Rather than stand up to his president, calling emergency hearings, or otherwise use his powers to address the wrongdoing, a Republican senator with subpoena power is saying he won’t do anything until the press does his job for him. But Burr did better than Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who literally flipped off a reporter asking about the news. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told my colleague Dylan Scott, “If the FBI director feels the president did something inappropriate, he should come in and tell us,” and dismissed the need for a special prosecutor, saying, “Nobody’s showed me a crime anywhere.”
The sad truth is that whether or not Trump is “brought down” has at best an indirect relationship to the gravity of the charges against him. His fate depends much more heavily on how Republican leaders in Congress respond to the scandals in question than it does on those scandals’ details or severity. Trump is the American president. He can only be removed from office if a majority of the House votes to impeach and a two-thirds majority of the Senate votes to convict.
The Comey scandal won’t end Trump’s presidency
unless Republicans agree it should
Vox
It’s as quiet and still as a mouse
in the halls of the Senate and House
where courageous conviction
is visible fiction
enabling a plundering louse.
Mary Boren, 5/31/17