Defending justice

Jeff Sessions and the rule of law

Hang in there, Jeff. What’s at stake is the rule of law in the United States and your place in the history of American democracy.

President Trump can only belittle and humiliate Jeff Sessions in hopes that Sessions will quit his job as U.S. attorney general. Trump could then nominate a pliable loyalist who would protect him from Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia in the 2016 U.S. elections.

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I disagree with many policies of the current attorney general, but defending the rule of law is critical to U.S. democracy, and right now Sessions is essential to that defense.

Trump knows that obstruction of justice was a central charge in the two previous impeachment procedures against sitting U.S. presidents. After he fired FBI Director James Comey and acted to discredit the Mueller investigation, sacking Sessions would almost certainly produce convincing obstruction charges against the president.

Despite a constant barrage of criticism by Trump, Sessions refuses to resign, and he appears to be steadfast in defending an independent investigation of allegations against the president.

“The actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations,” Sessions said last week in defiance of Trump’s recent personal attacks. Let’s hope he means it.

If Trump successfully turns the Department of Justice and the FBI into a political instrument of the president, rule of law in the United States, a central element of American democracy, will be lost.

For now, the swamp that is being drained in Washington is a swamp of Trump’s creation. The Justice Department and Mueller’s team have Trump’s inner circle of lawyers, advisers, supporters and staff falling like dominoes to the U.S. justice system as misdeeds are uncovered.

What we don’t know is whether Trump is the biggest creature in the swamp.

The president thinks that the use of plea deals by federal prosecutors to expose the wrongdoing of higher-ups “almost ought to be illegal.” New York mobster John Gotti and thousands of other gangsters, corrupt officials, and drug dealers would fully agree with Trump.

In the latest discoveries, the president, after months of denials, claims that his payment of hush money to a porn star and a Playboy model to protect his political campaign was not illegal because the money came from him.

The U.S. justice system will determine if Trump is right about the legality, but that’s hardly the point. At issue is Trump’s character and his status as the symbol of the United States at home and abroad.

What is shocking is that most Republicans in Congress cower before Trump. Where is the moral outrage Republicans expressed in the past about presidential behavior? The Republican-controlled Congress won’t even conduct serious public hearings to investigate the president’s actions.

That leaves the Mueller investigation to get to the truth.

Trump’s attraction to Russia remains a mystery. In Trump’s recent meeting with Putin in Helsinki, no Western political leader has looked weaker or more overmatched by a hostile dictator since Neville Chamberlain flew home from Munich in 1938.

The Russian attack on U.S. democracy and possible collusion between an American president and a hostile foreign power in 2016 are issues of great importance to U.S. national security. They are the most serious charges against a sitting president in U.S. history. They are bigger than Republican and Democratic Party politics.

These issues require full national security and legal investigation, and the facts presented to the American people for public scrutiny.

Despite intense pressure to resign, Attorney General Sessions is the primary figure in the U.S. justice system keeping the investigations out of politics and out of the hands of the subject of the investigation. Let’s hope that Sessions, as the last line of defense for the rule of law, keeps his nerve until the findings of the investigations are complete and the American public learns the truth.