Not with a bang but a whimper.
One strange trait of the die hard
NeverTrump Republicans and progressives is their charge that Donald Trump poses
an existential threat to democracy. Trump, as is his wont, says a lot of
outrageous and weird things. But it is hard in his 16 months of rule to find
any proof that Trump has subverted the rule of law.
Most of the furor is over what we
are told what Trump might do, or what Trump has said, or which unsavory
character in Europe likes Trump. These could be legitimate worries if they were
followed by Trump’s anti-democratic concrete subversions. But so far, we have
not seen them. And there has certainly been nothing yet in this administration
comparable to the Obama-era efforts to curb civil liberties.
While we understand those on the
left refuse to believe that a constitutional “legal scholar” like Obama would
even think of allowing the executive branch to go rogue, it is indeed strange
that in almost every NeverTrump attack on Trump’s conduct, there is almost
no recognition or indeed worry that we have been living through one of the
great challenges to constitutional government in our history.
Does anyone remember that the Obama
Administration allowed Lois Lerner (“Not a smidgen of corruption”) more or less
to weaponize the IRS to help the Obama 2012 reelection effort? Does anyone
remember Eric Holder’s surveillance of the Associated Press journalists and Fox
News’s James Rosen?
Why have conservative
constitutionalists focused on what Trump has said rather than the strange
treatment accorded to investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson by U.S.
intelligence and investigatory agencies? Do we even remember the Benghazi
pseudo-video narrative and the strange jailing of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula?
Is there even curiosity about why
and how the departing Obama Administration suddenly and vastly expanded the
number of agencies that could have access to classified surveillance in its
aftermath?
Do we remember the more than 20 times Obama warned before
reelection that he was not a “king” and, as a constitutional scholar, could not
by fiat offer blanket amnesties?
Do the authorities in California realize that
they are resorting to the extralegal states-rights arguments that South
Carolina on the eve of the Civil War and Alabama in the early 1960s used to
nullify federal laws?
But stranger still is what we
already know of the 2016 election, and the lack of outrage from
constitutionalists, who daily warn us of what Trump might do—when we
already know what the U.S. government has done in violation of civil
rights, constitutional principles, and likely federal laws.
So far there is no
information that Stephen Bannon ordered taps on reporters, or that Nigel Farage
was hired by Trump to find Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton, or that Stephen
Miller requested the unmasking of surveilled names associated with the Clinton
campaign and then leaked them to the press.
But we do know that U.S. officials,
including the head of the FBI and chief deputies in the Justice Department,
misled a FISA court to obtain intelligence surveillance on U.S. citizens, by
providing information that they knew at the time, but did not disclose to the
court.
That information, by their own private admission, was unverified, compiled by a foreign national whom they had used and fired as an
unreliable informant.
They also admitted that the unverified information was paid for by the Clinton campaign, and served as
the basis for news accounts that were used in circular fashion to verify to the
court the dossier’s contents.
We do know that members of the Obama
intelligence and national security teams—Susan Rice and Samantha Power among
others—requested the names of American citizens surveilled (likely obtained
through improperly obtained FISA warrants) to be unmasked.
Then
someone illegally leaked their names to the press to damage the Trump campaign
and his presidential transition.
We do know that FBI Director James
Comey, in succession, has admitted that he in singular fashion took notes of a
confidential one-on-one meeting with the president.
Comey then briefed him on the
existence of a campaign dossier on him and did not disclose that it was
purchased by the Clinton campaign.
Comey also assured him that he was not the subject
of a FBI investigation at a time either he or his subordinates were leaking the
opposite to the media.
Then, after being fired, Comey leaked those memos
(at least one of which was classified) to the media to ensure the appointment
of a special counsel to investigate the president, who turned out to be a
friend of Comey’s, Robert Mueller.
Comey by his own admission has also
stated that he calibrated the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton to the
likelihood of her election to the presidency. FBI directors in a lawful society
are not supposed to do such things.
We do know that the FBI placed some
sort of an informant in the camp of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign in association
with gathering information about data used by a foreign national and a paid
operative of the Clinton campaign, Christopher Steele, in his effort to collude with Russians against the
campaign efforts of Donald Trump.
We do know that the deputy director
of the FBI is currently under investigation for lying to federal investigators, on at least four occasions, about his own conduct in
investigating candidate Hillary Clinton—at a time not long after
Clinton-related political action committees gave several hundred thousand
dollars to the political campaign of his wife.
We do know now that both James
Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, and John Brennan, head of the CIA,
knowingly gave false testimony under oath to Congress.
Clapper has
previously lied about the surveillance of American citizens.
Clapper has lied about
his knowledge of the Steele dossier.
Clapper likely also lied about leaking its
contents.
Brennan also had lied under oath to Congress about the U.S. drone
assassination program.
Brennan lied about CIA surveillance of computers used by U.S.
Senate staff.
Brennan lied about leaking the existence and promulgation of the Steele
dossier.
Brennan lied yet again to Congress that the dossier was not used to prompt
a CIA investigation into so-called collusion.
Again, the government’s two highest
intelligence officials did not tell the full truth about their knowledge of the
Steele dossier or their own roles in promulgating its contents.
In a
constitutional republic both such reprehensible officials who betrayed the
public trust would be subject to criminal investigations for knowingly lying
under oath to Congress and undermining the sinews of constitutional government.
We do know that senior Justice
Department official Bruce Ohr met with the architects of the Steele dossier and
that at the time his wife was working on the Clinton-purchased Fusion/GPS
Steele dossier, information not disclosed as required by the law on a federal
form.
Mueller’s special investigatory
team, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, and the media have not
yet found any credible evidence of Trump-Russian collusion.
Indeed, it is
more likely that the indictments and confessions of some Trump campaign
officials and Michael Flynn, on counts having nothing to do with collusion,
either will be dropped, retracted, or will not lead to convictions.
Why?
Because much
of the information used against them was obtained by misleading a FISA court
judge and through improper conduct at the highest level of the FBI.
There is a reason why over a
half-dozen top FBI officials either have been fired, reassigned, resigned, or
retired.
We have not yet seen the inspector general’s full report, but its
publication may lead to more departures from both the FBI and the Justice
Department, if not to criminal prosecutions.
If the present constitutional crisis
really involves high federal officials and former federal officials who were
colluding with foreign governments, then we have ample evidence that:
1) Bill
Clinton and the Clinton Foundation received large sums of money from
Russian-related interests in association with ongoing requests to buy into
companies that might control North American uranium stocks;
2) John Kerry
has met clandestinely with members and former members of the Iranian government
to craft joint strategies to save the so-called Iran Deal, from which the
president of the United States just withdrew; and
3) Hillary Clinton’s
campaign hired a foreign national to use sources from other foreign nationals
to help subvert the campaign of her 2016 opponent.
We are all worried, on occasion, by
nationalist and anti-democratic movements abroad in former democratic
countries.
....
[T]he current and chief
threats to Western constitutional government are not originating from
loud right-wing populists in Eastern Europe, or from Trump wailing like Ajax
about the rigged deep state.
Rather, the threat to our civil
liberties is coming from supposedly sanctimonious and allegedly judicious
career FBI, Justice Department, and intelligence agency officials. It's coming from progressive
and self-described idealistic former members of the Obama national security
team, and anti-Trump fervent campaign operatives, all of whom felt that they
could break the law.
The democracy killing lawbreaking by this cabal included illegally monitoring American citizens, and seeking to warp federal courts and
even the presidential election because such unsavory and anti-constitutional
means were felt necessary and justified to prevent and then subvert the
presidency of Donald J. Trump.
It is willful blindness for
progressives and NeverTrump Republicans to overlook what has happened only to
damn what has not happened.
The
dangers in America are not from transparent right-wing authoritarians (who are
easily spotted in their clumsiness), but from mellifluous self-styled
constitutionalists, whose facades and professions of legality mask their
rank efforts to use any anti-constitutional means necessary to achieve their
supposedly noble egalitarian ends.
This is the way democracies end—not
with a loud boisterous bang, but with insidious and self-righteous whimpers.
