The news has leaked out that President Trump has secretly built a new, not previously announced, wall that was finished in the dark of night while the nation slept. It stretches from coast to coast and from Canada to Mexico.

It’s called the Great Stonewall. It’s a replica of a stonewall we’ve seen before:  Watergate. It comes with the bilious stench of “cover-up” that just won’t go away.

The Great Stonewall was built by a select team of Trump insiders and Republican supplicants on Capitol Hill: Trump himself, Bannon, Conway, Spicer, Miller, the Republican majority on the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and others. The Great Stonewall has the same characteristics as all of its predecessors: dissembling (well, that meeting was in my “other capacity” so the fact that I didn’t mention it when asked under oath is of no consequence), misdirection and just plain lies.

The cost of the Great Stonewall is considerable: among them, the further loss of credibility of many leading players in the Trump ensemble, including the President himself, untold damage to the democratic process and, if the worst fears are true, serious potential harm to the security of the country. The problem is made worse, of course, by the fact that the President and members of his entourage have lied about so many things, so consistently, throughout the campaign and since the election, that it is difficult to credit anything they say when the truth could be so damaging to their situation.

The solution seems obvious: If there is nothing to hide, appoint an independent “prosecutor” (call him/her what you like: “investigator” would be fine) to dig out the documents, transcripts and other relevant material, take testimony under oath and eventually to get to the bottom of the “Russia Connection” and make a full public report of findings. If there is nothing to hide, Trump and his gang will come out way ahead … if there is nothing to hide. If there is something to hide, then heads, perhaps many of them, will roll, as well they should.

I, of course, don’t know whether there is anything to hide; no one does. But I do know one thing that I believe is irrefutable: it is not acceptable to expect the American people to believe in an investigation of the potentially guilty parties conducted by of themselves or by their political allies in Congress.  There must be an independent investigation. If not, this issue will haunt this administration for the rest of its days. The Great Stonewall must come down.