May 5, 2024
In 1776, as British colonists in North America were contemplating how to construct a new nation, Massachusetts lawyer John Adams famously wrote to friends about the relationship between government and the law. A republic, he wrote, “is an Empire of Laws and not of Men: and therefore…that particular Arrangement…which is best calculated to Secure an exact and impartial Execution of the Laws, is the best Republic.”
In 1787 the framers of the Constitution set out to create a nation built on the rule of law. The next year, the states ratified their new framework, and in 1789, the Constitution went into effect. One of the first acts of the newly seated Congress was to establish a federal court system. The Judiciary Act of 1789 set out the different courts and their jurisdictions. And in 1868, with the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, Americans explicitly wrote into the Constitution the principle that all U.S. citizens must be equal before the law. Two years later, they established the Department of Justice to make sure that principle would be honored across the country.
In the past three years, the Biden administration has worked to confirm that the U.S. is a nation of laws. That work has borne fruit. In the past few days, several cases have jumped out in which the administration has used the law to protect ordinary Americans.
On Tuesday, April 30, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) challenged more than 300 junk patent listings for drugs that treat diabetes, asthma, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and that help people lose weight, including Ozempic. Bogus patent listings prevent generic drugs from entering the market, keeping brand-name drug prices high. The FTC gives the manufacturer 20 days to withdraw or amend the listing or certify, under penalty of perjury, that they are correct. In November the FTC successfully challenged junk patents on asthma inhalers, reducing their price to $35.
FTC chair Lina Khan said: “By challenging junk patent filings, the FTC is fighting these illegal tactics and making sure that Americans can get timely access to innovative and affordable versions of the medicines they need.”
On Thursday, May 2, Yvette Wang, the chief of staff to Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese billionaire businessman who works with Trump associate Steve Bannon (in 2020, law enforcement officers arrested Bannon on Guo’s yacht on charges of fraud), pleaded guilty to conspiring with Guo in a massive fraud scheme that involved wire fraud and money laundering and netted more than $1 billion. Wang personally will forfeit $1.4 billion to the United States and faces up to ten years in prison. The trial for Wang and Guo is scheduled to start on May 20. Guo has pleaded not guilty.
On Friday the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged the auditing firm for Trump’s social media company and its owner with “massive fraud.” The SEC called BF Borgers a “sham audit mill” and said it “deliberately systemically failed to conduct” audits and reviews that were filed with the SEC between January 2021 and June 2023. Those reports are supposed to inform investors about the value of companies. The SEC fined the company $14 million and banned it from practicing accounting. Its owner, Benjamin Borgers, did not admit wrongdoing but accepted the judgment.
Also on Friday, the Department of Justice released a grand jury’s indictment of Representative Henry Cuellar (D-TX) and his wife, Imelda, alleging that beginning no later than 2014 and until at least November 2021, they accepted close to $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijani oil and gas company and a Mexican bank and then laundered the payments through Imelda’s company. In exchange, the indictment says, Cuellar agreed to adjust U.S. policy toward Azerbaijan, especially its oil industry, and to oppose laws that would curb money laundering and regulate the payday lending industry.
On Friday, at former president Trump’s fraud trial for interfering in the 2016 election by paying $130,000 to buy the silence of adult film actress Stormy Daniels and falsifying business records to hide the payment, former White House aide Hope Hicks established that Trump had indeed intended to silence Daniels in order to stop voters from hearing her information before the election. Appearing reluctant to testify against Trump, Hicks nonetheless described a conversation with Trump in 2018, after Daniels’s story became public. Trump told her that “it was better to be dealing with it now, and it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election.”
The rule of law protects ordinary Americans and defends their right to elect a government of their choice. But in 2024, it is under attack.
Trump continues to insist that the stories about his extramarital affairs are false, but his main strategy for addressing his many legal troubles is to insist that the justice system is rigged against him. This continues a pattern he began as soon as he took office, when he unsuccessfully pressured FBI director James Comey to drop the investigation into his 2016 campaign’s interaction with Russian operatives. Although FBI directors are supposed to be virtually untouchable during their ten-year term, Trump fired Comey and then spent the rest of his term accusing the FBI of persecuting him.
That attack on our judicial system expanded to sweep in all the judges who ruled against his campaign operatives and his extremist policies on immigration. He called the courts a “joke” and a “laughingstock” and attacked the Justice Department as a whole and judges personally.
Those attacks increased after Trump left office and was indicted for his efforts to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election. An analysis by NBC News of more than 14,000 Trump posts and reposts from April 2022 to January 6, 2024, showed that in some periods he attacked the judicial system more than he promoted his campaign. He aimed his attacks most often at special counsel Jack Smith, as well as New York attorney general Letitia James; Judge Arthur Engoron, who presided over Trump’s Manhattan fraud trial; Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg; and Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney Fani Willis—all of whom are in charge of cases against Trump.
Reporters Dareh Gregorian and Jasmine Cui wrote: “The posts generally portray Trump as the victim of a Democratic scheme designed to derail his presidential bid, with an array of judges and prosecutors working against him at the behest of President Joe Biden, and all part of a partisan ‘witch hunt,’ a term he used about 250 times during that time period.”
At a meeting for donors at Mar-a-Lago Saturday, Trump complained about the criminal charges against him, calling Jack Smith a “f**king a**hole,” and accused President Joe Biden of running a “Gestapo administration,” a reference to the German secret police that crushed opposition and rounded up Jews, Roma, LGBT individuals, and other targeted groups during World War II.
Trump has vowed to take control of the Justice Department and make it serve his interests. Chris Geidner of Law Dork noted today that the federal courts already favor Republicans, and a second Trump presidency would allow him to fill multiple court vacancies, probably including some on the Supreme Court, with his extremists. They would cement the ideology of MAGA Republicans into our laws for the foreseeable future.
Trump’s war on the Department of Justice over his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election has already progressed into an attempt to delegitimize the results of the 2024 election, suggesting he does not believe he will win in a free and fair election.
Yesterday, Charlie Spies, the Republican Party’s top lawyer, resigned after Trump turned on him for his public statements that the 2020 election was not stolen. Spies was one of three lawyers the Trump team hired in March after it took over the Republican National Committee (RNC). An establishment Republican lawyer, Spies was paired with MAGA lawyer and former right-wing One America News Network anchor Christina Bobb to oversee the RNC’s so-called election integrity unit. Now Spies is out and Bobb, who has been indicted for election fraud for her participation in the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election, remains.
In an astonishing exchange on Meet the Press this morning, Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), who is angling to become Trump’s vice presidential pick, refused six times to say he would accept the results of the 2024 election if Trump didn’t win. Host Kristen Welker asked: “Will you commit to accepting the election results of 2024?” Scott responded: “At the end of the day, the 47th president of the United States will be President Donald Trump.” Welker followed up: “Yes or no, will you accept the election results of 2024 no matter who wins?” Scott answered: “That is my statement.”
When Welker continued to push the question, Scott accused NBC of working for the “Democrat Party” but refused ever to agree to the peaceful transition of power, which, as Welker noted, is the hallmark of the democratic republic people like John Adams established in 1789.
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Notes:
https://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/index.php/view/PJA04dg2
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/federal-judiciary-act
https://time.com/6974644/bf-borgers-charged-fraud-trump-media/
https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/gkpldnoolpb/05032024wang_plea.pdf
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/04/trump-rnc-spies-election-fraud/
https://www.democracydocket.com/opinion/republicans-prepare-a-new-wave-of-legal-attacks-on-voting/
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24636508-cuellar-indictment
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/03/trump-hush-money-trial-hope-hicks-testimony/
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/his-own-words-presidents-attacks-courts
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-trials-attacks-judges-rcna131916
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/04/trump-indictments-attacks-democrats-gestapo/
Twitter (X):
RpsAgainstTrump/status/1787167295288008745
Senator Tim Scott’s refusal to accept the results of the presidential election if Trump loses should disqualify him from serving another day. It undermines, as Republicans increasingly do, our system of laws.
Perhaps he would change his tune if House members who worked with Trump to overturn the 2020 election results ever face criminal charges. Not holding my breath.
Refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election isn’t only a buy-in to the Big Lie, it’s a loyalty oath that is common to fascist regimes. When we hear Republicans support the Big Lie, they are saying the loyalty oath to each other. Their assertion that the Big Lie is true is their justification for refusing to accept electoral defeat and for doing anything they can within and outside the law to achieve their goal of grabbing power. The Big Lie repeated endlessly creates doubts in people who don’t follow politics or the news or who support Republican policies like banning abortion. And, acceptance of the Big Lie is a pledge to accept “alternate facts” in loyalty to the Trumpist party. Then any lie is acceptable for promoting their messaging. In this way, the Big Lie is a many-headed Hydra. Defeating MAGA buttresses actual facts and a country of laws. And MAGA extremism seems to be unpopular in two recent polls that show President Biden leading tRump for likely voters by 4 or 5 points.
https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/biden-leads-49-45-in-new-abc-poll?r=dpmrd&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web