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Although I had followed the Watergate crisis with minute attention, it had grown vague and formless in my mind, like a nightmare recollected in sunshine. It was not until I began working my way through back copies of The New York Times that I was able to remember clearly why I used to read my morning paper with forebodings for the country's future.

—Walter Karp, The Hour of the Founders,1984.

It's not like we haven't been through something like this before: A dubious presidency, shot through with actual corruption corruptly concealed, begins to unravel because, sooner or later, the old republic begins to kick back, hard, with whatever happens to be handy. Ambition counters ambition, was the way Mr. Madison put it, and while he thought of this tug-of-war as taking place in the polite precincts of a legislative chamber, he also knew that ambition could counter ambition in a number of ways.

For example, ambition could counter ambition through a free and vigorous press, which is why he included that in the very first amendment to his masterpiece. Or, ambition could counter ambition through an aroused and boisterous populace, which is why freedom of association and the right to petition got hung onto the end of that same amendment. Or ambition could counter ambition through the many ways these fundamental rights could be put to use. Leaks, say, are an enabling device for a free press. Sooner or later, if we stay as lucky as we have been, the old republic kicks back with whatever is at hand. Which is pretty much what happened last night, when even more of all hell broke loose again.

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First, The New York Times dropped a story that officials of the Obama administration were so alarmed by what they'd discovered about the contacts between the Trump campaign and various plutocratic Russian ratfckers that the Obama folks dispersed the evidence as widely as they could so it wouldn't all end up in the same burn bag as soon as the new guy's hand came off the Bible.

Former American officials say they had two aims: to ensure that such meddling isn't duplicated in future American or European elections, and to leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators. American allies, including the British and the Dutch, had provided information describing meetings in European cities between Russian officials — and others close to Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin — and associates of President-elect Trump, according to three former American officials who requested anonymity in discussing classified intelligence. Separately, American intelligence agencies had intercepted communications of Russian officials, some of them within the Kremlin, discussing contacts with Trump associates.

It is possible that the Obama administration's desire not to politicize a national election, as absurd as that sounds, will go down in history with Lyndon Johnson's refusal to publicize Richard Nixon's treasonous attempt to monkeywrench the Paris Peace Talks in 1968, or the general yawn that greeted the revelations that the Reagan campaign likely played mischief with the release of the Iranian hostages in 1980. But there's no question that whatever evidence was presented to them shook the members of the last administration pretty profoundly.

At the Obama White House, Mr. Trump's statements stoked fears among some that intelligence could be covered up or destroyed — or its sources exposed — once power changed hands. What followed was a push to preserve the intelligence that underscored the deep anxiety with which the White House and American intelligence agencies had come to view the threat from Moscow.

(There's a lot of that going around. You may recall the accounts of white-faced members of Congress as they left a classified briefing on what may be the same information.)

That story hung in the air for approximately 15 minutes before The Washington Post called it and raised, and newly confirmed Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III found himself treed like an ol' possum in the piney woods. Or something.

One of the meetings was a private conversation between Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that took place in September in the senator's office, at the height of what U.S. intelligence officials say was a Russian cyber campaign to upend the U.S. presidential race. The previously undisclosed discussions could fuel new congressional calls for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russia's alleged role in the 2016 presidential election. As attorney general, Sessions oversees the Justice Department and the FBI, which have been leading investigations into Russian meddling and any links to Trump's associates. He has so far resisted calls to recuse himself.

More significant to our current dilemma is that Sessions flatly denied under oath in his confirmation hearings that he knew of any contacts between the Trump campaign—of which Sessions was a principal surrogate—and officials of the Russian government.

At his Jan. 10 Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, Sessions was asked by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) what he would do if he learned of any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of the 2016 campaign. "I'm not aware of any of those activities," he responded. He added: "I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians."

I remember this moment. I wrote it down in my notebook and starred it. It seemed to me that Sessions was leaving himself not an inch of wiggle room. The current explanation—that Sessions indeed did speak to the Russians twice, but only in his capacity as a senator—sounds a little too much like Group Captain Biggles' plan for dictation. Apparently, Sessions was wearing the antlers when he chatted up the Russian ambassador.

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Again, there was a lot of that going around, too. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price probably wasn't altogether straight in his confirmation testimony regarding his odiferous stock trading, and then there's EPA chief Scott Pruitt, his testimony, and his (gasp!) private e-mail server. Time was when lying under oath was a big deal. Take, say, 1998, when a young Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was perfectly vaporous at the notion that the president might have barbered his testimony.

Elijah Cummings and Nancy Pelosi immediately called for Sessions to resign. Senator Al Franken, whose questioning of Sessions elicited the denial that now has been proven to be false, along with a lot of official Washington, want Sessions to recuse himself from an investigation into the Trump-Russia connection, which is probably a smart move since now it appears more than likely that Sessions will be called as a witness in any and all of those investigations.

But ultimately, the judgment lies with the country, which is how it should be, because the entire Constitution is arranged so that the ultimate vehicle through which the old republic can defend itself is its people. We can go along and pretend that this administration isn't the carnival of grift and incompetence that it plainly is. We can accept the platitudes and the anesthetic banality of the people who will tell us that this is politics as usual, and that both sides do it, and that righteous democratic anger is somehow impolite and inappropriate to the august task of determining on exactly what percentage of the American government the Russians currently hold paper.

Or, we can decide not to do that. We can push back with the rusty tools that are never far from our hands. Ultimately, that's what happened in 1974. After two years, the accumulated crimes and lies and contempt for democratic norms hauled the country out of its customary torpor and the old republic stirred to life again. That's the choice before us.

The ease with which the powerful can arrange "deniability," to use the Watergate catchword, was one reason the criminal standard was so dangerous to liberty. Instead of having to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, a President, under that standard, would only have to take care to insulate himself from the criminal activities of his agents. Moreover, the standard could not reach the most dangerous offenses. There is no crime in the statute books called "attempted tyranny."

—Karp, 1974.

Yes, there is. But only we can bring the charges.

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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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