FBI Shutdown

   It's clear that the White House has been trying  to close off the investigation into allegations of collusion with Kremlin hacks and fixing last year's presidential election. But don't be surprised if the attacks escalate into an effort to shut down the FBI entirely.
   Couple the president's verbosity over the nation's premier investigative agency, relying on his apparent belief that the FBI is his personal police force, with the cooperation of other Republicans who are now claiming to have unearthed a "secret society" within the agency that is determined to overturn the current president.
   But amid all the outrage propounded by the GOP in support of a memo that Republicans themselves wrote, the propounders so far refuse to divulge the contents of said memo, even to other Republicans on various intelligence committees or to other investigative agencies such as the Secret Service and, yes, the FBI itself.
   The strategy seems to be focused on forcing the firing or resignation of top FBI officials, one of whose primary sins is that .... (his wife is a Democrat).  And perhaps more critical is the report that when the president himself asked the official who he had voted for in the presidential election, the senior FBI chief did not say that he had voted for The Don. Rather, in what is a tradition among many senior level law enforcement officials, he did not vote at all.
   Nevertheless, the fact that his wife not only was a Democrat, but was also a candidate in a state election (she lost) and had received a campaign contribution from a group connected to Hillary Clinton. (Horrors!)
   All that apparently was enough to persuade the president and his GOP allies that the FBI guy was a serious enough threat to the nation's chief law enforcement executive to warrant ousting him.
   So far, though, top leaders of the FBI are still on the job, as are the career rank and file agents of the bureau.
   But whether the current director and the current assistant director can be fired by Attorney General Jeff Session (who recused himself from the investigation into the Russia probe), or by the president himself, who is increasingly closer to the probers' curiosity, is an open question.
   The president has agreed to be interviewed by team led by special counsel Robert Mueller, but that also promise may be broken if the president doesn't get his way on how the interview is to be conducted. For example, whether the questions should be submitted in advance and the answers be returned at his convenience.
   And if the president does not get agreement to his terms, the probers could then subpoena him to appear before a grand jury, where he would be questioned without being accompanied by his own lawyers.
   That, of course, could mean a citation for contempt.

   So who's really in charge of a legal investigation? The duly appointed investigators and the courts, or the president, even if he happens to be the target of the investigation?
   It is a puzzlement.

   Unless, of course, the president tries to shut down the investigation as well as the FBI itself.
   Can he unilaterally fire the special counsel leading the investigation? President Richard Nixon tried that, in what became known as the Saturday Night Massacre. Nixon tried to order the attorney general to do it, but the AG resigned instead, as did his deputy.
   It seems we're looking at the potential for a similar confrontation now. And we know how the last one turned out. Nixon resigned the presidency rather than be impeached, when it became clear that he would face trial in the Senate, convicted and removed from office.
   By the way, while it may not be possible to indict a president on criminal charges while in office, it is possible to do that after impeachment and removal from office. At least, that's what the Constitution says.
   Unless the new guy somehow arranges for the Constitution to be suspended.