Don't Let the Law Get in His Way

 This article from Atlantic is a good read. I know, I know, we are all up to here with the outrageous things Trump does. That works to his advantage. Even the subject of this article will disappear  with the Twitter cycle. His plans to pardon a phalanx of war criminals for Memorial Day (may as well do a posthumous job for Goebbels and Himmler while he is at it) will rise. And they will fall to his plan to hijack A Capitol Fourth and turn the event into Triumph of the Donald. (Leni, where are you, now that he needs you?)
 But while we are here, it is worth pausing to note that breaking laws has become standard operating procedure for Costa Lago Nostra. A section from the Atlantic piece by Garrett Epps:

 ... 26 US code § 6103(f)(1) ...  reads: “Upon written request from the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives, the chairman of the Committee on Finance of the Senate, or the chairman of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Secretary [of the Treasury] shall furnish such committee with any return or return information specified in such request,” subject only to a requirement that the return be considered in closed session.
 Served with a proper demand by Representative Richard Neal, the Ways and Means Committee chair, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin responded, “I have determined that the Committee’s request lacks a legitimate legislative purpose,” and that he therefore would not comply.
Let’s begin at the beginning: To paraphrase Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny, Section 6103 is what we lawyers call a “statute.” It was adopted by Congress as part of the Tax Reform Act of 1976. The final Senate vote on the bill was 81–1; in the House, it was 405–2. It was signed by President Gerald Ford (for those scoring at home, a Republican). Under the United States Constitution, Article VI, Section 2, it, like all statutes, is “the supreme law of the land.” It contains no provision requiring a “legislative purpose” at all. That’s not an oversight. Congress isn’t always legislating. It has other functions; one of them is to investigate officials and even private citizens, which has been part of Congress’s mission since its 1790 inquiry into the financier Robert Morris’s management of federal revenue during the Revolution.

 The incumbent brings us something new under the sun almost every week. But the substitution of himself  for the law should give us all a little extra cause for concern this week.