There’s a president* who wants the Department of Justice to knuckle his political opponents. The DOJ—even this DOJ—temporizes because this clearly smacks of Somoza at best and Mussolini at worst. Now, 11 members of the House of Representatives Flunky Caucus jump in, demanding that the DOJ get off the dime. From Politico:

The push represents the latest counter-attack from the right against the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign — an investigation that Trump continues to rail against. The lawmakers describe a variety of potential crimes in calling for the new inquiries. They accuse Comey of leaking classified information, Clinton of concealing campaign payments to an opposition research firm and Lynch of threatening an informant with "reprisal" if he came forward with anti-Clinton information in 2016. They also demand new criminal investigations into top FBI officials who signed off on a surveillance warrant for former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Those officials, they say, include former acting attorney general Sally Yates, former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe and former acting deputy attorney general Dana Boente.

The letter is a ragbag of diversions and distractions, the ragged flotsam of the endless pursuit of Hillary Rodham Clinton that covered over 20 years of public life, and of the ongoing desperate attempts to cover the president*’s more than ample hindquarters.

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The signatories are the loudest nightbirds in the fever swamp, some of them more ambitious than others. Ron DiSantis wants to be governor of Florida and Todd Rokita would like Indiana’s permission to blight the U.S. Senate. The rest of them are irreconcilable talk-radio conservatives, including Dave Brat, the man who replaced Eric Cantor and would very much like to replace the 20th Century; Matt Gaetz, who thinks he has Robert Mueller’s number; and a whole flock of other Freedom Caucus loon-o-bots who have signed aboard the Trump Train because Hillary, that’s why. These include Claudia Tenney of New York, who recently shared with the nation her perception that many mass murderers are Democrats.

This whole thing reeks of authoritarian vengeance and it also smells faintly of outright fascism. A president* is being encouraged by members of the national legislature to defend himself by using the law-enforcement apparatus at his command to investigate his perceived political opponents, and the president* is not committed enough to democratic processes to tell these guys to go turn a hose on each other to cool off. Ni shagu nazad, y’all.

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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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