With such advice, the equivalent that a president can do no wrong, Trump is convinced that he can fight “all the subpoenas." Those Democrats are such meanies, why should he have to endure a co-equal branch investigating him?

The latest utterance from Trump is the perfect “l’etat, c’est moi!” Reuters reports:

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President Donald Trump said on Thursday he did not believe he would allow former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify to committees in Congress, saying McGahn had already spoken to the special counsel on the Russia probe. “I would say it’s done,” Trump told Fox News. “I’ve had him testifying already for 30 hours,” Trump said, referring to McGahn’s testimony to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team. Trump said allowing McGahn to testify would open the gates for others to be called.

Hmm. On what basis does Trump declare McGahn off limits? McGahn doesn’t even work in the White House, you might recall. (What’s Trump going to do, have him arrested so he cannot testify?

Constitutional lawyer Laurence Tribe tells me, “Trump has no legal authority whatsoever to prevent McGahn from complying with Congress’s demand for his testimony, nor can McGahn invoke Trump’s gag order as a defense to a subpoena from Congress.” Tribe explains, “Former White House Counsel Don McGahn was never Trump’s personal attorney, and what he told Mueller about what transpired between him and the President with the latter’s public blessing cannot be shielded by whatever executive privilege might have been available at the time.” Moreover, “McGahn’s statements to Mueller are now part of the public record. Any executive privilege arguably attaching to those statements and their contents has been waived and cannot be unwaived.”

Trump is right that McGahn already testified for 30-plus hours to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. That means any privilege has been waived. Congress, a co-equal branch, is allowed to do its own due diligence, especially since it does not have the full report and because Trump has questioned McGahn’s testimony that he was asked to get rid of Mueller. Since Trump has disputed McGahn publicly, he waived any scintilla of the privilege that wasn’t previously waived.

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Moreover, if McGahn does not show up, he’ll be subpoenaed and held in contempt. I sincerely doubt McGahn wants to go down that road. He’ll no doubt feel better having been subpoenaed (the House can accommodate him) so he can tell his Republican friends, “Hey, I had no choice!”

“Trump is acting as though all his former government aides were just private employees bound by his infamous NDAs,” Tribe notes. “He will learn the hard way that American taxpayers weren’t paying folks like McGahn to serve as private retainers to be unleashed or muzzled at Trump’s pleasure.”

Former Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller finds the entire thing absurd. “He can assert the privilege, and if McGahn blows him off he can’t block him,” he tells me. Not only does McGahn have a First Amendment right to testify — if he is subpoenaed he must testify.

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On one level, you might say this is just Trump saying stupid things. He cannot stop McGahn, so what is the harm? The harm is that the president is the chief executive who took an oath to faithfully execute the laws, not to think up groundless, absurd ways to block an investigation.

And this is precisely the kind of conduct Barr inspired with his declaration that the president can cut off any investigation he thinks is unjustified. Barr now invites and incites Trump to become even more brazen in his defiance of Congress and his disdain for the rule of law. Barr has created a monster who now roams through the landscape destroying norms, tearing up the statute books and encouraging lawlessness by others. (Why wouldn’t every witness in a criminal proceeding brought by the feds try the same sort of shenanigans?)

Barr needs to go, by impeachment if need be (understanding that the Senate will defend his brazen lawlessness). Once we hear from Mueller, McGahn and others, the public and Congress can then reassess whether they want to risk leaving Trump in office until January 2021. Trump is demonstrating just how risky that proposition would be.