Yes, Children, Trump's Legal Strategy Really IS That Stupid

Knock you over with a feather!

No sooner had we published our second-to-last piece, on Adam Schiff's House Intelligence Committee requesting documents from Trump lawyers and lawyers representing Trump's fucked up family, than the White House had fired off yet another letter, this time to House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler, telling him to take all his investigations and fuck right off.

Not only does White House Counsel Pat Cipollone -- yet another real lawyer who's decided his own   professional reputation can fuck right off, because everything Donald Trump touches turns into a gaping hole of sadness and failure -- write that Judiciary doesn't have the right to investigate Trump's crimes, because its investigation is "duplicative" of what Robert Mueller investigated, and laughably assert that Mueller's investigation cleared Trump of all Russian and obstruction crimes based on the legal standard of "Because Bill Barr Said So," Cipollone also asserts something we've heard approximately 1,000 times in the last 24 hours. (Emphasis ours in all forthcoming block quotes.)

Lost in the Committee's legally indefensible rush to recommend a contempt citation is the reality that the Committeehas not articulated any proper legislative purposefor pursuing inquiries that duplicate matters that were the subject of the Special Counsel's inquiry. Congressional investigations are intended to obtain information to aid in evaluating potential legislation, not to harass political opponents or to pursue an unauthorized "do-over" of exhaustive law enforcement investigations conducted by the Department of Justice.

Under the circumstances, the appropriate course is for the Committee to discontinue the inquiry discussed in the March 4 letter.

LOLOLOLOLOL, what lawyerly bluster for a letter full of such dogshit! (Worth noting that Jerry Nadler's reaction was approximately the same, though he said it nicer.)

So basically, we have Pat Cipollone Congress-splaining TO CONGRESS the question of "What is Congress," and getting it mindfuckingly wrong. And he's using very authoritative words that are just sure to scare the (better) lawyers on the House Judiciary Committee, you betcha!

Cipollone is saying is that the only thing that falls under the purview of a "legislative purpose" is for Congress to sit there and look cute and pass laws related to national speed limits. Maybe they are allowed to rename national parks after cool, recently deceased Americans. BUT NOTHING ELSE. Of course, the part about how Congress's inquiries amount to an "unauthorized do-over" is pretty funny, because whose permission, pray tell Pat Cipollone, has Congress failed to obtain? And of course he's either full of shit or lying about what the Mueller Report found, but it's worth noting that when he refers to DOJ investigations that are OVER AND DONE WITH, he's talking about an investigation where the current sitting shithole human Attorney General Bill Barr has already decided that a sitting president cannot be held accountable for the hundreds of pages of Trump crimes listed in the Mueller Report .

So the DOJ can't hold Trump accountable.

And the Congress can't hold Trump accountable.

Can GOD even hold Trump accountable? Or if Jesus Christ came back to earth upon a cloud and shoehorned a subpoena up Trump's asshole, would Pat Cipollone write a fancy Nancy letter to OUR LORD AND SAVIOR too?

As Nadler remarked:

They say the Justice Department cannot hold him accountable since a sitting president can't be indicted, and now they're saying Congress cannot hold a president accountable. This is ridiculous — it would make the president above the law and of course we totally reject it.

We bring this up for two reasons. One, of course, is that it just happened, which means it is the news, and what is Wonkette if notA WAR BLOGthe news? But secondly, as we noted, we've been hearin' this a lot the past day, and it's just breathtaking realizing that this -- this -- is actually Trump's legal strategy, to argue that Congress is simply not allowed to Do Stuff, if the stuff Congress wants to Do is Stuff that chaps the president's tender asshole.

As we mentioned above, Adam Schiff's Intelligence Committee is being stonewalled on document requests from Trump lawyers. Check out what Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow's lawyer (so many layers of lawyers!), speaking for the whole class, had to say about why Schiff is not allowed to have documents:

In a statement on Tuesday on behalf of the group, Patrick Strawbridge, who represents Mr. Sekulow, accused Mr. Schiff of ginning up a conflict. [...]

The lawyers raised other objections in response to Mr. Schiff's initial request, writing that the inquiry "appears to be far afield from any proper legislative purpose."

Do we hear an echo in here? We're about to hear one again, because let's go to Trump lawyer William Consovoy, arguing in court yesterday in front of a truly stunned DC District Court Judge Amit Mehta that Elijah Cummings and the House Oversight Committee aren't allowed to get Trump's financial records and tax records from his accountants at Mazars, because here's why:   

"Say for example if a president had a financial interest in a particular piece of legislation that was being considered … in your view Congress could not investigate whether a president has a conflict of interest?" Mehta wondered.

"It would lack legitimate legislative purpose,"replied Consovoy, who argued that any attempt by Congress to determine whether a president was acting outside the law was improper because it's the job of law enforcement, not lawmakers.

It's like they're all circle-jerking in the same AOL chat room, isn't it?

Mehta couldn't even get Consovoy to agree that either the Watergate OR WHITEWATER investigations were legal for Congress to conduct, because that would throw a flaming dick right in the middle of the hilarious legal "theory" he's being paid by Trump (or not paid by Trump, let's not assume Trump has paid his bill) to embarrass himself in court arguing.

@joshtpm It'll be hilarious when Brett Kavanaugh (former top aide to Ken Starr) signs on to the Trump position that… https: //t.co/eyUQqMrXGN

— Eric Kleefeld (@Eric Kleefeld) 1557945265.0 

This is really where we are. This is how full of shit the president of the United States really is. This is how stupid our life is now.

We can only hope and pray that the rest of the judges the Trump administration goes in front of in coming days get as much of a kick out of this dumbfuckery as Judge Mehta did in DC yesterday.

[ Talking Points Memo /  ibid.    / New York Times / Politico ]

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