Misrule of Law

Here is the gist of what I discussed this morning on the Michael Patrick Leahy Show.

President Trump seeks justice (“equal justice under the law”), public safety, and peace, and is—despite resistance–achieving all three.

Justice:  Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted (by a grand jury in the ED VA), for lying to Congress. Comey became the first FBI Director ever indicted in the history of the country. New York Attorney General Letitia James has been indicted (also by a grand jury in the ED VA) for mortgage fraud. Former National Security Adviser John Bolton is expected to face federal charges in Maryland this week for charges related to his improper handling of classified information.  

For Letitia James, the irony is that she brought phony charges against President Trump and members of his family for improperly obtaining real estate loans (“mortgages,” in other words) from banks, even though the loans were fully repaid and no banks complained. She tweeted at the time that “When powerful people cheat to get better loans, it comes at the expense of hard-working people. Everyday people cannot lie to a bank to get a mortgage, and if they did, our government would throw the book at them. There simply cannot be different rules for different people.”

She is now charged with lying on an application for a loan to buy a $137,000 house in Virgina in 2020 that she used as a rental property, falsely claiming that it would be a second residence for her (even though she lives and works in New York). By claiming it was a second residence, rather than a rental property, she was able to put less money down and get a better interest rate (3% instead of 3.815%, worth almost $19,000 over the life of the loan). This is outright fraud, consistent with a pattern of deception she has exhibited with real estate transactions going back for decades.

How can she complain of retaliation when she ran for office promising to “get” Donald Trump, and stating publicly that lying to get a bank loan is a crime, emphasizing that “There simply cannot be different rules for different people”? Karma.  The case faces difficulties, but Letitia James richly deserves being prosecuted.

Critics accuse President Trump of pursuing grudges (“retaliation”) against his political enemies, and staging events for publicity, but he has a finely-tuned sense of justice that does not depend on politics, and which he demonstrates even when no one is watching.  For instance, over the weekend, the WSJ reported that immediately after taking office in January, President Trump directed the DOJ to keep in the harshest confinement possible the 37 convicted murderers on Death Row whose death sentences were commuted at the last minute by President Joe Biden (or his autopen, whoever was actually in charge). Accordingly, the 37 convicted murderers who escaped the death penalty due to Biden’s leniency will be kept in the federal prison in Florence, Colorado known as ADX.

President Trump is de-weaponizing the DOJ, which under President Biden (and AG Merrick Garland and Civil Rights Division head Kristen Clarke) was a tool of hard-left groups such as the SPLC.

Public Safety: President Trump wants to make America’s cities great again, beginning with making them safe again. Most blue cities are a disaster. Some—like Chicago—are overrun with crime. President Trump started with D.C., where the federal government has the authority to oversee city government. By putting federal officers and the National Guard in the nation’s capitol, crime fell, the streets became safe, and homeless encampments no longer blighted places like D.C.’s Union Station.

President Trump next turned his attention to crime-ridden cities in red states, starting with Memphis. He got Governor Lee’s permission to send in federal law enforcement officers and, as reported in the Tennessee Star, “the Memphis Safe Task Force has already made more than 500 arrests and seized 144 illegal firearms.” 562 arrests, to be exact.

President Trump has attempted to send the National Guard to Los Angeles, Portland, and Chicago, over the protests of the Democrat mayors and governors in those places. Lower federal courts have—predictably—sided with the blue state mayors and governors, but those rulings will face greater scrutiny from the courts of appeals and SCOTUS.

In L.A., Portland, and Chicago, President Trump was trying to send in the National Guard to protect ICE officers who were being threatened and actively obstructed by violent mobs including Antifa, which has been declared a terrorist organization. The Insurrection Act, 10 U.S.C. section 252, states that “Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.” Rioters attacking ICE certainly qualify.

Professor Glenn Reynolds at the UT School of Law thinks that the language of the Insurrection Act leaves no room for judicial review. In a Substack essay, Professor Reynolds says:

There’s no meaningful opportunity for judicial review under the Insurrection Act as its invocation is a “political question” and hence non-justiciable. (The same is true, as the Supreme Court held almost 200 years ago, in the case of Luther v. Borden, of recognizing one of two competing state governments as the legitimate government of a state).

“Political question” just means that the decision is left to one or both of the political branches of the government, leaving no room for judicial resolution. There is discipline, just not judicial discipline; instead it comes ultimately from voters.

President Trump will ultimately prevail. In the meantime, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson continues to make a fool of himself, as does Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, California Governor Gavin Newsom, and the left-wing idiots running the state of Oregon. President Trump’s goading has gotten the Illinois State Police to become involved in arresting anti-ICE protesters interfering with the Broadview ICE detention center near Chicago. As Professor Reynolds notes, “the value of the Sword of Damocles is that it hangs, not that it falls. That may be the case here, too. But if the sword of the Insurrection Act falls, it can fall very heavy indeed.”    

Peace: President Trump deserved the Nobel Peace Prize for putting together the peace deal between Israel and Hamas ending the Gaza war. But he didn’t get it. Peace is prize enough.

But serious problems remain….

Notwithstanding these salutary developments, the nation remains more divided than at any time I can recall in my lifetime. Consider the extent of the rift that divides so many of our institutions:

Congress cannot pass a budget, and Senate Democrats have shut down the federal government in order to claw back billions of dollars in wasteful spending that were eliminated in the Big Beautiful Bill. Even though the Senate voted 55-45 to pass the CR, the filibuster rule in the Senate requires 60 votes. So Chuck Schumer (scared of a primary challenge by AOC) can hold the nation hostage for political advantage.

We have a judicial impasse in the lower federal courts, due to rogue district judges appointed by Biden and Obama. SCOTUS cannot overturn all of the activist rulings in real time.

We have an impasse between blue cities and states and the Trump administration. In Chicago, officials openly defy the federal government, and talk about the Civil War. NYC voters seem poised to elect a radical socialist as mayor. Blue states and cities seem oblivious to the urban crime problem.

We have an impasse in public opinion over the nation’s direction and destiny.  The Democratic candidate for AG in Virginia remains in the race even after he was exposed for fantasizing about murdering a Republican legislator and his children. In a previous era, the candidate would have been forced to withdraw from the race. Not anymore. Democrat voters are as extreme as the officials they elect.

We have continuing threats of violence against conservatives—unprecedented in my lifetime. The biased news media downplays these threats.

Americans no longer share a common reality. The Left believes that gender is a choice, not biology, that J6 was the worst challenge to authority since the Civil War, and that Antifa doesn’t exist. These are delusions.  

We have an impasse between Ukraine and Russia in a horrific war that has cost millions of casualties.

We even see deep divisions among certain factions of voters in Tennessee: urban vs. rural, Democrats vs. Republicans, and within the GOP.    

As I warned about in a commentary in the Tennessee Star, dire things happen when the center doesn’t hold.

We are getting dangerously close to the brink of an abyss. A house divided cannot stand.