The Rule of Law In Danger

Justice is supposed to be blind.  That is not the case in America today and President Trump is partly to blame.

[Update:  This today from the Daily Caller:

President Donald Trump chose to have the indictments of 12 Russian hackers announced before his Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a Tuesday Bloomberg report.

Trump wanted the indictments announced ahead of the Monday summit to give him leverage over Putin, a source familiar with the matter told Bloomberg on Tuesday. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein gave Trump the option of having the indictments released before or after Helsinki, according to the report.

Rosenstein cited national security concerns to allow him to share details of grand jury proceedings with Trump.

A portion of this post was based on incomplete information and thus has been edited to reflect the above, that the timing of the indictments was at the behest of Pres. Trump.  The thrust of the original argument remains.]

For all the good Trump has done for this nation — and indeed, in terms of economics, pulling us out of the Paris Accord, rolling back the EPA regs, putting Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, just to name a few, he has a list of accomplishments Reagan would envy — Trump has utterly failed the nation and his own administration when it comes to reestablishing the rule of law.  That most basic of Rules, dating back to the Magna Carta of 1215, is that no one is above the law.

In January, 2017, I quoted Stephen Presser, a law professor at Northwestern University, who wrote in an op-ed:

I can’t help but wonder whether the many millions who voted for President-elect Trump also understood what the legal academy had all but forgotten, that what was at stake in the past election was nothing less than the rule of law and self-government itself.

Prof. Presser had arrived at the same conclusion I had:

. . . Obama, by his unconstitutional Executive actions and his weaponization of the regulatory bureaucracies — and supported between John Roberts and the activist progressive wing of the Supreme Court — had taken this nation past the brink of a Constitutional crisis.  All that remained was for Hillary to push it to the point of no return.  And going forward, if Trump fails, the progs well know that they will still have that opportunity.

. . .  Had Hildabeast been elected, all of Obama’s acts would have been validated.  Progressives would have attained dominance in America that would outlast our lifetimes, given the changes they would have de facto made to our laws and what little remains of our Constitutional system of checks and balances.  Congress would have been an afterthought, with progressives ruling through the bureaucracy, by Executive Orders and through the Courts.  Ever more taxpayer money would have been funneled to cronies, laundered through Democrat organizations such as public sector unions and Planned Parenthood, and sent to the EU for “global warming,” the biggest socialist gambit / theft ever conceived.  The Supreme Court, once in solid control of the progressive left for decades to come, would have reliably rendered political decisions to advance progressive goals.  Conservatives and the religious would have been fully pushed out of the public square, their voices effectively silenced.  So to say that we dodged a bullet a little over a week ago is the mother of all understatements.

In all fairness to Trump, he has dealt somewhat with lawlessness in the above mentioned areas.  He has at least rolled us back from that brink.  Nor is he himself endangering the Constitution by his acts.

But this nation was treated to eight years of utter lawlessness by Obama.  That has to be fully corrected or it will happen again, if not pull our nation apart at the seams while Trump is still in office.  Progressives acted as if they were above the law with Obama in power — and they were.  The DOJ, the IRS and the EPA treated Congress and Congressional subpoenas with Strzok-like arrogance.  Lois Lerner, who illegally targeted conservative organization through the IRS, has retired with full pension and no prosecution.  IRS Commissioner John Koskinen was part and parcel of covering that up, lying to Congress with no action taken.  NASA’s Tom Karl refused to honor a Congressional subpoena when it was clear that he fraudulently adjusted our temperature records.  He too has since retired and is now likely sharing mimosas with Lerner and Koskinen.

Then there was the most obscene debasement of justice our nation has ever seen in the pass given to Hillary Clinton over her private server, her violation of our laws regarding classified information, and her use of a private server to avoid subpoenas.  I am here to tell you as a person who held a security clearance, who worked extensively with classified material, and who is now a lawyer, had I done a fraction of what Hillary did, I would be in jail for life.  These were charges brought on facts so open and shut a third year law student could have successfully prosecuted them.  Comey ignored the last of those charges and rewrote the law to let Clinton off of the first two.

And yet Trump ignored all of that.  Nor has he has done nothing to make sure Congressional subpoenas are honored or apparatchiks jailed if they refuse.  Hell, he has done nothing to have the FBI actually examine the DNC server that was supposedly hacked.  Instead, he has acted like a eunuch in response to outrageous acts taken against him and his administration since he was sworn into power.  Let’s enumerate:

—  Within days of being sworn in, the FBI and DOJ combined to conduct a political assassination of Michael Flynn over a Logan Act violation.  No one, in the entire 200 plus years that law has been on the books, has been convicted of the Logan Act, nor will they ever be.  The only reason for the FBI to interview Flynn almost two months after Flynn had engaged in certain phone calls was to entrap him for somehow lying to the FBI.  The DOJ leaked all of this to the public before Trump even had knowledge of the event if I recall.  That whole event was lawless.  Trump should have fired everyone whose fingerprints were on that file, immediately, and yet he ended up firing Flynn and hanging him out to dry.

— Trump has kept Sessions as the AG even though Sessions, with no basis in fact other than a truly bare appearance of impropriety, recused himself from the Russia investigation.  Compare that to Obama’s self styled “wingman,” Eric Holder, who made sure that none of the lawlessness in the Obama administration was ever investigated, nor any Congressional subpoena honored.  Holder ill served the nation, but he did right by Obama.  In contrast, no AG has more ill served a President — and thereby the nation — than Jeff Sessions.   He has let Rosenstein and Mueller run wild with no limitation.  Lives have been ruined because of it.  We as a nation are paying a price because of it. And yet Trump has not fired him.

— When Comey, leaked memos in order to give cover to Rosenstein to appoint a special council, the only crime at issue was whether President Trump had committed obstruction of justice in asking Comey to go easy on Flynn.  Under the facts, that was a legal question that a law school student, paid to research on Westlaw for $10 and hour, could have run up a bill of $20 answering.  Instead, Rosenstein appoints Mueller with an unlawful mandate to take over the entire Russia counterintelligence operation.  Trump — and Sessions — allowed that to go forward through to this day.

— All the while this is going on, who is investigating what seems to be the most illegal dirty trick in the history of American politics?

This nation could well be heading towards a true crisis.  If one is of a protected class and has no fear of being held to account for their actions, then this nation is in deep systemic trouble.  And if we are, Trump, who has failed to reestablish rule of law in this country, will carry a significant portion of the blame.