Welcome to uncharted territory
The term “constitutional crisis” tends to get thrown around anytime a potential conflict arises that might not be easily resolvable by the United States Constitution. We’ve arguably been in one ever since the day Donald Trump took office, or the day he publicly asked the Russians to illegally hack his opponent, or even the day he first entered politics. But it’s now fair to say that we’ve moved beyond a mere constitutional crisis, and we’re now in a crisis, period. Welcome to uncharted territory.
Donald Trump, in a last ditch effort to salvage his illegitimate and dying presidency, decided this week that the constitutional powers given to Congress no longer exist. He’s instructed all of his Executive Branch officials to simply ignore any requests, demands, or subpoenas that come from the House of Representatives. If he manages to pull it off, there no longer is a Constitution.
We can debate if it’s part of some kind of perverse reelection strategy, if he’s doing this simply because he’s maniacally out of control and bent on self destruction. Either way, he’s forcing the House to impeach him, which will happen rather soon. The particularly tricky part is that the House has to put together a case for impeachment, and Trump is actively trying to prevent that from happening. Of course, in so doing, he’s only making the case for impeachment even stronger – and he’s handing House Democrats additional leverage when it comes to dismantling him.
Because Donald Trump is now taking his obstruction of justice to such cartoonishly criminal fashion, House Democrats are preparing to have his regime’s officials arrested if they continue following Trump’s illegal orders to defy congressional subpoenas. We’re now entering that deep dark territory where government officials have to start arresting each other in the hope of keeping the basic tenets of our democracy intact.
The stakes are even higher than you might think. The Mueller report not only lays out the proof that Donald Trump committed a double digit number of felonies, it also explicitly spells out that Trump can be criminally prosecuted for them once he’s no longer in office. That means Trump will be arrested and indicted the minute he’s out of office. He knows it too. He’s single handedly trying to burn our democracy to the ground, in the hope of keeping himself out of prison. He will lose – and he will spend the rest of his life in solitary confinement. The question is what will be left of our democracy once America finally defeats him.
