Will the Senate Still Protect Robert Mueller From Donald Trumps Ax?

[babylonsister]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/will-the-senate-still-protect-robert-mueller-from-donald-trumps-ax


Will the Senate Still Protect Robert Mueller From Donald Trump’s Ax?
Republicans talked big this summer about protecting the special counsel from the president. Did they mean it?
Michael Tomasky
12.12.17 5:00 AM ET


snip//

We have never been here. Richard Nixon and his henchmen subverted the law. They did not attempt to subvert reality itself. Nixon did not go around saying that in fact it was George McGovern who belonged in prison. A news network did not exist to scream on a daily basis that McGovern should face indictment, peddling false “scandals” about him. In the summer and fall of 1973, before Nixon ordered the firing of Archibald Cox, influential congressional Republicans and prominent former congressional Republicans did not go around saying that there wasn’t one honest investigator on Cox’s staff or that Cox was corrupt.

But these things are happening now. They are gathering steam daily. And they are all about blurring reality, making it confusing to people, hardening the base against Mueller so that when Trump does move on him, support for the decision will be solid enough in the GOP base that Republicans in Congress will just cower.

snip//

What, then, will our brave senators do? Right now, there are two “protect Mueller” bills in the Senate. Both are bipartisan. One, sponsored by New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker and North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis, codifies existing DoJ regulations that a special counsel may be removed only for cause. A second, sponsored by Delaware Democrat Chris Coons and the aforementioned Lindsey Graham, would require that a panel of federal judges review any firing of a special counsel before it is executed.

Sources tell me that the four senators are working to combine the bills into one and hoping to get it through the Judiciary Committee and onto the Senate floor for consideration. A spokesman for Graham, in response to my email questions, referred me to a statement Graham made in late October, when Graham said, “I don’t feel an urgent need to pass that law until you show me that Mr. Mueller is in jeopardy.” Apparently, Graham sees no such jeopardy right now.

So here are some things to watch. Will this effort to combine the bills move forward? Will Chairman Charles Grassley allow a committee vote? Will Graham and Tillis vote for it (as one would hope and expect, since it would be their bill)? And, most of all, if the bill does materialize and get to the floor, how many Republicans will support it? Remember that back in the summer, nearly all of them said they would take the darkest view of Trump canning Mueller.

Such a move would constitute an assertion by Trump that he can get away with anything and the Republicans won’t stop him. Their moment of truth is coming. I hope they know it.

[Horse with no Name]

1. No. N/t

[Cosmocat]

4. I dont feel an urgent need to pass that law until you show me that Mr. Mueller is in jeopardy.

Sure, Lyndsey, no urgency given a POS who will tweet the first impulse that pops into his VERY grey matter sitting on the shitter 3:30 in the am.

Pretty much highlights the shame that is any civil, decent, responsible thing these jackasses float out there every now and again.

[spanone]

2. I have NO confidence in this senate....

[sansa]

3. They only confidence that I have in the Republicans in Congress

is that they will screw us over without a second thought.