Sen. Chuck Grassley is stubbornly moving forward on a bill that his own party doesn't support, his own leadership won't bring to a vote, his own president wouldn't sign, but one that the courts would likely overturn, multiple outlets are reporting.
The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman is likely to preside over a Thursday vote on a bipartisan bill that attempts to shield special counsel Robert Mueller from being fired by President Donald Trump without cause despite the landmines that abound.
The bill, authored by Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Thom Tillis, as well as Democratic Sens. Chris Coons and Cory Booker, would be the first congressional action to protect Mueller from Trump.
If it ever sees the light of day once it leaves Grassley's committee.
"Appetites change if circumstances do. I remember a president who said he would never sign stronger sanctions against Russia and folks who said there was no point in our bringing it up. Ultimately, it passed the Senate 98-2 and the president signed it into law," Coons told The Wall Street Journal.
Grassley has more skin in the game. By moving forward, he's thumbing his nose at the party and Mitch McConnell, last week saying that the Senate majority leader's views "do not govern what happens here in the Judiciary Committee."
"Does my stock with any colleagues make a big difference to me?" Politico quoted Grassley. "You've just got to do your job and let the chips fall where they may."
And those chips aren't going to fall Grassley's way. Even if it did get a vote and pass Congress, for sake of argument, the bill wouldn't pass the smell test with the Supreme Court, expert say. At issue is limiting the president in who he may or may not terminate.
"As a scholar who has studied the Constitution for over 30 years and written extensively on constitutional law, I believe that the bills in their current form are unwise and unconstitutional," Yale law professor Akhil Reed Amar, a Democrat and Trump critic, said in his testimony before the panel.
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