“L’état, c’est moi”
Chief Justice John Roberts created a monster when his ruling in Trump v. United States gave the president immunity for “official acts.” He’s figuring that out now. Trump is signing executive order after executive order to render his pogrom against perceived enemies “official.” Roberts’s very legacy is on life support.
Retired Judge J. Michael Luttig, the conservative icon who tesified before the January 6 Committee, told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace this month that Trump has effectively “declared war on the rule of law.”
“In the past several weeks, however, he has really launched a full-frontal assault on the Constitution, the rule of law, our system of justice and the entire legal profession,” Luttig added.
At The Atlantic, Tom Nichols concurs:
He has issued trollish and almost certainly unconstitutional executive orders, unleashed verbal fusillades against jurists (as well as various law-enforcement officials and prosecutors), and forced government lawyers to stand tongue-tied as they struggled to answer simple questions from judges. He has sent his minions, including the vice president of the United States, out in public to argue that a president has the right to ignore court orders, making an eventual showdown with the federal bench practically inevitable.
Then there are the physical threats to judges of the sort Republican lawmakers no fear if they cross Trump.
Trump has used this authoritarian approach, undergirded by his legendary shamelessness, to break through every line of constitutional and moral defense—impeachment, elections, even the humiliation of arrest and conviction—that would otherwise restrain a rogue president (or, for that matter, any ordinary American felon).
Despite conservatives’ faith in the deterent effect of punishment, Roberts stripped it from a man twice impeached, convicted of 34 felonies, banned from doing business in New York, and unrepentant for stoking an attempt to overturn a presidential election and for absconding with national security documents.
Roberts has devoted his life to the rule of law, remember.
Nichols observes that Trump’s visit to the Department of Justice where he gave a lie-filled speech made his intentions to weaponize against his enemies the agency he declared had been weaponized against him because on good evidence it investigated his (alleged) crimes.
So blatant were Trump’s attacks on U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg and so sweeping his claims of presidential authority to ignore the courts that Roberts himself issued a rare statement directed at Trump’s attack.
Luttig himself published an op-ed in the New York Times on Sunday calling out Trump for launching a “stunning frontal assault on the third branch of government,” to our “American system of justice,” and to our constitutional democracy.
Luttig has more confidence in the judicial branch than I have. He writes:
If the president oversteps his authority in his dispute with Judge Boasberg, the Supreme Court will step in and assert its undisputed constitutional power “to say what the law is.” A rebuke from the nation’s highest court in his wished-for war with the nation’s federal courts could well cripple Mr. Trump’s presidency and tarnish his legacy.
If only. Trump has already dismissed Roberts’s admonishment as irrelevant because he did not call out Trump by name.
So now Trump is attacking law firms that supplied lawyers who investigated and/or brough cases against him:
The presidential memorandum, “Preventing Abuses of the Legal System and the Federal Court,” also ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to recommend revoking attorneys’ security clearances or terminating law firms’ federal contracts if she deems their lawsuits against the administration “unreasonable” or “vexatious.”
The memo, which was issued Saturday, follows executive orders against three firms: Covington & Burling, which provided pro bono legal services to former special counsel Jack Smith, who secured an indictment against Trump; Perkins Coie, which represented Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and worked with an opposition research firm that compiled a discredited dossier against Trump; and Paul Weiss, where a former firm partner, Mark Pomerantz, tried to build a criminal case against Trump while he was working at the Manhattan district attorney’s office several years ago.
The executive orders suspended the security clearances of the firms’ employees and barred them from some federal buildings, steps that would make it difficult for them to represent clients.
This is, in a word, bad, as Nichols sees it:
The dismantling of America’s constitutional government is under way. The United States in 2025 no longer has an independently led national law-enforcement organization. It no longer has a Department of Justice whose leadership is following the mission to serve the American nation and its Constitution. The immense power of the Defense Department is in the hands of a talk-show culture warrior who intends to purge the officer corps of generals and admirals suspected of ideological unreliability. The Congress is dominated by men and women who either agree with this authoritarian project or are too scared to oppose it. The judges now stand alone—but their courage may not be enough to stop Trump.
And Roberts? He has painted himself into a corner. If he finds a way to rule for Trump on upcoming cases that question Trump’s overeaching authority, he neuters his own court. If he rules against Trump and Trump gives the court his middle finger, Roberts has few levers for compelling compliance … which neuters his own court and our constitution.
After that, it’s people in the streets or “L’état, c’est moi” dictatorship. Donald Trump can’t say it but he means it.
* * * * *
Have you fought the coup today?
National Day of Action, Saturday, April 5
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions