Trump seeks to bend the executive branch as part of impeachment vendetta

“I’ve never seen so many prosecutors, including those who aren’t political or those who haven’t been following this situation closely, go to red alert so quickly,” said Joyce White Vance, a former U.S. attorney in the Obama administration. “The reason is this: If a president can meddle in a criminal case to help a friend, then there’s nothing that keeps him from meddling to harm someone he thinks is his enemy. That means that a president is fully above the law in the most dangerous kind of way. This is how democracies die.”…

During an election year, few lawmakers are willing to offer even minor criticism of their own party’s president and risk alienating GOP base voters, veteran Republican operatives said.

“It’s one of those things where these lines have never been crossed in this way — that’s the way responsible administrations act,” said Brendan Buck, a longtime adviser to former House speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). “But you’ll end up seeing Republicans saying he has the authority to do it, even if they know it’s not necessarily within the bounds of what should be done.”

“It’s like bad weather. Nothing more, nothing less,” said one Republican congressional aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly explain the thinking of top GOP lawmakers. “What do you expect? We’re in year four of this. It just happens.”