EACH IS GIVEN A BAG OF TOOLS, A SHAPELESS MASS, AND A BOOK OF RULES

On Saturday, the New York Times published a letter that Donald Trump’s attorneys sent to Robert Mueller back in January.  Neither of the authors, John Dowd and Jay Sekulow, are currently employed by the White House, but someone in Trump’s camp saw fit to leak the memo to the Times.

Long story short, the memo argues that because Donald Trump is president, with authority over the Justice Department, nothing he might do would be illegal.  Trump is justice personified, and cannot, by definition, obstruct himself. 

Let us all walk humbly in the presence of our magnificent God-Emperor.

VOX Media’s Matt Yglesias has a good article on the implications of Trump’s claims (link below).  Money quote: “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….  Having cut your check, you’d then have carte blanche to commit bank fraud or dump toxic waste in violation of the Clean Water Act or whatever else you want to do. Tony Soprano could get the feds off his case, and so could the perpetrators of the next Enron fraud or whatever else.”

Of course, this is a ridiculous argument.  And the cream of the jest is that it also completely undercuts Trump’s paranoid fantasy about President Obama planting a spy in his campaign.  Dude, your own lawyers say that nothing a president does is illegal.  STFU.

https://www.vox.com/2018/6/3/17421300/trumps-interview-subpoena