‘Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a former constitutional law professor, said he suspects trump doesn’t actually want a constitutional crisis ― but also doesn’t care if he triggers one if that’s what it takes to get a loyalist like Gaetz running the Department of Justice. “He wants what he wants, and he’s not going to allow the Constitution to stand in the way,” Raskin told HuffPost. “But you know, he has happened upon, really, one of the Senate’s core functions.”

 Raskin is optimistic that Republican senators, who this week elected Sen. John Thune of South Dakota as their incoming majority leader, will stand up for their institutional prerogatives. Thune has said he wouldn’t discard the filibuster, for example, and offered only a half-hearted endorsement of allowing recess appointments. “I don’t think, in the final analysis, that members of Congress are going to surrender our essential constitutional functions,” Raskin said.

Former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, could see no good outcome if the choice is between installing the likes of Gaetz into the top law enforcement job in the country or bringing on a constitutional crisis. “I don’t even know what the difference is, what you just described. They both sound like the same thing,” Pelosi said.

For his part, Thune suggested Thursday evening in a Fox News interview that if trump did not have the votes to get someone like Gaetz through the Senate, then he also did not have the votes he would need to have the chamber agree to an adjournment.
“The same Republicans… that might have a problem voting for somebody under regular order probably also have a problem voting to put the Senate into recess,” Thune said….’ (via HuffPost Latest News)