Erica Newland is a counsel for the nonprofit group Protect Democracy and a former attorney adviser in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. President Trump said Thursday that he will “maybe definitely” declare a national emergency to free up funds for his long-promised wall at the southern border. But when it comes to the president’s findings about the state of the world, OLC generally defers to the president. Sometimes, we just wouldn’t look that closely at the claims the president was making about the state of the world. And I hope, more than anything else, that they are asking themselves whether they, too, are just fashioning a pretext, building an alibi.

Source: Washington Post January 10, 2019 23:48 UTC