TELLING IT LIKE IT IS – AT 9:54 A.M. ET:  The Washington probes may be turning into a useless farce, but they may still bring Trump down, which is the objective.  The Democrats are trying everything, literally everything.  From IBD: 

Politics: It is merely a coincidence that just as the Trump-Russia collusion story started seriously falling apart, Democrats suddenly shifted gears to file a lawsuit against President Trump for allegedly violating an obscure provision of the Constitution involving foreign "emoluments."

On Monday, attorneys general from Maryland and Washington, D.C., filed a lawsuit against Trump claiming that he is "flagrantly violating" the Constitution because he is still the owner of his businesses, even though he's given up the operation of them.

On Wednesday, nearly 200 Democratic lawmakers sued Trump on the same basis, with Michigan Rep. John Conyers claiming that "Trump has conflicts of interest in at least 25 countries, and it appears he's using his presidency to maximize his profits."

For those who don't know, Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution stipulates that "no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State."

The idea that Trump's businesses could be a problem vis-a-vis this clause never came up before the election. In fact, the only article we found in a search was one that questioned whether Hillary Clinton violated it as secretary of state when her foundation was getting fat foreign gifts while she was making decisions that benefited foreign governments.

The topic came up only after the election — but before Democrats decided to charge Trump with colluding with Russia to swing the election, after which the topic disappeared from view.

But after Democrats came up empty-handed with James Comey's testimony last Thursday — in which the former FBI director made it clear that Trump had not been a subject of the investigation and that he didn't believe Trump had pressured him to drop his investigation into Russian collusion — "emoluments" suddenly shot to the front of the Democrats' agenda. Why?

The chance that Democrats will succeed in their cases against Trump are incredibly slim. The Supreme Court has never heard a case involving this clause. As a result, it's not even known whether it applies to the president; there is in fact a debate about that among legal scholars. It's also far from clear whether Democratic lawmakers or state attorneys general have standing to bring such a suit, because they'd have to show that they were somehow harmed by the Trump Organization's business dealings.

COMMENT:  Read the rest.  It's fascinating.  I'm especially worried about the activities of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, former head of the FBI.  Special counsels have a bad history.  They often become witch-hunts, designed more to keep the probe going and to justify their salaries than to find real truth.  Some good people have been badly hurt.  And special counsels tend to take a long time, disrupting government and casting a cloud of suspicion over officeholders who may have done nothing wrong.

June 15,  2017