One week, House Democrats engage in impeachment inquiries of President Trump, excluding Republicans from even witnessing the proceedings.

The next, they complain that the President excluded them from being briefed on the Baghdadi raid.

“President Trump pointed his finger at House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff,” begins Carlin Becker’s Washington Examiner account of the Baghdadi biz. The president, calling Adam Schiff “the biggest leaker in Washington,” explained that “[w]e were going to notify them last night, but we decided not to do that because Washington leaks like I’ve never seen before.”

Whereas leaking was the word on Trump’s lips, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi inveighed against him merely for excluding her and her gang from the big story.

And so soon after the whole secret-proceedings-in-the-basement brouhaha!

This is not just hypocrisy. Another word seems warranted. Ultra-hypocrisy?

How about estoppel?

That is an old legal principle barring someone who has made a claim from denying it later.

Estoppel also bars folks from prosecuting someone for doing something they themselves have done to that someone. It thus reflects a very robust notion of fairness, which can be extended to fundamental rights — as one legal theorist has argued, “an aggressor has endorsed the rule that aggression is legitimate because he is committing aggression,” and therefore has no cause to complain. If aggressors wish to prohibit other folks’ aggressions, they must accept their own as also unwarranted, and are “estopped” from making the claim against another.

Thereby a general principle for society emerges. Broadly, this principle might have some bearing on American foreign policy. On a more humble level, though, it serves as an explanation for the muted outrage at Trump’s selective consultation.

Live by exclusion, die by exclusion.

twv