7/24-25/20: We have a few positive stories to report. On Friday every player and coach on the New York Yankees and Washington Nationals took a knee before their opening game of the much-delayed season. It was their way of showing support for the “Black Lives Matter” movement.
Then again: The president has said he will not watch any game where kneeling occurs. Not baseball. Not chess. Not Scrabble.
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Yankees players take a knee. |
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The Department of Homeland Security “was not established to be the president’s personal militia.
Former Secretary of DHS, Tom Ridge
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Kneeling is bad! But obstructing justice? That’s cool. Trump also announces that he would consider pardoning anyone implicated in the Mueller investigation. In another one of his near-nightly call-ins to Sean Hannity’s show, he says, “I’ve looked at a lot of different people. They’ve been treated extremely unfairly, and I think I probably would, yes,” Trump says. He would pardon them.
Fortunately, we can also report there are some Republicans who have spines and understand the reason the U.S. Constitution is replete with checks and balances. Former Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, made it clear this week that he believes Trump has leaped over the constitutional line by sending federal paramilitary forces to cities and states where mayors and governors have not requested them. As first head of Homeland Security, Ridge noted that his department was established to protect America from “global terrorism.” In a radio interview he explained, “It was not established to be the president’s personal militia.”
Ridge would have been happy to work with state and local leaders if asked. Otherwise, “it would be a cold day in hell before I would consent to an uninvited, unilateral intervention” into any American city.
Michael Chertoff, another former head of Homeland Security, and another Republican, similarly faulted the president for tone and tactics. Trump wasn’t helping with his “very belligerent, aggressive tone,” Mr. Chertoff cautioned. “You can protect federal property, but that doesn’t mean it’s an unlimited license to roam around the streets [emphasis added] and pick up people based on some suspicion that maybe they’re involved or gonna be involved in something.”
Neither Ridge nor Chertoff were condoning violence. Nevertheless, there are reasons the U.S. Constitution limits situations in which a president can call out troops and send them into states without governors asking. This new tactic, sending in Immigrations and Custom Enforcement officers and heavily-armed tactical teams from a variety of federal agencies (not technically U.S. military forces) sets a dangerous precedent. Think Hong Kong 2020, or Tahrir Square 2013.
Or Boston Massacre, 1770.
“Whatever the statutory authority is, we still have a Constitution and that requires reasonable suspicion to stop somebody,” Chertoff added. We require, “probable cause to arrest them. And it’s not clear to me that that is being applied in this case.”
Chertoff told ABC News he wished Team Trump would do more to safeguard the next election and quit focusing on mail-in balloting as a problem. “There is zero evidence that mail-in voting creates widespread problems in an election,” he said. “It’s not of the scale that could possibly impact on a national election. So, there is zero evidence for this.”
Chertoff later spoke to a reporter from the Washington Post, and said sending in forces to cities where they were not wanted would damage DHS. “It undermines the credibility of the department’s principal mission,” he warned. “While it’s appropriate for DHS to protect federal property, that is not an excuse to range more widely in a city and to conduct police operations, particularly if local authorities have not requested federal assistance. That’s our constitutional system.”
Chertoff also had concerns because Trump had singled out Democratic cities. “Essentially, he’s suggesting this is a political maneuver. As someone who’s spent four years at the department, the idea that people would be suggesting that it’s going to be a tool of political activity is very unsettling.”
“It’s very problematic legally as well as morally.”
Retired three-star Gen. Russell Honoré has not forgotten the oath he took to defend the U.S. Constitution, either.
In an interview last week he too blasted Team Trump for sending men in uniform to crush protests in American cities. That uniform, he said, “represents the cloth of our nation” and “it’s not to be used as an instrument of protest suppression.” Real soldiers, he added, “don’t just walk up to people and start beating them…with batons.”
Watch this, he said. A film clip ran, and a uniformed man beat a U.S. Navy veteran. “What kind of bullshit is this?” Gen. Honoré fumed.
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IN OTHER GOOD NEWS, the judicial branch continues to rebuke the man in the White House.
We know Trump has a soft spot for felons, accused (Ghislaine Maxwell) and convicted (Gen. Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort), just not felons who lied for him, but later decided to cooperate with investigators. Flynn, who admitted perjury – in return for dodging a variety of additional charges – got his case thrown out entirely, thanks to Trump. Stone, with seven felonies, never spent a day behind bars. Paul Manafort, with ten felonies, has been released from the slammer due to age and health concerns in a time of coronavirus. Yet, Team Trump, working through the Department of Quasi-Justice decided one felon, Michael Cohen, with eight counts against him, should definitely remain in jail.
A judge has ruled that the DOJ sent Cohen, the president’s former personal lawyer, back to jail in “retaliation for his plans to publish a book about the president [emphasis added].” The judge noted that Cohen’s First Amendment rights had been violated.
Cohen hopes to have his book done before the election, but was offered a chance to remain free if he promised not to talk to the media about his plans or work on his story. He decided to fight his case. And lest we forget, Cohen went to jail for committing felonies involving a co-conspirator, labeled “Individual 1,” in his indictment. That unnamed accomplice? His initials are DJT.
Nor is this the first time Team Trump has tried to ban a book that might be damaging. They tried to block publication of John Bolton’s book, and Mary Trump’s book, too. (See also: Fire and Fury, 1/3/18.)
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On Saturday, the first anniversary of President Trump’s call to the President of Ukraine, Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman posts a tweet. “One year since The Call. Much has changed for me and so much more has changed for our country,” he says. “I rest well knowing I did my duty.”
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COVID-19 cases on July 24:
74,818.
Cases on July 25:
64,582.
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