Forget Rudy Giuliani. He’s not really Trump’s lawyer. He’s just there to go on TV and blather, confuse and deflect. A useful tool, no doubt, in the Trump legal team’s broader defense against investigation and oversight of the President and his Administration. While the connection between Trump and the late Roy Coen isn’t breaking news, something else is happening that is entirely new in the American experience and altogether lamentable. President Donald Trump is taking the advice of a dead guy in responding to Presidential obligations to submit to the oversight of Congress.
Elijah Cummings confirmed this week, in connection with his Committee’s oversight of security clearance problems at the White House, that Trump has blocked or refused all information sought for oversight since the Democrats took control of the House.
"The White House and Mr. Kline now stand in open defiance of a duly authorized congressional subpoena with no assertion of any privilege of any kind by President Trump. Based on these actions, it appears that the President believes that the Constitution does not apply to his White House, that he may order officials at will to violate their legal obligations, and that he may obstruct attempts by Congress to conduct oversight. It also appears that the White House believes it may dictate to Congress — an independent and co-equal branch of government — the scope of its investigations and even the rules by which it conducts them. To date, the White House has refused to produce a single piece of paper or a single witness in any of the Committee's investigations this entire year."
Today, Trump openly proclaimed it. Trump no longer heeds the advice of actual lawyers who practice their profession ethically. Maybe he never did.
Trump’s earliest legal mentor was Roy Cohn, and Trump’s response to Congressional oversight is not only something no modern, competent, ethical attorney would advise, it is also pure Roy Cohn, a scandalous, thieving, lying, cheating, underhanded New York fixer and fixture from the1950s until his death, disbarred and disgraced, in 1986 from complications of AIDS, or as he called it, liver cancer.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, the story connecting Trump to Cohn was already out there that would allow us to predict that Trump’s reaction to oversight would be a complete stonewall. Consider this bit from a CNN report that aired on September 1, 2016, months before Trump’s election.
We are about to find out how much of our Judicial system Trump, McConnell and the GOP have left us with. Pray that Chief Justice Roberts will save the Constitution.