Thread by @ThePlumLineGS

1) Trump is again calling on AG Jeff Sessions to investigate his political opponents.

Laughably, Trump is doing this while simultaneously urging Sessions and DOJ to show its independence.

This carries echoes of Watergate, and the history here is worth recalling.

*THREAD*

2) Trump continues to treat AG Sessions as his personal lawyer and protector.

While this is easy to dismiss as Trumpian bluster, it actually gets at a thorny problem that officials have wrestled with again and again.

This problem was the subject of a great paper by @rroiphe.

@rroiphe 3) The paper details the inherent ambiguity in the idea that the president controls the executive branch, which is oversees enforcement of the law -- even as prosecutors are supposed to be answerable *to the law* and not subject to political manipulation by the president.

@rroiphe 4) The president’s role as head of the exec branch has led many to argue that the president has total authority to dictate what DOJ investigates and how, even involving investigations into himself. This is the argument that Trump's lawyers have made:

nytimes.com/interactive/20…

@rroiphe 5) But this idea has periodically come under strain. As the fed gov't grew, @rroiphe's paper explains, the idea of prosecutorial independence developed as a “central norm” that helped “preserve the legitimacy of the system.”

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

@rroiphe 6) After the Watergate abuses, this ideal of prosecutorial independence further became seen as a kind of check *on presidential power.*

This is somewhat paradoxical, since DOJ is part of the executive branch.

@rroiphe 7) But this paradox gets at the central problem here.

After Watergate, some proposed isolating DOJ from the exec branch.

But that was seen as unworkable, because it risks sacrificing the *political accountability* of law enforcement.

@rroiphe 8) Yet keeping DOJ under exec branch risks subjecting it to *political manipulation.*

So what to do?

The answer is this norm of prosecutorial independence.

As one Senator put it during Watergate, DOJ's “client is not only the President but includes the people."

@rroiphe 9) But here's the rub.

This norm must be respected *both* by prosecutors *and* by the president:

wapo.st/2MxBqre

@rroiphe 10) And this isn't happening right now.

Trump simply does not accept the core underlying idea that law enforcement answers not just to him, but to *the law and the people* as well:

wapo.st/2MxBqre

@rroiphe 11) Trump plainly feels constrained in some ways. He has not fired Rosenstein. He backed off his effort to remove Mueller.

But it is obvious that this is only because Trump *did not think he could get away with these things.*

@rroiphe 12) The only constraints Trump recognizes are *whatever limits he perceives on what he can get away with.*

As Trump's latest Sessions rant shows, Trump recognizes zero institutional obligation of any kind to the law or to the people.

Hard to see this ending in a good place. FIN