CNN’s chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin has warned that America’s constitutional system “may simply be incapable of responding” to the threat posed to it by President Donald Trump.
“Our constitutional system never contemplated a President like Donald Trump,” Toobin wrote in an opinion piece published by The New Yorker, where he is also a staff writer, on Friday.
“The Framers anticipated friction among the three branches of government, which has been a constant throughout our history,” he explained. “But the Trump White House has now established a complete blockade against the legislative branch, thwarting any meaningful oversight.”
Toobin documented the multiple times that Trump and members of his administration have resisted congressional oversight.
Impeachment was “the most obvious political response,” he noted, but Toobin predicted the Trump administration would fight and tie up any cases it became involved in court, where they would “drag on.”
“So, after nearly two and a half centuries, Trump will create a new constitutional norm—in which the executive can defy the legislature without consequence,” Toobin concluded. “The only likely remedy, therefore, will lie with the voters, next year.”
Read Toobin’s full article in The New Yorker here.