The State of the Union is Divided. And That's How Republicans Love It.

Things you should know before leading up to tonight's State of the Union address.

We are currently dealing with a federal government where the White House and certain Republican members of Congress are openly attacking agencies like the FBI and Department of Justice, because those agencies have been digging into financial and political scandals caused by the current White House administration before trump entered the Oval Office in January 2017.

There have been signs that the FBI has been digging into the backgrounds of various trump lackeys - such as Paul Manafort and Carter Page - years before trump even announced his candidacy in 2015.

Yet we've got Congresscritters like Nunes tossing around "classified" memos - that he and his staffers created - trying to discredit the Bureau for really only one purpose: protect trump from the oncoming inevitability of Mueller prosecuting him for Obstruction (or worse).

Referring to David A Graham at the Atlantic:

Not long ago, the standoff now consuming Washington would have been unthinkable.  The Trump White House and Justice Department are sharply at odds over releasing a memo prepared by Representative Devin Nunes, alleging misconduct by the FBI and Justice Department. The president seems poised to approve the release of the document in order to seek his own vindication...

Most remarkable of all is the all-out assault by Trump and his allies on the independence of the Department of Justice and the FBI. On Tuesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan joined the chorus of critics calling for the release of the Nunes memo. “Let it all out, get it all out there. Cleanse the organization,” he told Fox News.

This crisis may have arrived suddenly, but the conditions that allow for this moment have been building for some time. While there’s great concern about Donald Trump destroying longstanding norms, this is the latest example of how the Trump presidency has hastened the demolition of norms that began eroding long ago.

Consider the Nunes memo. Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, prepared the memo along with staffers. The four-page document reportedly suggests that DOJ and FBI officials relied upon information from Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence official who investigated Trump on the Democratic Party’s dime, in applying for a warrant to surveil Carter Page, a former Trump foreign-policy adviser...

This ties into the trumpian argument that the Steele Dossier is a partisan hoax, getting abused as a source of information that the FBI is relying on to get illegal FISA warrants (and other calamities).

Problems with that argument are:

1. The report notes that Rod Rosenstein - Deputy Attorney General backing Mueller's special counsel investigation into trump/Russia - requested a renewal on a FISA warrant on Page, meaning there was existing evidence that passed muster for a FISA warrant in the first place.
2. Steele's Dossier isn't what started the investigations into trump, Manafort, Page, and others in trump's orbit. FBI had received reports from other foreign agencies and contacts about Russian meddling into our elections for years (look at the Dutch giving us heads up about Russian hackers as early as 2014). All Steele's dirt-digging turned up was corroborating evidence...

You don't even have to scratch the surface of this faux outrage to see what Nunes is attempting: He's trying to discredit Rosenstein (at the worst to drive him from office), any high-ranking FBI officials in favor of the investigations into trump/Russia (to purge them out as well), and create any kind of excuse (even a lie) to justify shutting down Mueller before he hits trump with any charge.

This is all causing a Constitutional Crisis where the political partisanship of one party is hampering a federal agency's ability to do its job. Back to Graham:

Seldom has a congressional committee launched such a frontal assault on the FBI and Department of Justice. It’s been more common for oversight panels to be criticized for excessive coziness with the executive-branch agencies they regulate. A rare exception is the mid-1970s Church Committee, which investigated intelligence-community abuses. Yet that committee conducted lengthy investigations following standard procedures; the rush to push out a short memo that seems mostly to serve the president’s political purposes is rather different...

This is not to say that any of these institutions were ever beyond reproach. As I wrote last week, the FBI and the intelligence community make for imperfect vessels for the hopes of those who see them as defenders of rule of law against Trump. The FBI has at various moments in history wielded its powers to persecute political opponents. But the FBI, and the Justice Department, were granted a presumption of some objectivity. This, like the delicate diplomatic concepts that Trump has casually destroyed, was a fiction, but it was a fiction that allowed the system to function by presenting procedures and rules. Institutions provided a framework, and while there might be differences of opinion about the conclusions reached, there was a process for reaching them.

Now, however, the various factions can’t even reach an agreement on what the rules are. The Republicans and Democrats on the intelligence committee don’t agree on the rules, much less the outcomes. The White House is attacking its own Justice Department; Trump expresses puzzlement at why “my guys” in the department don’t care of his dirty work, while the Department of Justice puzzles over why Trump is endangering their procedures and reputation...

We are at the point where one of the major institutions of our government - one responsible for investigating crimes and performing some semblance of justice for our citizenry - is under partisan attack on a scale darker than any previous ones. An attack designed to force that agency - and others - to become partisan wings to a single political party (Republicans) dominated by a would-be dictator eager for such powers to abuse to his whims.

It’s important for Americans to question the FBI and the Justice Department, and to criticize the press. Accountability is essential in a democracy, and none of these institutions has ever been perfect. But in the present case, those leading the assault seem to be doing so for cynical reasons. Trump is attacking the Justice Department and FBI because of an investigation that threatens his presidency; he has repeatedly made charges (remember the “wiretapping” claim?) that proved to be false. Nunes and other House Republicans claim overreaches by the intelligence community, yet just voted against reforms of the surveillance process.

These attacks aren't out of any duty toward reform, or reparation. These attacks are by a criminal president (and his Congressional allies) doing everything he can to stop investigations into crimes he may have committed before (and especially during) his political campaign.

The consequences to these attacks can be devastating. If trump gets his way, he gains full control of an agency in the FBI able to investigate any individual on any charge that trump can aim at them. trump could gain full control of the Department of Justice that could carry out any criminal proceedings on people guilty only of opposing trump. Critics in the media could find themselves in jail. Democrats at the federal and state level could find themselves hounded out of elected office, creating a one-party authoritarian rule.

trump becomes the bullying dictator he dreams of being. And the Republican Party gets to tag along for the ride.

We are at the point where it's clear that the United States is now in another Civil War. It's not like the first one, where it was mostly states vs. states. Today, it's a civil war between Parties: between one party still holding to the rule of law and constitutional norms (Democrats) against a party driven to the extremes of breaking every law in order to seize and keep power (Republicans).

The state of the Union tonight is in tatters. It's Republicans vs. Democrats. It's trump vs. the Constitution. It's Russia, standing on the sidelines laughing their collective asses off at our riven status.

If trump succeeds at breaking the FBI, at turning the entirety of the DoJ bureaucracy to his whims, we are so very royally fucked. Charles I of England won't have sh-t on what trump could do.

People, you need to call now, before it's too late, and let every Congresscritter - Republican and Democrat both - know you will stand up against trump's attempt to save his criminal ass from the rule of law.