Shit continues to get real as El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago is becoming an overly litigious society all on his lonesome. From The New York Times:



In the suit, filed in the federal courthouse in Manhattan, the president and his family members argue that the Democrat-controlled House committee leaders who issued subpoenas engaged in a broad overreach. “This case involves congressional subpoenas that have no legitimate or lawful purpose,” the suit alleges. “The subpoenas were issued to harass President Donald J. Trump, to rummage through every aspect of his personal finances, his businesses and the private information of the president and his family, and to ferret about for any material that might be used to cause him political damage. No grounds exist to establish any purpose other than a political one.”



For their part, the responsible parties in Congress can see a church by daylight.

Representative Maxine Waters, the chairwoman of the Financial Services Committee, and Representative Adam B. Schiff, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, called the lawsuit “meritless” in a joint statement, and said it demonstrated “the depths to which President Trump will go to obstruct Congress’s constitutional oversight authority.”

“As a private businessman, Trump routinely used his well-known litigiousness and the threat of lawsuits to intimidate others, but he will find that Congress will not be deterred from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities,” they said. “This lawsuit is not designed to succeed; it is only designed to put off meaningful accountability as long as possible.”

This is, of course, the absolute truth. In his cornered-rat brawl against congressional oversight, the president* is treating the legislative branch as though it's some poor sap's glazier company that he's stiffed on their bill. He doesn't know any other way than to bluster and bluff his way through any attempt to rein him in. (At the same time, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is at war with House Ways and Means chairman Richard Neal over the president*'s taxes.) And then, of course, there's Attorney General William Barr, who's embraced this ethos with both hands and is demonstrating that fact by insisting that he be treated differently than John Mitchell was, which is incredibly unfair to the memory of John Mitchell.

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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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