To me, anyway, the great danger is that the constitutional crisis will come and go and pass from the scene, having done its irreparable damage without anybody really noticing—or, to be entirely honest, caring very much. On Monday, Gina Haspel was sworn in as the new director of the CIA—which, among other things, meant that, acting through their elected representatives, the American people have made their peace with being a nation that tortures.

And, by Monday, there is reason to believe the following about the administration* that gave Haspel that job.

That it may have conspired with foreign governments at the very least to finagle the last presidential election, and that those government did so in the expectation of favors from the administration* they worked to install. That it may have delivered the quo for several of those quids through the foreign policy of the United States. And, if the administration delivered the quo, that it would be guilty of a crime. In fact, it would be guilty of one of the crimes specifically mentioned in the constitutional provisions regarding the impeachment and removal of a president—to wit: bribery. And this is not even to mention the many still unresolved questions relating to Russian ratfcking for the hell of it.

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In response to the attacks of 9/11, the United States turned the tiny nation of Qatar essentially into a landlocked aircraft carrier. The Qatari satraps, having dedicated themselves years earlier to not working for a living, were grateful for this influx of American money and American personnel, which enabled them to hire more Filipino teenagers at slave wages.

Anyway, things were rocking along the way things will until last June, when the president* leapt onto the electric Twitter machine and excoriated Qatar for being the funder of what the president* called “Radical Ideology.” At the time, Qatar was the victim of a blockade established by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and the world assumed that the president* was endorsing that action, having just returned from his orb-fondling trip to the region. None of it made any sense; this was a complete reversal of more than a decade’s worth of American foreign policy, and it also was a complete sell-out of an ally that pretty much had done everything asked of it by the United States. The popular opinion at the time was that the president* did something stupid because he doesn’t know anything about anything, which is always the safe play with this crowd.

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Recently, we have discovered differently. Thanks to some great reporting from The New York Times and elsewhere, we learn that American foreign policy in one of the world’s most volatile regions may have been bargained away in order to bail his son-in-law out of one of the worst New York real-estate decisions since the Lenape sold the place to Peter Minuit. And that this arrangement was part and parcel of a general scheme by the Trump campaign and various unemployables from Saudi Arabia and the UAE to ratfck the election themselves. It wasn’t just the Russians, after all, although, eventually, everybody was in business with everybody else through the network of slimy middlemen who were brokering deals.

The meeting was convened primarily to offer help to the Trump team, and it forged relationships between the men and Trump insiders that would develop over the coming months—past the election and well into President Trump’s first year in office, according to several people with knowledge of their encounters.

Erik Prince, the private security contractor and the former head of Blackwater, arranged the meeting, which took place on Aug. 3, 2016. The emissary, George Nader, told Donald Trump Jr. that the princes who led Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were eager to help his father win election as president. The social media specialist, Joel Zamel, extolled his company’s ability to give an edge to a political campaign; by that time, the firm had already drawn up a multimillion-dollar proposal for a social media manipulation effort to help elect Mr. Trump.

Does it seem to you that this president* is positively a magnet for skeevy international operators? Yeah, me, too. So it’s no surprise that Erik Prince makes an appearance in this saga as well.

It is illegal for foreign governments or individuals to be involved in American elections, and it is unclear what—if any—direct assistance Saudi Arabia and the Emirates may have provided. But two people familiar with the meetings said that Trump campaign officials did not appear bothered by the idea of cooperation with foreigners.

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A lawyer for Donald Trump Jr., Alan Futerfas, said in a statement that “prior to the 2016 election, Donald Trump Jr. recalls a meeting with Erik Prince, George Nader and another individual who may be Joel Zamel. They pitched Mr. Trump Jr. on a social media platform or marketing strategy. He was not interested and that was the end of it.”

The August 2016 meeting has echoes of another Trump Tower meeting two months earlier, also under scrutiny by the special counsel, when Donald Trump Jr. and other top campaign aides met with a Russian lawyer after being promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton. No evidence has emerged suggesting that the August meeting was set up with a similar premise.

OK, so there’s the quid. The quo may be located in midtown Manhattan, across the street from St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and it is a building in which was located the home office of a newspaper for which I once worked. Its number is 666 Fifth Avenue, and it is owned by Jared Kushner. Or, to be more precise, the building pretty much owns him. Genius Boy and his formerly incarcerated father bought it for a record $1.8 billion, and now it’s 30 percent vacant and the Kushners find themselves saddled with a white elephant whose trumpeting you can hear for 20 miles.

Trump with the Emin of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, in April 2018 Getty Images

Lo and behold, a firm connected with the Qatari government is negotiating a bailout. Again, from the Times:

Both Brookfield and the Qatar Investment Authority, the sovereign fund of the oil-rich Middle Eastern emirate, said the Investment Authority had no knowledge of the deal. A spokesman for the Investment Authority said the fund “has no involvement whatsoever in this deal.”

But the Qatar Investment Authority is the second-biggest investor in Brookfield Property Partners, Brookfield’s real estate arm.

The deal is likely to raise further concerns about Jared Kushner’s dual role as a White House point person on the Middle East and a continuing stakeholder in the family’s company. Mr. Kushner in February lost his top-secret security clearance amid concerns that foreign governments could attempt to gain influence with the White House by doing business with his firm. In January, The Times reported that his firm last year received a $30 million investment from Menora Mivtachim, a large Israeli insurer, just a few days before Mr. Kushner flew to Israel for his first diplomatic trip to the region.

You don’t have to be, say, Robert Mueller to look at the reversal of long-standing American policy regarding Qatar as a simple shakedown racket with international consequences.

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The president* has proceeded to up the ante. Over the weekend, on the electric Twitter machine, he hereby demanded that the Department of Justice launch an investigation into whether or not the Obama administration had used the FBI to submarine his campaign, a contention that would be laughable if it weren’t so serious. (It appears that, rather than be accused of political shenanigans, the Bureau kept the investigation into the Trump campaign on the down-low, a consideration that was not afforded the campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton.)

OK, so there’s the quid. The quo may be located in midtown Manhattan, across the street from St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

This outburst was clearly designed to put the DOJ, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, into an impossible small-p-political position. (Rosenstein handed off the request to the DOJ’s inspector general, which was the smart rope-a-dope play under the circumstances.) More to the point, it brought the president* right to the brink of a serious constitutional cataclysm. He is hereby demanding that the DOJ conduct an investigation of a political rival for purely political purposes. This is what Nixon did. This is why John Mitchell went to federal prison. And it is right there, in the open, on the electric Twitter machine. The Watergate crowd at least had the common decency to use code names.

Thus, the week begins ominously. We can only hope it ends the same way because, if it doesn’t, if there is not a constitutional crisis, ongoing and loud, at the end of the week, then we have determined through our system of government, and through our elected representatives, that we are willing to tolerate foreign bribes doled out to our president*’s pets, foreign sabotage of our national elections, and American foreign and domestic policy sold out to the highest grifter.

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Clearly, the Republican majorities in the Congress will do nothing about this gathering threat to the constitutional legitimacy of the government as a whole. Therefore, those majorities have to be pushed and threatened to get them to move and, if they still refuse, they have to be replaced by majorities that will protect jealousy both the legislature’s legitimate powers and the general constitutional order. If neither of those courses is followed, then we have said as a self-governing people that we are willing to participate in a farce, a burlesque of constitutional democracy concocted by a passel of avaricious clowns, rather than fight for our right to a political commonwealth based on self-government.

There is a fight to be had here, and it is better that it be held out in the open, with every honest weapon available—including the current midterm campaign. It is not a time for irresolute appeals for civility and political politesse. Nothing honest is off the table. The American republic is fighting for its life and, as the old song goes, which side are you on?

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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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