I worked under Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr during his investigation of Bill Clinton. In those proceedings, Clinton was represented primarily by his private attorneys. Under Trump, the lines that should separate the president’s personal interests from those of the American populace have blurred. Even as news reports have described Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, as being improperly enmeshed in diplomatic communications with Ukraine, lawyers for the Justice Department and the White House have taken dubious legal postures to impede lawful investigations of Trump’s conduct.

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When an intelligence-community insider accused Trump of using American military aid as a lever to make Ukraine pursue a baseless investigation of Joe Biden and his son, for example, the governing statute legally obligated the acting director of national intelligence to hand over the complaint to Congress. Instead, Barr’s Justice Department issued an irresponsible legal opinion to justify keeping the whistle-blower complaint from Congress—despite the inspector general’s official determination that the complaint was “credible” and of “urgent concern,” thereby triggering congressional oversight.

The whole purpose of inspectors general and whistle-blower laws—which pre-date the Constitution itself—is to make sure that legitimate insider information of wrongdoing within the executive branch sees the light of scrutiny by a co-equal branch of government. The laws exist to protect the public. Justice Department lawyers know this.

The latest troubling missive came from White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, whose October 8 memo lays out the president’s rationale for keeping the entire executive branch from cooperating with the House’s impeachment inquiry. In his letter to Congress, Cipollone advances a host of frivolous arguments. He insists that President Trump “cannot permit his Administration to participate in this partisan inquiry under the circumstances,” and that the inquiry “lacks any legitimate foundation” under the Constitution. Cipollone goes on to posit that impeachment itself is constitutionally improper because it “seek[s] to overturn the results of the 2016 election and deprive the American people of the President they have freely chosen.”

This gripe is one to take up with the Framers of the Constitution, which allows for the impeachment and removal of a president for grievous misconduct. The inquiry’s legitimate foundation lies in Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, which states that the House “shall have the sole power of impeachment.” This is as black-and-white as the law gets.

While it’s not unprecedented for political appointees to back the president, Richard Nixon’s attorney general, Elliot Richardson, resigned his post rather than execute a presidential directive that he fire the prosecutor charged with investigating his boss. Richardson’s predecessor, John N. Mitchell, stood by the president, but went to jail for his Watergate-related crimes.