Trump did not even nod to Congress’s right to know – keeping senior members in the dark until the operation was under way. Only after it had begun did they bother to tell members of the congressional “gang of eight”: the top Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives, plus the chairs and ranking members of the intelligence committees of the two chambers. In one fell swoop, the capture appeared to render the 1973 War Powers Resolution obsolete. The 1973 act was passed in the wake of the Vietnam war amid widespread fear of an incipient “imperial president"