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You know, if I were a bungling criminal autocrat, and the law was closing in on me, and it was the end of a week in which it was revealed that my administration had hosted two top intelligence officials of an unfriendly government that aided my rise to power, and some useful tools in my national legislature were crafting a transparent and threadbare alibi by which I was the victim of a nefarious conspiracy from within my own government, this is exactly the kind of thing I would put up on the electric Twitter machine on Friday morning.

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The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans - something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Rank & File are great people! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2018

And so is this…

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“You had Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party try to hide the fact that they gave money to GPS Fusion to create a Dossier which was used by their allies in the Obama Administration to convince a Court misleadingly, by all accounts, to spy on the Trump Team.” Tom Fitton, JW — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2018

Of course, to do so, you would have to ignore the fact that all of the “top Leadership” of the FBI and the DOJ are Republicans, and that you appointed them. You also would have to ignore the fact that Judicial Watch—or “JW,” as its important fans seem to call it—really is a terrible house of hacks who’ve been carrying water in court for the extreme right for almost two decades now. But, since you are convinced, and with very good reason, that your primary audience is made up of meatheads and morons, these two things would trouble you only for the most fleeting of moments. Hit “Tweet,” baby! And so, you do.

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It is entirely possible that this will be the weekend on which the president* holds the Constitution above the mouth of the paper shredder and dares anyone to stop him. The recklessly spurious Nunes memo is his last chance. Remember the great Conrad cartoon of Nixon on a cross, driving nails into his own hands? That’s the Nunes memo. Well, that, and the fauxtrage that will be ginned up by the usual suspects upon its release. The problem for the rest of us is that his last chance isn’t that much of a long shot. The waters have been so muddied with deliberate conservative misinformation and legislative cowardice that it’s entirely possible that any institutional safeguards have been rendered blind.

Right now, the leadership of the law enforcement institutions are the only ones standing in his way. The Congress has abandoned its function as a co-equal branch of government. The people themselves have no real recourse until next November, by which time it may be too late. Mueller’s renowned implacability as an investigator is going to be tested more severely than it ever has been before.

However—because, there’s always a however—other gears are moving in the big machine. It appears that a permanent split has developed between Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, against whom Mueller already has won indictments. From Politico:

Lawyers Shanlon Wu, Walter Mack and Annemarie McAvoy said in a two-page motion that they would explain the reasons for their abrupt move in documents filed under seal with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia…While Gates’ shift in legal strategy was a surprise, speculation had been mounting that the longtime GOP operative might be seeking to cooperate with the Mueller investigation. CNN reported last month that Gates had added Washington defense attorney Tom Green to his team, noting he’d been spotted at Mueller’s downtown office twice.

If Mueller has flipped Gates, that changes the game. Gates is, you will pardon the expression, Mueller’s gateway to Manafort, and Manafort is the keeper of many of the Trump family jewels as regards the Russian chicanery that Mueller is investigating. All of this may come to some kind of a head before Monday morning. Nobody gets a day off.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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