Good morning. I'm James Holman from the Washington Post and this is the Daily

202 for Wednesday, February 19. In today's news, Bill Barr threatens to quit if the president doesn't stop tweeting about his department.

All the Democrats sound eager to pile on Mike Bloomberg in tonight's debate, and China expels three reporters because of a coronavirus op-ed they didn't write.

But first, the big idea.

During his Senate impeachment trial,

Democrats repeatedly asserted that President Trump is not above the law.

But since his acquittal two weeks ago, the president has taken a series of steps

aimed at showing that essentially he is the law.

Trump granted clemency yesterday to a clutch of political allies circumventing the usual Justice Department process.

The pardons and commutations followed Trump's moves to punish

witnesses in his impeachment trial, to publicly intervene in a pending legal case

to urge leniency for a friend, to attack a federal judge, to accuse a juror of bias,

and to threaten to sue his own government for investigating him. Speaking to reporters yesterday afternoon, the

president explained that he's quote the chief law enforcement officer of the

country. Trump used his sweeping presidential pardon powers to forgive the crimes of a list of bold-faced names, including disgraced politician Rod Blagojevich, convicted junk bond King Michael Milk and

the

convicted junk bond King Michael Milken and former New York police commissioner Bernie Kerrick.

Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of seven convicted

white collar criminals at the center of federal

anti-corruption and tax fraud cases spanning decades, alongside four women whose cases were not

as well known. The action freed Blagojevich, the former Democratic

Governor of Illinois, from a federal correctional facility in Colorado where he was

...