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| Harpswell forest, 2017 |
Listening to the latest wrangling and speechifying, I’m beginning to wonder if anyone’s noticing the trees are falling. If we keep it up, there may not be a forest to see at all.
Let me back up. Someone recently questioned an observation I made about the president and his apparent disregard for the rule of law. I was asked, “Can you please tell us where Trump has ignored or crossed the line to negate the rule of law?” The question was civil, and made me stop and think about how to answer it in kind, leading me to give some thought to the concept of “rule of law.”
The clearest example I could come up with of the president ignoring what I understand as the rule of law is the pardon of Joe Arpaio. Readers may remember that the former Arizona sheriff was convicted after a bench trial of contempt of court for failure to comply with a court order. (The Sheriff’s people were using racial profiling to detain Latinos they suspected might be illegally in the country, and the court ordered them to cease doing so.) Upon conviction, there was a process available: first sentencing for the criminal conduct, then appeal, which if accepted, would lead to review on appeal.
Before sentencing occurred, the president issued a broad pardon that included not only the conviction at issue, but also any other offense with which Arpaio might be charged thereafter in connection with the case.
There are two rule of law issues here that concern me. First, Arpaio, as the record shows, blatantly ignored the court order and continued to perform in a manner contrary to law. Second, the president implicitly ratified that behavior by pardoning him. Moreover, rather than letting the judicial process play out, he issued the pardon even before sentencing.
Whether you believe racial profiling is warranted to find illegal aliens or not, in fact the law does not permit it, and the sheriff is sworn to uphold and enforce the law. He did not do so, but arbitrarily substituted his own judgement for the law. And the president in essence ratified that abuse of authority and violation of his sworn duty to uphold the constitution.
Fast forward through the woods to the Nunes memo concerning FBI investigatory procedures and possible bias by certain FBI personnel. If Joe Arpaio represents the felling of a single, fairly small, tree, the Nunes memo would take out a whole stand of trees.
First, it’s a memo! It is not a report, hashed out and debated by the full committee. Due to its nature, it cannot support its claims and arguments with underlying evidence and citations; and there is a charge, which seems to concern some in Nunes’ own party as well as the opposition, that the wording approved by GOP representatives for the memo’s release was changed before it was submitted to the White House for review. If that were true, not even the GOP members on the committee approved the draft in the form in which it will be released.
Second, there is another memo meant to stand against the Nunes memo and point out what the opposition feels are its inaccuracies. This memo must go through the same vetting process as the Nunes memo. Which means the White House has to approve its release. It may end up doing so, though I doubt it, but in any case, by that time, the damage from the Nunes memo will have been done. As I understand it, the House hasn’t approved release of the opposition memo.
Third, the FBI has expressed grave concerns about release of the memo. I don’t know what the memo says, but based on Rep. Nunes’ history, it seems safe to presume it is drafted in a way that emphasizes anything that could bring the FBI as an impartial fact finder into question; if the complaints already heard about the memo are, in fact, the case, Nunes manipulates innuendo to reach a desired conclusion. Process isn’t empty. If the House Intelligence Committee has real concerns about the performance of the FBI, it should carry out an investigation. Release of a memo that everyone acknowledges is partisan serves no national interest.
Watching this administration and its friends, we often learn eventually that where claims and charges they make are loudest, they themselves have engaged in the conduct they attribute to their opponents.
All of this begs the broader question: is ANYONE in authority in Washington even remotely concerned about the fact that a very powerful foreign adversary has been and continues to play games with our national interests? Whether there was conscious collusion by GOP operatives to gain the presidency or not, there was interference by the Russians, and continues to be. Ferreting out these efforts is part of the FBI’s work and critically important to our future as a democratic nation. I’m not saying the FBI, or any organization, is perfect, but there are institutional ways of dealing with imperfections without cutting down the forest to obtain a specific tree.
Or, perhaps the GOP is willing to let the forest go—they certainly seem prepared to see actual forests go—in favor of securing profits. Russia has built a fairly successful oligarchy, and our current president noted in a passing remark at the GOP retreat on 1 February that he’d accomplished more with regulation (getting rid of them) than a president who served 16 years… Now, it’s rare for presidents to mention FDR’s length of time in office when rallying their troops, so the reference took me a bit aback.
Then the story teller in me popped up: Is he thinking ahead? Why should a little constitutional amendment that sets a term limit on the president bother him? There’s a national emergency, after all, all those dark-skinned illegal immigrants, all that carnage… or if there isn’t an emergency yet, he’s sure there will be. It’s how we’ll unify and come together, he says….
I don’t write horror tales, but if I did…
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