Merrick Garland's Red Line
Plus: A dangerous escalation in Ukraine
“My view is, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.” — Judge Raymond Dearie to Trump’s lawyers.
(Composite / Photos: GettyImages)
Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves here. But I think it’s safe to say that Trump’s “special master” gambit isn’t going well for him. That’s good news for the Department of Justice, of course, but it’s also vastly reassuring on another level as well: Despite a risible ruling by one Trump-appointed judge, the federal courts remain a bulwark for the rule of law.
Make sure you read Kim Wehle’s backgrounder on the case, but here’s a taste of what happened yesterday.
Judge Raymond Dearie pushed Trump’s lawyers repeatedly for refusing to back up the former president’s claim that he declassified the highly sensitive national security-related records discovered in his residence.
A special master pressed Donald Trump’s attorneys to move quickly and provide more answers about whether the former president did or didn’t declassify documents marked “top secret” that were found in his Florida home last month, saying “you can’t have your cake and eat it” if they want to argue the documents might not still be secret.
Keep in mind that this was the judge that Team Trump wanted. They picked him. But, fortunately, Judge Dearie is no Aileen Cannon.
And here’s the The NYT with a bit of journalistic understatement:
The statements by the judge, Raymond J. Dearie, who is acting as a special master reviewing the seized materials, were an early indication that he may not be entirely sympathetic to the former president’s attempts to bog down the judge’s evaluation with time-consuming questions over the classification status of some of the documents.
Exit take: There is, perhaps, some ketchup on the walls down in Mar-a-Lago.
Garland Draws His Line
ICYMI, Attorney General Merrick Garland gave a speech at Ellis Island over the weekend. It was a remarkable moment, and worth revisiting.
Garland spoke as former (and perhaps future) president Trump ratcheted up his not-so-veiled threats of chaos, anarchy, and violence if he is held legally accountable.
Trump’s escalation gave new urgency to the question: Would Garland blink? Would the attorney general decide that charging Trump would be too risky? Would he put “prudence” ahead of the rule of law?
I read Garland’s speech as a direct answer to Trump’s attempt to intimidate him.
“The protection of law – the Rule of Law – is the foundation of our system of government,” Garland said. And he went on to emphasize that no one — no one — is above that law.
The Rule of Law means that the same laws apply to all of us, regardless of whether we are this country’s newest citizens or whether our [families] have been here for generations.
The Rule of Law means that the law treats each of us alike: there is not one rule for friends, another for foes; one rule for the powerful, another for the powerless; a rule for the rich, another for the poor; or different rules, depending upon one’s race or ethnicity or country of origin.
Garland acknowledged that all of that was under threat. “The Rule of Law is not assured,” he said. “It is fragile. It demands constant effort and vigilance.”
And then he invoked our — and his — duty to uphold it, especially at this fraught moment in history.
The responsibility to ensure the Rule of Law is and has been the duty of every generation in our country’s history. It is now your duty as well. And it is one that is especially urgent today at a time of intense polarization in America.
Garland placed “our intense polarization,” in historical context. The country, he explained to a group of new citizens, was “no stranger to what our Founders called the risk of faction. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison wrote about it in the Federalist Papers. George Washington warned against it in his Farewell Address.”
Then he laid out the challenge.
Overcoming the current polarization in our public life is, and will continue to be, a difficult task.
But we cannot overcome it by ignoring it. We must address the fractures in our society with honesty, with humility, and with respect for the Rule of Law.
That meant tolerating peaceful disagreement and “demands that we listen to each other, even when we disagree.”
But, Garland emphasized, it also “it demands that we reject violence and threats of violence that endanger each other and endanger our democracy.”
“We are all in this together,” the attorney general said. “We are all Americans.”
And then, Merrick Garland drew his red line:
On this historic day and in this historic place, let us make a promise that each of us will protect each other and our democracy.
That we will honor and defend our Constitution.
That we will recognize and respect the dignity of our fellow Americans.
That we will uphold the Rule of Law and seek to make real the promise of equal justice under law.
That we will do what is right, even if that means doing what is difficult.
I had some thoughts
Putin’s escalation
This situation is fast-moving, and very dangerous. Cornered by Ukraine’s rapid victories, Vladimir Putin wants us to know that he has his finger on the button.
In a speech this morning, Putin announced a partial mobilization, “railed against the West for providing Ukraine with arms and made a veiled threat of using nuclear weapons.”
“I want to remind you that our country also has various means of destruction, and some components are more modern than those of the NATO countries,” he said.
His remarks come after Russia moved swiftly to annex the Ukrainian territory it has occupied, which would make any attacks an assault on Russia itself. Putin made that strategy explicit:
“If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people,” he said. “This is not a bluff.”
But…
Ukrainians seem unfazed. The Times notes the “dismissive and mocking reaction that ensued in Ukraine to Mr. Putin’s latest gambit to regain momentum in the war.”
His decision to call up hundreds of thousands of reservists was unlikely to have any immediate impact on the battlefield, Ukrainian officials said, and was more likely to further undermine Mr. Putin’s grip on power at home.
Ron DeSantis: Real Man of Political Genius
For months now, the Smart Kids have been assuring us that Ron DeSantis is the Man of the Future. Right-wing media continues to have tingles up their legs about his brilliant human pawn stunt with Venezuelan refugees.
But this answer seems, uh, sub-optimal:
So, once again, I have to ask: Did DeSantis really think this out? Or did he just grab the idea of trolling the libs from a Tucker Carlson segment? Here’s David Frum:
As Matthew Gertz of Media Matters has pointed out, DeSantis evidently got the idea for his Martha’s Vineyard airlift from a July 26 Tucker Carlson monologue (obviously, readers shouldn’t rely on his numbers):
Joe Biden took 70 percent of the vote on that small Massachusetts island. Over the past four years, according to FEC data, 92 percent of all donations from its biggest town, Edgartown, went to the Democratic Party. So you probably imagine Edgartown is pretty diverse; I mean, the Obamas live on the island, right? No. In fact, we checked. At last count Edgartown is 95.7 percent white. What century is this? As of 2019, only 3 percent of all people, all residents of Edgartown, were born outside of this country. So do the math: That’s 17 people, total. That’s effectively zero diversity, which means zero strength. They are begging for more diversity. Why not send migrants there? In huge numbers. Let’s start with 300,000 and move up from there. As the island gets stronger, more.
The lulz was, apparently irresistible to the Florida governor. But as Frum notes:
Embedded in this text that inserted a concept into the brain of the governor of Florida is a theory about how and why immigration happens. It’s not responding to incentives, signals, and rules—not even perverse incentives, signals, and rules.
It’s a plot. It’s a plot inflicted punitively on Real America by cosmopolitan elites. The right response to this plot, the theory continues, is not to address incentives, signals, and rules. The right response is to retaliate against the cosmopolitan elites, who are to blame for immigration, by imposing punitive diversity upon them too.
This way of thinking is conspiratorial, paranoid, and vengeful.
It’s also wrong and stupid.
Meanwhile, in addition to a criminal investigation, DeSantis now also faces a lawsuit from the asylum-seekers he duped. Via Judd Legum:
On Tuesday, three of the migrants filed a class action lawsuit against DeSantis "in his official and personal capacity." …
The lawsuit alleges that DeSantis and his accomplices "executed a premeditated, fraudulent, and illegal scheme centered on exploiting [the migrants] for the sole purpose of advancing their own personal, financial, and political interests."
The lawsuit also contains explosive new allegations about the lengths that DeSantis and other defendants went to manipulate and deceive the migrants.
Stay tuned.
Quick Hits
1. Don’t Blame the Immigrants. It’s Our Laws That Are Criminal.
In today’s Bulwark, Mona Charen argues that our immigration problem is that we’re not politically capable of fixing the broken system.
We are fortunate that so many hard-working people want to come here. If we had our act together, we would reform our laws to take many more legal immigrants (who would begin the application process in their home countries) and hire more immigration judges to hear asylum claims while clarifying that only severe cases will be eligible for that status (not economic migrants). We are an aging population with a declining birth rate. Our national spirit needs the infusion of energy and dynamism that immigrants provide. If our laws are clear, we can reduce the crush of hopefuls at the border. With more legal immigrants, our economy will thrive. Our tax receipts will increase. We’ll have the nurses, truckers, teachers, cooks, train conductors, and construction workers we desperately need. And we will be thanked and strengthened by people whose lives we save.
2. Greg Abbott’s Failures Mean Texas Could Suffer Another Freezing Winter Blackout
Paul Alexander in today’s Bulwark:
If Disaster by Design—which premiered last night at the Austin Film Society Cinema—is a cautionary tale, it should be of interest not only to Texans but also to citizens in other states where electricity is deregulated or where officials are considering deregulation. A recent Wall Street Journal article detailed how regulated markets see smaller increases in cost, and Uri is a prime example of the unreliability produced by deregulation. Even so, Wyoming’s legislature is considering deregulation, mostly because of pressure from industrial companies that use large quantities of power, as is Louisiana’s legislature, mostly because of an effort, to quote one report, “to break up the monopolies that have controlled power generation and distribution in the state for decades.”
“This is not a breakdown in the system,” Mims quotes one expert on the concept of deregulation. “This is a system that is broken down by design.”
Cheap Shots
We are a very polarized nation, but what's amazing is that the biggest factor driving this polarization is the inability of Americans to universally condemn a figure so loathsome as Donald Trump. It's truly astonishing. There is no mystery to the man; he's vile; he is the worst of the human race. Republican politicians love telling Mark Liebovitch what a toxic dirtbag he is, just as long as he agrees not to rat them out.
They know. They all know. They know the racist gameshow host (credit to Tim Miller) should never have been President; they said as much in 2016. They know he should have been removed from office through the Impeachment process. They know people around him had to prevent him from doing even worse things. Marco Rubio, lead Republican on the Senate Intel Committee, knows this MaraLago documents scandal is a BFD, and that Trump is totally guilty, and did something very very bad here. But they get on tv and make excuses, and tell their voters how Donald Trump is a perpetual victim, and the politicians, rightwing media, and voters reinforce each other in a closed-system, never-ending circle jerk of confirmation bias.
We are polarized, because we can't even get a large majority of America to agree on this one obvious truth: Donald Trump is a bastard, a criminal, and a pathological liar. He doesn't lie, He tells it like it is! We could unite as a country against the USSR; how is Donald Trump not like the USSR right now? How stupid of a country is this?
One comment from way out in left field…
I really wish that writers and speakers would replace the phrase “conspiracy theory” with conspiracy fiction. By using the word “theory” it demeans the word and puts it on par with the scientific notion of theory. In short, it makes anyone and everyone who has a thought, intellectually equal.