Separation of powers, anyone?
[Hat tip: commenter “Barry Meislin.”]
Alan Dershowitz opines on the Jan 6 committee’s recommendation that the DOJ indict Trump:
“In my view, it’s clearly unconstitutional,” Dershowitz said on Monday’s edition of the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show. “Article One limits the power of Congress through legislative actions. This is not a legislative action — naming a specific individual and referring them to the Justice Department. It’s not legislative and it tramples on the authority of the executive branch.”
“The 14th Amendment provides one specific time when Congress may in fact, act against an individual,” he later continued. “That is if the person was engaged in an insurrection or rebellion, like in the Civil War, and they didn’t act under that provision.”
Dershowitz said that he believes that the Justice Department will accept these referrals and will most likely ignore them.
Also, does it matter that Trump’s actions in question were committed while he was still nominally president? And that he was impeached for them by the House one week before leaving office, but the Senate did not vote in favor of removing him from office? Isn’t that the limit of Congress’s powers against an ex-president for acts committed while president?
At any rate, Dershowitz isn’t saying that Trump won’t be indicted. He points out that the DOJ is continuing with its own investigation and has a lot more power than Congress to do this. It’s my recollection that the DOJ is focusing on the materials seized in the MAL raid. Perhaps because the charges can involve acts committed after Trump left the presidency?
Another separation of powers issue is this one, about which we’ve just learned. This time the offender was the DOJ vis a vis members of Congress:
In an extraordinary intrusion on congressional oversight, the Justice Department used grand jury subpoenas to secretly obtain the personal email and phone data of at least two top House Intelligence Committee investigators back in November 2017 just as they and their boss, then-Chairman Devin Nunes, were assembling bombshell evidence of FBI abuses in the Russia collusion probe, Just the News has learned.
The subpoenas, obtained by Just the News, show the DOJ demanded that Google turn over personal email and phone data from the two senior staffers on Nov. 20, 2017 and that responsive materials were to be returned to DOJ by Dec. 5, 2017.
The subpoenas were delivered during a critical time frame in the committee’s effort to expose the Donald Trump-Russia collusion investigation as having been driven by an uncorroborated political opposition dossier funded by Hillary Clinton. Nunes’ committee was locked at the time in a bitter struggle to force the FBI and DOJ to turn over records to the committee.
So while Nunes et al were trying to get records from the DOJ, the DOJ was using its power to spy on them without their knowledge. How is it that we have finally learned this? Here’s the reason:
The DOJ subpoenas came to light in the last few days when the former committee staffers were informed by Google that their records had been taken, consistent with the Big Tech company’s policy of alerting customers five years after law enforcement takes such actions.
So that’s Google’s policy of giving notice five years later. It’s not the DOJ’s policy, which is probably to never give notice unless someone is indicted and tried for something relevant in the material accessed by the agency though Google or any other similar source.
One of the people whose communications were monitored was Kash Patel, who now says that:
…the DOJ’s subpoenas were an extraordinary intrusion on congressional oversight and raised serious concerns about the separation of executive and legislative branch powers guaranteed in the Constitution…
“Because a co-equal branch of government, we as congressional investigators and Devin Nunes, his staff on House Intel were conducting constitutional demanded oversight of the fraudulent acts at the FBI and DOJ which we now know happened.”
This should be big news but of course most people probably won’t ever know or care.
Here’s the summary by Nunes:
“The FBI and DOJ spied on a presidential campaign, and when Congress began exposing what they were doing, they spied on us to find out what we knew and how we knew it,” Nunes told Just the News. “It’s an egregious abuse of power that the next Congress must investigate so these agencies can be held accountable and reformed.”
Of the two legislative branches, only the House is held by Republicans, and they face the dilemma of having to decide how much investigating to do instead of trying to pass legislation. Of course, any legislation they would pass wouold probably not get past the Democrats in the Senate anyway.
[NOTE: I’m not sure where to put this next bit, but I’ll just put it here even though it isn’t on the topic. Guess what judge had originally ordered Title 42 stopped? Why, our old friend federal judge Emmet “Ahab” Sullivan, that’s who.]
Perhaps unprecedented in modern American history is the level of corruption in all three branches of government (SCOTUS perhaps least of all, although the failure of the Supremes to address the multitudinous irregularities of 2020 was troubling indeed), while it appears likely that, of the two legislative branches, the House (soon with Republicans in the majority) is being subverted, in the “lame-duck session”, by the Senate with the monstrosity of an omnibus having just been released (costing nearly two trillion dollars, more than 4,000 pages long!) and seemingly favored by “Cocaine Mitch” and GOPe, as it gives massive amounts to the Pentagon (wasteful and bloated and newly “woke”), as well as forty-five billion more to the “Welfare Queen” in Kiev.
Then congressman nixon challenged the establishment went he went after hiss who had all the pedigree 70 years later nunes was under investigation because of traitors in the government
Well, as long as you’re asking….
“Musk Asks Schiff If He Approved ‘State Censorship’; Advocates Modern ‘Church Commission’ To Investigate FBI Corruption”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/musk-asks-schiff-if-he-approved-state-censorship-advocates-modern-church-commission
The above (link) is a formidable posting, set up by a “wild and crazy guy”(TM) who just happens to be one of the richest individuals on the planet and has an extraordinarily whimsical sense of humor—oh, and who by buying Twitter now owns the keys to the realm of some ultra-sensitive information that he’s NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE let alone PUBLICIZE.
In this posting the 1975 Church Commission, is discussed (including the suggestion that the Church-inspired laws need to be seriously updated for the 21st century) along with an extraordinary video of Frank Church—in 1975!!—explaining the need for the commission and the laws intended to limit the extent of snooping on American citizens.
https://twitter.com/TyCardon/status/1604913025651298305
This is MUST viewing.
All of Church’s efforts were blown out of the water as the result of 9/11 and its aftermath—where snooping power was returned, in spades, to the alphabet agencies to prevent future attacks (though one could well argue that as a result of a questionable interpretation of Church’s efforts, “walls” built up between FBI and CIA intelligence gathering greatly assisted in bin-Laden’s success).
This awesome power was then turned on American citizens—i.e., subverted by Obama and his gang leading to such outrages as the IRS scandal (much more of which we should be seeing in the near future—in its new, turbo-charged incarnation), Russiagate and everything in its aftermath.
IRONIC—or maybe that’s not quite the right word—that the snooping laws, expanded as a result of Osama bin-Laden’s insidious attack on America, have been manipulated and exploited even more insidiously by Obama and his henchmen to FINISH bin-Laden’s goal…of America’s destruction…or, if you prefer, “transformation”.
As they say in the Casbah, INSHALLAH.
Actually, I found Dershowitz’s arguments, while impressive(!), to be UNCONVINCING(!!) in this case (though this is likely because I don’t understand things all the way through…)
If I do understand his argument correctly, the Legislative branch of government has no business—no right—to “invade the space” of the Executive branch, i.e., to do what ONLY the Executive branch is allowed—by the Constitution—to do.
Leaving aside the pitifully dismissive regard that the current administration has for the Constitution, WHAT IF the Executive branch (IOW the all-encompassing “Biden”) is absolutely FINE with the “Biden”-controlled Legislative branch’s effort to draw and quarter Trump?
(“FINE” as in, “Make OUR day; CRUCIFY the bas***d!!”)
IOW, would such a “separation of powers” be a non-sequitur given that the Legislative branch is doing PRECISELY WHAT the Executive branch would like to do; i.e., PRECISELY WHAT the Executive branch wants the Legislative branch to do.
So I guess the question is, Would such a bizarre, corrupt situation STILL prevent—according to the Constitution—the Legislative branch from persecuting Trump?
Barry Meislin:
My opinion is that, if the Constitution is the guide, it doesn’t matter if the executive branch is in cahoots with the action. It would still be prohibited.
j e:
SCOTUS had no available legal remedy for the election fraud problem. That is why I have hammered home the message that prevention is the only way.
Neo, check out the Arizona judges’ dismissal of Lake’s claim that the procedures weren’t followed for signature verification.
VivaFrei talked about it this am. I haven’t been able to find a pdf of the judge’s order allowing two of her claims to go forward but dismissing the other eight.
It’s more a matter if the DOJ who definitely wants to charge DJT actually thinks they can and not have repercussions if they do.
Running all of government, agencies, the Democrats Propaganda Ministry and a extremely weak Congress thinking the die roll might do it.
Shut the FBI down and fire all of its employees. No notice. Just federalize the National Guard in all 50 states and have them show up at every FBI office, leading the employees out and sealing it up.
“Shut the FBI down and fire all of its employees. No notice. Just federalize the National Guard in all 50 states and have them show up at every FBI office, leading the employees out and sealing it up.” Art Deco
Bingo. Nothing less will suffice. Highly unlikely to happen however, so the corruption persists.
“The 14th Amendment provides one specific time when Congress may in fact, act against an individual,” he later continued. “That is if the person was engaged in an insurrection or rebellion, like in the Civil War, and they didn’t act under that provision.”
Which is exactly what the liberals in congress are charging mr. Trump with.
And which the leftists in DOJ will no doubt use to indict him when so charged by congress, in fact probably have been preparing to do for the last several years.
They’re just waiting for the right moment, and what better date than 6 January 2023, on the anniversary of the supposed insurrection, to arrest mr. Trump and drag him off to prison for a speedy trial and conviction.