lawyers were making legal arguments that were almost wholly unfounded in law, but offered for obstruction. Lawyers who do that generally get slapped around by judges who don't like arguments not made in good faith in their courts. A judge threatening to hold government lawyers in contempt is a judge facing lawyers who shouldn't be working for the government.

That's the real issue, to me, with this whistleblower case: not who said what to whom, but how the DOJ can dare to keep this from Congress. That is not a legal argument made in good faith. It is, instead, a corruption of government.

And there is no "ambiguity" in the law. That argument presumes a "loophole" has been found, a legitimate legal posture is being made. That's not the case here. This is a position taken solely to hide the President's actions from scrutiny. It is no more legitimate than the legal fight in New York and Maryland where the DOJ finally admitted it had no case.

That corruption is the furtherance of the 10 obstruction charges reported by Mueller. And that actually is the case the Democrats want to make in order to further their charges against him. But that will have to work next November, because a Congress seen as doing nothing but going after Trump is a Congress that will please only partisans, but not the sought after "swing" and "independent" voters. And what is the point of gaining the White House but losing the Congress?