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Legal ethics expert and board chair of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington Norm Eisen worked once with John Dowd, who just quit representing President Donald Trump in the Russia probe. Eisen wrote that reading the tea leaves, he suspects Dowd quit because his client was about to walk right into a perjury trap and thereby commit legal suicide.

“I know Dowd, was in a case with him once where he also quit. Reading the tea leaves here, his client is determined against his advice to testify–a perjury trap & legal suicide for an inveterate liar like Trump. If I were Dowd, I would walk away too,” Eisen wrote on Twitter above the New York Times report that Dowd had quit possibly because “Mr. Trump was increasingly ignoring his advice.”

I know Dowd, was in a case with him once where he also quit. Reading the tea leaves here, his client is determined against his advice to testify–a perjury trap & legal suicide for an inveterate liar like Trump. If I were Dowd, I would walk away too. https://t.co/rgzI1zTdsU — Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) March 22, 2018

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The problem Trump is facing right now is a problem of his own making and a result of his personality and background. Trump has always been able to get away with bullying people with the backing of lawyers who acted as legal thugs on his behalf. In the world of “property development” and licensing his name, this worked.

In the world of the government, and specifically in the world of being in the most watched office in the entire world, Trump cannot get away with the same gangster tactics that have always served him so well. In Trump’s world, he can testify because he has always managed to appear as if he “won” even when he lost. Appearances were everything in Trump’s old world.

In this new world, facts are everything. And facts are not Trump’s specialty. Reality is not Trump’s specialty. Trump cannot manage to testify without lying because he lies when he speaks. That is his brand; it’s why his base love him and why he is the worse witness for his own cause imaginable.

It is legal suicide for Trump to testify. Remember, Republicans impeached former President Bill Clinton for lying under oath about a consensual (although huge disparity in power, and what would be seen properly in a post #MeToo world as an abuse of power) blow job. Lying about contacts with Russia is so much worse. This President’s private sexual acts speak to his character, ethics, morality, and perhaps failure to live up to the evangelical Christian values he is supposed to represent, but they are not the same thing as willingly accepting the help – and perhaps working with – of a hostile foreign power as it attacks the country he was running to serve as president.

These are much more serious allegations than a blow job. These are allegations that go the very heart of our entire democracy: Do we have a president in the White House right now who is actually serving another country’s interests over our own or even his own financial interests over the interests of our country?