There's a certain trickle-down shamelessness to the Trump era, as others in the public eye follow the president's lead. Enter Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, who joined CNN today and proceeded to berate his interviewer for asking about Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Russia probe. He then attacked Sessions and the probe. Granted, Rohrabacher joined ostensibly to talk marijuana policy, but two of his Republican congressional colleagues wrote an op-ed this week essentially calling for Sessions' resignation because he recused himself, and therefore failed to protect the president, from the Russia investigation. The New York Times reported Thursday that Trump instructed White House Counsel Don McGahn to try to stop Sessions recusing himself, raising questions of obstruction of justice.

The anchor, Ana Cabrera, saw fit to ask him about all that, and Rohrabacher offered an extraordinary response based on his background.

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Congressman who FBI had to warn he was being recruited to be a Russian asset says Sessions betrayed us and Russia thing is a joke. pic.twitter.com/GRmRgvTkiG — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) January 5, 2018

Rohrabacher, after all, has been called "Putin's favorite congressman" for his extensive lobbying in favor of improved relations with Russia—but mostly, on behalf of the Russian government. (Before the fall of the Soviet Union, in contrast, he was a hardened Cold Warrior.) That includes his efforts to undermine the Magnitsky Act, a sanctions bill targeting Putin-aligned oligarchs after its namesake, Sergey Magnitsky, was found dead in a Russian prison under—to say the least—suspicious circumstances. Magnitsky was a whistleblower who uncovered the theft of $230 million by officials tied to the Putin regime. Politico has more details of Rohrabacher's role:

But the story of the Russian government’s tireless efforts to co-opt Rohrabacher, and gain his support for removing the Magnitsky name from the global anti-corruption bill, illustrates just how deeply Putin’s influence is being felt in Washington...

...On a trip to Moscow, Rohrabacher met with a close Putin confidant and accepted documents from Russian prosecutors claiming Magnitsky wasn’t a whistleblower, but a thief. Back in Washington, Rohrabacher’s senior aide escorted anti-Magnitsky lobbyists to meet other lawmakers and entered testimony endorsing Russia’s version of events into the official congressional record.

Incidentally, the Magnitsky Act is at the root of a lot of recent Russia news. Donald Trump, Jr. claimed he took a meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer (and many other figures he initially did not disclose) at Trump Tower in 2016 to discuss "adoption." (It subsequently emerged the lawyer had promised dirt on Hillary Clinton.) This is actually in reference to a ban on Americans adopting Russian orphans instituted by Putin in retaliation for the Magnitsky Act, which sanctioned his oligarch allies—and, according to some, Putin himself. Canning the act was and is a top priority for the Kremlin, because it froze the assets that some of Russia's most powerful figures had stashed in the West.

Rohrabacher has also met with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, and tried to create an arrangement wherein he'd be granted "a deal" in the United States in exchange for providing documents "proving" Russia was not involved in hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee. The New York Times reports that Rohrabacher has proved so valuable to the Russians that they deemed him worthy of a Kremlin code name. The FBI felt moved to warn Rohrabacher that the Russians were trying to recruit him as a full-blown intelligence asset.

All this is to say that the Orange County congressman is in an intriguing position to comment on the Russia investigation, which he regards as, at best, an overreach. “No, I don’t have confidence in Robert Mueller,” Rohrabacher said. “Special prosecutors should be brought in specifically to look at specific actions.” Mueller is operating well within the broad mandate granted him by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed him after Sessions had recused himself and Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. Trump has admitted to Lester Holt on national TV that he fired Comey over the Russia matter.

Meanwhile, Sessions recused himself because, during his confirmation hearings, he failed to disclose multiple meetings with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign. Since he was embroiled in the investigation, Sessions was right to recuse himself from overseeing it. But that didn't stop Rohrabacher from unleashing the lion's share of his displeasure on the attorney general.

Rod Rosenstein and Jeff Sessions Getty Images

The president “has a legitimate right to say that he was betrayed” by Sessions, Rohrabacher said, choosing to ignore that the attorney general is not the president's lawyer, and his job is not to protect the president from investigation. (Neither, indeed, is the White House counsel, who the Times found was doing Trump's bidding. The counsel's job is to protect the White House and the office of the presidency.)

“When [Sessions] recused himself from this whole Russia thing,” Rohrabacher continued, “he knew he was setting in motion the establishment of a special prosecutor. And a special prosecutor, as happens in Washington, we understand, is just giving unlimited power to someone to go after you, and not just you but to go after anybody they want to go after." The power is not unlimited, but it is broad, based on the wide and intricate web of political and financial connections that would constitute a collusion case. But no matter—Rohrabacher wasn't done.

“This shows you what happens when you have an attorney general who is not loyal to someone who has been elected by the people on a specific issue,” he said. “And Sessions betrayed us on this, and he’s betrayed the president on the special prosecutor for the Russia collusion that never existed.”

The president “has a legitimate right to say that he was betrayed."

Again, the attorney general's mandate is not to be "loyal" to the president who appointed him. This kind of language is flowing freely at the moment, a sad testament to the breakdown of democratic norms in this country. The Justice Department is not a white-shoe law firm at the president's disposal. It is a law enforcement apparatus meant to uphold the rule of law, charging and prosecuting those who break it regardless of who they are. The more that we accept the idea that law enforcement is a tool of the president, the closer we slide towards a model of government like...Putin's Russia. Which may just be exactly what Rohrabacher is interested in. That someone with so much baggage is willing to say this publicly, however, is a sign the slide has already begun.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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