Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (CA-48), who many observers have characterized as the closest thing to a Russian asset that exists in the United States Congress, made a remarkable statement yesterday.
Dana Rohrabacher, the embattled Orange County congressman known for his close ties to the Kremlin, said Friday that Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions should resign after showing disloyalty to President Trump by refusing to shut down the Russia investigation.
Rohrabacher’s statement follows Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ rebuke of Trump, after Trump publicly castigated Sessions for recusing himself from the investigation into Trump’s collaboration with the Russian government to influence and steal the 2016 election. As Sessions himself, as a member of Trump’s campaign, was a subject of the investigation, he had little choice in the matter. Trump evidently felt that the spectacle of an Attorney General charged with investigating his own possibly traitorous misconduct would not present a conflict of interest.
Nevertheless, Rohrabacher contended that Sessions should have bowed to Trump and shut down the investigation, or else resigned, to be replaced by someone who would.
“The fact that Jeff Sessions has not quit is a disloyalty to this president and to the country,” Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) told Fox Business Network. “The fact is, if he disagrees with what the president wants him to do, he should resign.”
Assuming he did not misspeak, that amounts to an official endorsement by a Republican Congressman of utilizing the Justice Department as a political arm of the executive branch. In effect, Rohrabacher suggests weaponizing the DOJ as a tool not to enforce the law, but to defend a president accused of breaking the law. With no one to enforce the laws Trump may have broken, and no punishment for any crimes he may have committed, this President would then assume dictatorial powers.
That is what Rohrabacher apparently has endorsed. But while things may work that way in Putin’s Russia, which is essentially a mafia state run by crime bosses, it is not yet what we expect or want to transpire in this country.
Democrat Harley Rouda, who is running to unseat Rohrabacher, responded quickly and vehemently.
The congressman’s remarks drew a scalding attack from his Democratic challenger, Harley Rouda, who cast Rohrabacher as a tool of Putin.
“It’s an utterly radical, un-American idea to attack the Attorney General because he is resisting efforts to pervert the Department of Justice’s truth-seeking mission with the worst kind of craven, partisan politics,” Rouda said by email.
“The truth — that Dana can’t or won’t comprehend — is that justice in America and the enforcement of our nation’s laws are not based on a loyalty test. That’s the way things work in dictatorships, not in the greatest democracy the world has ever known.”
Rohrabacher’s casual dismissal of a democratic institution as deeply ingrained as the independence of the Justice Department from the Presidency should alarm anyone. This is not someone who belongs in the U.S. Congress.
Harley Rouda’s campaign page is here.