Trump's plan to jam through appointments enters new 'extreme' phase: expert

President-elect Donald Trump’s efforts to jam through appointments for his next administration with as little resistance as possible entered a new, “extreme” phase, according to a legal expert.

The plan already being discussed among a group of House Republicans involves Trump dismissing the Senate “against its will,” which would allow him to stack the government with whomever he chooses in the resulting "recess," wrote Akhil Reed Amar, a constitutional law professor at Yale University.

“This is flagrantly unlawful,” he told readers in an op-ed published Friday in The Atlantic. Even more than that, Amar said the threat from House Republicans should be exposed as “an autocratic move that is not just unlawful but contemptuous of constitutionalism.”

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The scheme, according to the Yale professor, would see House Republicans manufacture an “illusory” disagreement to spark the president’s adjournment power.

“First, the House of Representatives would pass a resolution calling for a recess,” he wrote. “The Senate would then (in all likelihood) refuse to pass the resolution. Trump would then declare the houses to be in ‘disagreement’ and adjourn both houses for as long as he likes.”

The "recess-appointments spree" would ensue from there, Amar said.

He noted the other Washington maneuver gaining traction that Trump could pull to get his nominations through the finish line – through a Senate vote to recess itself after the incoming president’s inauguration, “allowing him to unilaterally make a series of ‘recess’ appointments.”

“That plan may formally be legal, but it is plainly improper,” Amar wrote.

Either way, the chaos swirling around Trump’s cabinet selections is just a preview of what’s to come, he said.

“Donald Trump has not even returned to office, and already a constitutional crisis may be in the making.”