It would be a capital mistake to underestimate the powers that can be marshaled to protect the plague ship that is the administration of this president*. If you were prone to do that, the sudden resignation, more than a month early, of Andrew McCabe from his post as Deputy Director of the FBI ought to shake you back into reality in one quick hurry. McCabe’s decision to abandon his post, when he could’ve simply stayed in it until March, is a signifying moment in what is rapidly becoming a constitutional crisis taking place almost entirely within the executive branch, with the members of the Republican majorities in the Congress either sitting this out, or throwing themselves behind the White House in its attempt to keep the hounds at bay.

Couple that with the powerful influence of the right-wing media enterprises, and their audiences, which will gladly buy any fantastical codswallop that is spooned out to them, and you get the sense that McCabe simply had had enough. From The Los Angeles Times:

Last month, Trump gave a push to McCabe, questioning reports that he would stay in the job until the spring: "90 days to go?!!!" Trump tweeted. He has highlighted the fact that McCabe's wife, a Democrat, ran a losing campaign for the state Senate in Virginia and received contributions with help from Clinton allies, or what he termed "Clinton puppets." Earlier this month, reports said that Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions pressured FBI Director Christopher Wray to push McCabe out, and a report in the Washington Post said that Trump, after firing former FBI director James B. Comey, asked McCabe how he voted in the 2016 election. Comey also has asserted that Trump in private conversations insisted on loyalty.

That McCabe jumped under pressure seems undeniable, unless you are Sarah Huckabee Sanders, from whom truth fled months ago. The president*, she said, was not part of the process through which McCabe resigned. This, of course, ignores the rather salient fact that there would not have been a “process” at all had not the president* and his people not felt the hot breath of the hounds on their hindquarters almost a year ago. The “process” began when the president* canned James Comey over, in the president*’s own words, the Russian thing.

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Nevertheless, the forces are organized and arrayed behind the president* if he wants to crank up the Enola Gay and fire Bob Mueller. (The terrified meeping of Republican senators like Lindsey Graham is of no consequence. Impeachment begins in the House, and that’s where the wild things roam.) They have established within their ranks an excuse that is plausible to the raving lunatics of The Base: that the FBI actively conspired against the president* and in favor of Hillary Rodham Clinton because a couple of FBI lovebirds texted each other about the fundamental absurdity of a Trump presidency*. Oh, and because #ReleaseTheMemo—the phantom document prepared by White House congressional doorstop Devin Nunes that purports to demonstrate to the feeble-minded the depths of FBI perfidy. Now for you, me, the lamp post, and anything with the intellectual depth of a handball, this is a ridiculous notion. We, however, are not the conscripted hoplites of this army of dumbasses.

The Memo represents Devin Nunes’ desperate attempt to get a raise for cleaning the White House pool.

On the right, in fact, they’re already crowing that McCabe left because of the possibility that someone will #ReleaseTheMemo. This, too, is idiotic because there’s one person in the country who could #ReleaseTheMemo with no unfortunate consequences, and that’s the President* of the United States. He can declassify anything. I suspect he has not yet decided to #ReleaseTheMemo because to #ReleaseTheMemo would be to demonstrate that The Memo represents Devin Nunes’s desperate attempt to get a raise for cleaning the White House pool.

Some of it leaked to The New York Times on Sunday. It reads like Sean Hannity’s midnight voicemail. But it did bring back into the news Carter Page, the Zelig of international ratfcking. This is always entertaining.

The renewal shows that the Justice Department under President Trump saw reason to believe that the associate, Carter Page, was acting as a Russian agent. But the reference to Mr. Rosenstein’s actions in the memo — a much-disputed document that paints the investigation into Russian election meddling as tainted from the start — indicates that Republicans may be moving to seize on his role as they seek to undermine the inquiry.

The memo’s primary contention is that F.B.I. and Justice Department officials failed to adequately explain to an intelligence court judge in initially seeking a warrant for surveillance of Mr. Page that they were relying in part on research by an investigator, Christopher Steele, that had been financed by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Another force at work is the fact that the president* apparently has explored entirely new regions of Bananaville over the ongoing investigation. Apparently, the flight to Davos was a real delight, like being trapped in a steel tube with two wolverines and a hand grenade. From Bloomberg:

Trump erupted in anger while traveling to Davos after learning that Associate Attorney General Stephen Boyd warned that it would be “extraordinarily reckless” to release a classified memo written by House Republican staffers. The memo outlines alleged misdeeds at the FBI and Justice Department related to the Russia investigation. For Trump, the letter was yet another example of the Justice Department undermining him and stymieing Republican efforts to expose what the president sees as the politically motivated agenda behind Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.

Kelly held separate meetings or phone calls with senior Justice Department officials last Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to convey Trump’s displeasure and lecture them on the White House’s expectations, according to the people. Kelly has taken to ending such conversations with a disclaimer that the White House isn’t expecting officials to do anything illegal or unethical. After Trump’s strong reaction on Air Force One over the Boyd letter, White House officials, including Kelly, sprang into action again, lashing Justice Department officials Thursday over the decision to send the letter, according to the people. Sarah Isgur Flores, director of public affairs at the Department of Justice, declined to comment.

So, it’s fairly clear that there’s no steadying influence on the White House staff, except maybe White House counsel Don McGahn, and he’s pretty clearly in it for himself. Kelly, who was supposed to fulfill that role, is all in, too. As long as brown people are being rounded up, he’s apparently OK with letting the president* bring the government down on his own head.

I think Mueller’s days are numbered. It’s set up that way now. Rosenstein has The Memo hanging over his head, and he’s the only thing between Mueller and a return to well-earned retirement. This is a president* who believes that he owes the country nothing except loyalty to his slavering base. He will do anything and, from that, he derives his power. It is not to be ignored.

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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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