Senate Republicans still hunky-dory with Trump, trying desperately to ignore Mueller's findings

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As it's becoming more and more clear as we have time to digest the full Mueller report, it showed serious malfeasance by Donald Trump, both in the campaign and after, while in office. Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are ready to ignore it all and just move on.

"I consider this to be, basically, the end of the road," said Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican. At one point, Lee was an ardent never-Trumper, and regularly purports to be a serious constitutional scholar and adherent to the rule of law. He sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which would investigate Mueller's findings if the Republican Senate Judiciary Committee did that kind of thing anymore. Under Sen. Lindsey Graham it's spending even more of its time and energy rubber-stamping Trump's unqualified judicial nominees than it did under Sen. Chuck Grassley.

Another erstwhile Republican critic of Trump, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio says that really, while Trump's actions might have been "inappropriate," never mind because "the special counsel reached no conclusion on obstruction of justice." Which is a big stretch of the eleven instances of likely obstruction identified by Mueller, who determined that it was up to Congress to use its "authority to prohibit a president's corrupt use of his authority." Which is lobbing that big ol' obstruction ball right over the net to Congress. Senate Republicans are hoping that it lands dead. As one senior aide said to the Times, "If the most respected law enforcement official of his generation did not have the temerity to accuse Mr. Trump of obstructing justice, why should they?"

The fact that the Constitution demands it appears not to have occurred to them, either that or they just don't give a damn. That makes it even more critical for House Democrats to act. To force the issue. To lay bare everything Trump has done and to make Republicans either embrace their crook in chief before the 2020 election, or do their jobs.

from Daily Kos http://bit.ly/2vnpc9M