Those who tuned into last week’s congressional testimony from Marie Yovanovitch, the ousted U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, heard an awkward phrase over and over again: that political appointees “serve at the pleasure of the president.” For most of those present, the idea that President Donald Trump can lawfully remove ambassadors and other top federal officials at will is a concession to legal and constitutional reality. For others, it was a justification all its own.When Adam Schiff noted this, for example, one House Republican wrote on Twitter that the House Intelligence Committee chairman had been “forced to admit that the president …read more
Source:: The New Republic
