Norms no longer quaint, says Torture Dude
Mar-a-Lago’s Hoarder-in-Chief heads to his arraignment in Miami this afternoon on federal charges brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith of willful retention of national defense information, obstruction and conspiracy.
The “Florida Republican Assembly” has chartered four or more buses to bring Donald Trump’s supporters from Orlando to make a show of their fealty to Dear Leader. The group’s executive director, Lou Marin, tells the Miami Herald his group is a “Judeo-Christan grassroots organization committed to restoring the Republican Party to it’s founding principles.” He didn’t specify.
The day will tell whether how many will show or if armed terrorists will be among them.
Bush administration torture memo author John Yoo knows how the United States should deal with terrorists. But that was two decades ago. Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law has seen his reputation whitewashed by outlets such as the New York Times and now Bloomberg Law. Yoo co-authored a Monday op-ed with Robert Delahunty of the Claremont Institute Center for the American Way of Life charging the Biden Department of Justice with crossing “a constitutional Rubicon” in permitting the indictment of Trump.
How quaint
“Biden administration officials must explain why prosecuting Trump for misuse of classified documents justifies disregarding two centuries of constitutional practice,” the pair write. “Presidents remain subject to the law just as anyone else.”
Do you sense a BUT coming? (my highlight)
“But our system has long understood that the Justice Department—which assists the president in his duty to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed’—can’t prosecute every person for every violation of every federal law.”
Deference to the king follows, naturally. The very idea of equal justice is as quaint as Geneva. Now, if the Department means to pour the Rubicon over a cloth covering Trump’s face, Yoo might have to reassess.
Yoo appeared Monday afternoon on Fox Business to tell Neil Cavuto, “We’re breaking an institutional norm that has been there since the beginning of our country, which is leave former presidents alone.” And former deputy assistant attorneys general, perhaps?
Trump violated institutional norms with abandon during his four years in the Oval Office. But indicting him for crimes he committed after leaving office for Yoo is a norm too far. Unprecedented means unprosecutable, Yoo argues.
“The torture guy is wrong here just simply as a matter of history,” replied MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on Twitter. “Nixon was almost certainly going to be prosecuted after leaving office and was only saved by Ford’s wholly unprecedented blanket pardon.”
Now Trump is counting on winning reelection to the presidency so he can issue a blanket pardon for himself for crimes committed in his interregnum.
“Trump will almost certainly plead not guilty,” The Guardian reports, in outlining what will happen in court today:
Defendants can choose to have the indictment read to them in open court, but many choose to waive that in order to get the hearing over quickly, said Barbara McQuade, who served as the US attorney for the eastern district of Michigan from 2010 to 2017.
The judge can also set bail and decide to detain a defendant in custody while trial is pending.
“The judge will consider the bail issue, but I would be stunned if Trump were held pending trial. A more likely scenario is that Trump will be ordered to surrender his passport and promise to pay some sum of money if he fails to appear,” McQuade said in an email.
“The court may consider as a condition of bond some sort of gag order prohibiting Trump from discussing the case, the prosecutor or the judge, but that can be tricky in light of first amendment concerns because Trump is running for president,” she added.
The revolution indictment will not be televised. Not like the insurrection for which Trump’s involvement is still under investigation. Please be patient. Jack Smith is not done with Donald yet.