[The Federalist] Last week when Andrew McCabe launched his Orange Man Bad tour, he stunned the public with claims that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein suggested using the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump from office. Reaction on the hill came quickly, with Sen. Lindsey Graham calling the claim "beyond stunning."Graham, the new chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, promised an investigation, telling CBS’s "Face the Nation": "There’s an allegation by the acting FBI director at the time that the deputy attorney general was basically trying to do an administrative coup, take the president down [using] the 25th Amendment process. The deputy attorney general denies it. I promise your viewers the following: that we will have a hearing about who’s telling the truth, what actually happened."
But the supposed consideration of the 25th Amendment shouldn’t be the focus of the outrage. After all, that amendment, which allows the vice president plus a "majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide" to declare the president "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office," is part of our constitutional system. Its stringent requirements for removing a president ensure it cannot be used to execute a soft coup by political opponents.
The true scandal is not the swirling gossip that Rosenstein mentioned the 25th Amendment, but what has been front and center for more than two years: It’s the dossier, stupid!
It’s the dossier, its funding, its creation, and its use. It’s the leaks, the sabotage by political appointees and career DOJ and FBI agents, the media’s complicity, and the triggering of a special counsel, all with the end goal of removing the duly elected president by pressuring Trump to resign or face impeachment.