>> His cutout is the AG- but since AG serves at his pleasure, a venal officeholder willing to flout tradition and decency could launch personal attacks on whomever she pleases.
>Lots of precedent for that.
>From Wikipedia, regarding John Mitchell, Nixon's AG:

Yes, well Nixon was caught spying on political opponents, using the FBI to attack opponents and he resigned to avoid impeachment. The suggestion this time is that current POTUS was being spied upon rather than doing the spying, and that political opponents conspired widely including misleading voters by leaking debate questions and colluding with foreigners to concoct pee pee dossiers to accuse Trump of colluding with foreigners and justify the spying. You'd have to hope it's not all true, as the scope of the conspiracy makes Nixon look like small beer.

Meanwhile, Nixon got caught mostly by reporters and congressional aides. This time, congressional secrecy and modern media ensure that unless Trump can be blamed for spying on himself, move along there's nothing to see here.

>>Bad things happen when law enforcement people start mixing with politics.

Amen. McCabe is being lionized by some corporate media and even is mounting an appeal into unfair dismissal! If he were a Trump staffer, Mueller would have recommended prosecution for lying under oath.

>>Now we have people doing things solely for the purpose of staying in office.
>>Here in NJ we have US reps whose sole job is keep a military base - that has no earthly reason to exist- open because of the jobs it supports.
>>Bad things happen when people think that way.

Democracy is the worse form of government apart from all the other forms tried from time to time. Those people remain in office because people vote for them.

Same with Trump: secretive impeachment makes no sense when sunlight on alleged crimes will leave the US electorate empowered in 2020.