Sitting Duck

"This is all too much!"

"We can handle it!"

"We can't handle it!"

"Our very future as a law firm is at stake!"

"Oh, stop being so melodramatic!"

"Melodramatic?  I had a nightmare last night I had to spend Father's Day weekend with the Trump's at Camp David!  Group showers!  Group bunking!  Mandatory scheduling!  Then I had to go out to the swimming pool to watch Melania and Donald do a weird skit while Barron sulked and Marine cadets politely fake-laughed!"

The deliberation of the DOJ Practice Group in Prince and Prowling's largest conference room was interrupted by the entrance of a confused and lost summer associate who opened the door and looked around befuddled.

"Get out of here!" snarled former Senator Evermore Breadman, and the young woman beat a hasty retreat.  "While it's true that our special role as DOJ's outside counsel for dealing with Trump litigation saw an explosion of action this past week, we have enough personnel to deal with it.  Our billings should be making every partner here overjoyed, frankly, and a little hard work never hurt anybody!"

"Evermore," said a recent hire for Constitutional and criminal defense, "my daughter is in law school right now, and she said DOJ's June 9th filing in the CREW litigation was basically arguing that the Emoluments Clause is made of Swiss cheese and cannot be interpreted literally or every Founding Father POTUS would have been guilty of violating it.  And I didn't have a good response to that!  And with another Originalist on the Supreme Court, how will that argument even fly?"

"A good response is to tell the whippersnapper to pass a bar exam and get a real job before she lectures her father on Constitutional law!" retorted Breadman.  "And it will never make it to the Supreme Court!"

"DOJ's Emoluments filing didn't deter the Attorneys General of Maryland and the District of Columbia from suing under the Emoluments Clause on Monday," the man replied, "and then Congressional Democrats filed an Emoluments suit on Wednesday!  We are talking about groundbreaking Constitutional litigation that could end up in front of the Supreme Court!"

"Well if it does, which it won't, you should be excited about that, anyway!" rejoined Breadman.

"We could lose!"

"Lose?!" cried Breadman.  "The correct Constitutional remedy is impeachment, and that's what the courts will say."

"The courts are under attack by Trump," said a senior partner.  "Appeals judges are more motivated than ever to assert their own independence!  You think they didn't see the 'Dear Leader' Cabinet meeting?  The testimony from our Attorney General that he has never paid the slightest attention to Russians during or after the campaign?  Newt 'let's impeach Clinton' Gingrich arguing that a POTUS cannot be prosecuted for obstruction of justice?  Trump's floating the idea of firing Special Counsel Mueller and/or Deputy A.G. Rosenstein?"

"Don't you get it?" asked Breadman.  "The shooting of Scalise changed everything!  Republicans are now the victims!"

"Trump's personal attorney hired his own attorney to represent him on Russian investigation matters!" exclaimed another partner.  "What the hell does that mean?!  Then the D.C. and New York bars received ethics complaints on him.  I barely survived two ethics investigations already!  I can't get hauled in there for a third!"

"We are providing counsel to the Justice Department!" cried Breadman.  "Nobody can file an ethics complaint about that!"

"They can if they have evidence we are deliberately mounting false evidence--"

"How dare you suggest that!" exclaimed Breadman, turning red in the face.  "It's DOJ that's mounting the false evidence!  I mean evidence.  I mean we're only writing legal memos to DOJ!  Nothing about evidence!  We don't consider evidence.  There's no evidence!"  He picked up the glass of Coke he had spiked earlier and took several big gulps.

"There will be if the tax returns come out," another senior partner said quietly.  "Is it really conceivable none of them will be leaked when we have seen leaks from White House, DOJ, CIA, FBI, NSA, Senate GOP, State Department, Pentagon--"

"Not everybody is willing to go to jail to take down Trump," said another.

"There will be no more talk of taking down Trump!" exclaimed Breadman.

"Isn't that what we're defending?"

"No!" insisted Breadman.  "We are providing outside counsel to the Justice Department, end of story!"

"But Breadman," said a junior partner, "you taught me that this law firm can make money no matter who is in office.  Do you really think we will get Democratic clients after assisting Trump's DOJ?"

"Our names aren't on the briefs!" said Breadman.  "I know what I'm doing!"

Across the street, Washington Post "Metro" reporter Perry Winkle was sitting on a Lafayette Square park bench talking quietly to a White House insider.  "I can't get the political desk to publish any of these stories," Winkle said.  "They just don't believe that people in the White House are seeing or hearing ghosts."

"But it's true!" protested the source.  "Melania is furious that Barron has already starting talking to the twin preschoolers, but who else is he going to play with here?"

"Um, it might be true," said Winkle, who knew that if he proposed the story to his own editor, Winkle would be sent back to the sabbatical that had landed him on anti-hallucination medication in the first place.  "But they already think most of the people in the White House are crazy or scared."

"I brought you photos of Impeach Trump stickers showing up on bathroom mirrors, filing cabinets, printers--"

"Do you have any photos of them obviously taken inside the White House?"

"No, but I have a couple photos of a drunk Steve Bannon passed out in the golf room."

"Golf room?"

"Yeah, Trump took the books out of the library and put in a putting green."

"Hm.  I might be able to use those."  Winkle pulled out his cellphone cable to transfer files.

 "Trump went to Camp David this weekend because the Scalise shooting scared the bejesus out of him.  He's a sitting duck on a golf course."

Winkle reflected on that a moment.  "That's the first rational decision he's made in a long time, but it won't have any staying power," he finally said.

Inside the West Wing, Ghost Dennis floated out of the National Security Council after briefing the White House's premier leaker on Eric Trump's latest business trip report to his father.

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COMING UP:     The Cult of Trump