A Historically Bad Day for the Rule of Law in America
INSIDE: James Boasberg ... Jeanine Pirro ... Eric Swalwell
A Near Worst-Case Scenario
The descent of the Justice Department into a crude weapon wielded by an erratic authoritarian is gathering speed and quickening the threat to America’s fraying democracy in ways that we all feared but hoped might be kept at bay for a bit longer.
The series of developments yesterday would have been, just two years ago, a near worst-case scenario:
Rather than do its duty to defend the hard-won convictions of a dozen Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders for seditious conspiracy on Jan. 6., the Trump DOJ abandoned those convictions in a new filing at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Trump DOJ prevailed at the D.C. Circuit in avoiding even an investigation by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg into the brazen contempt of court the DOJ enabled and has since defended in the original Alien Enemies Act case.
Federal prosecutors under D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro made an unannounced site visit to Federal Reserve headquarters in what was both an audacious act of intimidation divorced from proper investigatory techniques and a way for Pirro to toss an ingratiating bouquet to President Trump, who has made targeting the Fed’s independence a top priority.
The Trump DOJ released the first of its bogus “weaponization” reports, a propagandistic attack on the Justice Department under Joe Biden that is itself a political weapon.
Trump DOJ Abandons Seditious Conspiracy Convictions
The abandonment of the seditious conspiracy convictions stands foremost among yesterday’s parade of horribles. These were the most serious convictions to emerge from the Jan. 6 autocoup for which the Roberts Court spared Trump himself from facing criminal prosecution. We know — yet it bears repeating for ourselves and for history — that the seditionists sought to overturn the Constitution by installing Trump as president through violence despite his having lost the 2020 election. It was the first non-peaceful transfer of power in our our history and the most serious threat to the Republic other than the Civil War itself.
The abandonment of the convictions is clarifying in its own way and amounts to an admission by Trump. In the immediate aftermath of Jan. 6, Trump distanced himself from the seditionists, and in the years since had modulated his closeness to them, depending on what suited him politically in the moment. The Proud Boys always knew the truth and were never fooled. Not every one was as sophisticated. But now all pretenses are gone, and Trump is fully embracing the tip of the insurrectionist spear. Stand back and stand by, indeed.
A Contempt of Court Cover-up for the Ages
The second most egregious of yesterday’s indignities was the majority decision by two Trump appointees on the D.C. Circuit to pull the rug out from under Judge Boasberg, who has been patiently and diligently pursuing a contempt of court inquiry into the Trump administration’s defiance of his orders blocking the Alien Enemies Act deportations.
The sneering tone toward Boasberg from Judge Neomi Rao in the majority opinion reinforced how much cover the Trump appointees have been giving the president as the administration seeks to cover up the details of its complicity in defying Boasberg’s orders.
The D.C. Circuit bogged Boasberg down for seven months last year while it slow-rolled the case before eventually letting him proceed. Now it has cut him off at the knees again. It is hard to overstate the level of abdication this represents of the judiciary’s own powers under the law and its authority to enforce its orders against a renegade executive like Trump.
Still, there emerged during last year’s consideration of the contempt inquiry a clear sign that a majority of the appeals court writ large backed Boasberg’s inquiry, so while the writing was on the wall as soon as this particular three-judge panel got the case back for a second bite at the apple, the real test will be whether the full circuit takes up the case and vindicates not just the beleaguered Boasberg but the the very notion that the judiciary is a co-equal branch.
After the ruling, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche took an unseemly Boasberg-bashing victory lap: “Today’s decision by the DC Circuit should finally end Judge Boasberg’s year-long campaign against the hardworking Department attorneys doing their jobs fighting illegal immigration.”
Pirro’s Pirouettes for Trump
We step back from the existential and constitutional threats to the Republic for a taste of Trump II absurdism: Pirro’s two henchman made an unannounced visit to the Feds’ headquarters ostensibly to investigate its renovation project, which is the purported basis for what is really a retributive criminal investigation to further erode Fed independence and bring it to heel under Trump.
Like Ed Martin’s Columbo-style visit last year to a Brooklyn property owned by New York Attorney General Letitia James, the site visit by Pirro’s duo smacked of intimidation and taunting — and performative derring-do to curry favor with Trump.
Departing from DOJ policies of the past, Pirro gave up the game by releasing a statement after her underlings were turned away by the Fed: “Any construction project that has cost overruns of almost 80 percent over the original construction budget deserves some serious review. And these people are in charge of monetary policy in the United States?”
The Purges: Weaponization Edition
It’s barely worth your time or brain cells to try to get your head around the DOJ “weaponization” report on the FACE Act released yesterday. If you’re a glutton for punishment, former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance takes a close look at and contextualizes the report. Just know that this is what the work by the DOJ’s “Weaponization Working Group” is going to look like.
The more important development than the report itself is that four career prosecutors involved in FACE Act prosecutions in the Biden era were unlawfully fired this week ahead of the report’s release, including two Detroit assistant U.S. attorneys who prosecuted abortion clinic protestors, one of whom is now speaking out.
Only the Best People Watch
Harmeet Dhillon: The Atlantic has a fine profile of the head of the Trump DOJ’s Civil Rights Division who is jockeying for a promotion in the wake of Pam Bondi’s ouster as attorney general.
Leonard Leo: The conservative legal major domo is rebranding.
Sebastian Gorka: The right-wing Trump aide who is currently the senior director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council is aiming to fill the slot of director of the National Counterterrorism Center that Joe Kent resigned in protest over the Iran conflict.
More Troops to Middle East
The Trump administration is sending thousands of additional troops to the Middle East in a deployment which seems timed to put additional pressure on the Iranians in three-way peace talks, the WaPo reports.
Pace of Lawless Boat Strikes Quickens
The Trump administration’s unlawful campaign of boat strikes appears to have picked up again since the Iran ceasefire. The second attack in two days (and third since Saturday) killed four people in the Eastern Pacific, bringing the campaign’s death toll to at least 174.
Swalwell Officially Out
Rep. Eric Swalwell’s resignation from Congress became effective at 2 p.m. Tuesday, less than two hours after another accuser came forward in an emotionally searing press conference.
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Re: DCC and the embattled Judge James Boasberg...Rao and Walker, the Gruesome Twosome, are unrelenting in their dismissal of Boasberg's attempts to bring compliance with his orders to the DOJ.
Those two keep drawing the assignment to shit all over Boasberg's rulings, and how many of these 3-judge decisions can be maintained before a definitive en banc hearing can put it to rest? I mean, it just the same old same old every bloody time, so let's move it to the DCC majority and end the blockage, already.
Gonna repeat myself by repeating what should be obvious to everyone who’s been paying attention: Trump has the respect for the rule of law like every mafia don (pun, of course) ever. And we knew how badly he wanted a simpatico AG eg one without much respect for the rule of law since 2019 or so.
But actually, as we should know or recollect as the case may be, it’s worse in that SCOTUS has had comparable disrespect for since Roberts appointment, and of course there was that highlight of jurisprudence by fiat, Bush v Gore.
So with the highest court in the land committed to putting party before law, it shouldn’t be surprising that the circuit courts of appeal have a comparable respect for the law. (Not a defense of any the POS. Just context. OTOH, Biden went on record being cool with the Roberts court so who am I to disagree with so beloved a POTUS?)
Meanwhile, my question is still going unanswered re the Iran war criming: Why would Iran enter into any broad deal when the counterparty is completely untrustworthy and previously tore up a prior agreement for absolutely no good reason. Things’ll likely be different in a couple of months, but now? And now that I think about it, maybe Iran will choose to do Trump a solid and sign a peace deal in October to help Donny with the election in expectation of thereby getting as much appreciation, as it were, that they got from Reagan. (Young people, Iran helped Reagan get elected and St Ronnie then screwed them big time gifting Iran ten years of war.)