"rule of law"

this includes the concept as well as the term, including djt authoritarian hypocrisy

Undermining the Convictions

Finally, beyond using the power of his office to pursue Trump's perceived enemies, Barr has deployed the Justice Department to help Trump's convicted friends. It was the final step in wiping the Russia investigation from the history books altogether. But Barr's manipulations also have profound implications for the rule of law.

When Mueller closed up shop in 2019, then-U.S. Attorney Liu (whose office supervised the McCabe investigation) assumed control of several special counsel prosecutions and earlier referrals, including cases against Roger Stone and Mike Flynn. But after Liu failed to get McCabe indicted, Barr replaced her with his old friend and confidant, Timothy Shea (JD, Georgetown '91) — just as the Justice Department was finalizing its sentencing recommendation in Stone's case.

In 2017, Stone had lied to the House Intelligence Committee about his role concerning Trump campaign contacts with Russia. Then he threatened a witness who was going to expose him. A jury deliberated for about seven hours before convicting Stone on all seven counts of lying to Congress and witness tampering.

As Shea replaced Liu in the District of Columbia U.S. attorney's office, career prosecutors handling Stone's case filed a brief that followed federal sentencing guidelines recommending seven to nine years in prison. Immediately, Trump tweeted that Stone's plight was "horrible," "unfair," and a "miscarriage of justice." Hours later, an official at Justice Department headquarters said that the DC office's recommendation was "extreme" and "excessive" and that a new memorandum would outline the government's revised position.

Defending the rule of law, four of the federal prosecutors who signed the sentencing memorandum resigned immediately from the case. Jonathan Kravis (Yale, JD, '04) — one of Stone's prosecutors at trial — resigned from the Justice Department altogether. That left Shea and his assistant who was newly assigned to the Stone case to file a revised memorandum asserting that the government's previously recommended sentence "could be considered excessive and unwarranted."

The following day, Trump congratulated Barr for "taking charge" of the Stone case, "which perhaps should not even been brought."

Defenders of the rule of law fought back. Appearing on national television, the former chief of the criminal fraud section of the Justice Department, Andrew Weissmann (JD, Columbia, '84) — an appointee of President George H. W. Bush — said he could think of no instance where he had even heard of the attorney general reaching into a single criminal case to weigh in on a sentencing submission. Former Attorney General Eric Holder (JD, Columbia, '76) called Barr's direct intervention "unprecedented, wrong, and ultimately dangerous."

"Public confusion was the objective, because it led to public indifference"

The most damning criticism came from Donald Ayer (JD, Harvard, '75), who had served as President George H. W. Bush's deputy attorney general and Barr's boss at one point. On Feb. 17, 2020, Ayer wrote in The Atlantic:

"All of this conduct — including Barr's personal interventions to influence or negate independent investigations or the pursuit of criminal cases, and his use of the department's resources to frustrate the checks and balances provided by other branches — is incompatible with the rule of lawas we know it…"

Ayer concluded: "Bill Barr's America is not a place that anyone, including Trump voters, should want to go. It is a banana republic where all are subject to the whims of a dictatorial president and his henchmen. To prevent that, we need a public uprising demanding that Bill Barr resign immediately, or failing that, be impeached."

Trump and Barr were undeterred. Trump attacked Stone's judge, Amy Berman Jackson (JD, Harvard, JD '79), calling her "the Judge that put Paul Manafort in SOLITARY CONFINEMENT, something that not even mobster Al Capone had to endure." That was another Trump lie. Prison officials had made the decision about Manafort's federal housing. But Barr did not defend Jackson against Trump's attack, and the Judicial Code of Conduct prevented her from defending herself.

Instead, Barr gave an interview during which he sent Trump a message — the tweets were making it "impossible" for him to do his job. Since then, Barr's view of his job has become even clearer: obliterate all trace of the Russia investigation. Mike Flynn became a stunning example of Barr's methods.

Moving to Drop Charges After a Guilty Plea

On Dec. 1, 2017, Flynn pled guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. On Dec. 18, 2018, he again acknowledged his crimes in open court. Judge Emmett G. Sullivan (JD, Howard Univ., '71) did not hide his disgust.

"[Y]ou lied to the FBI about three different topics, and you made those false statements while you were serving as the national security advisor, the President of the United States' most senior national security aid. I can't minimize that," the judge said. "Two months later you again made false statements in multiple documents filed pursuant to the Foreign Agents Registration Act. So, all along you were an unregistered agent of a foreign country, while serving as the national security advisor to the President of the United States. I mean, arguably, that undermines everything this flag over here stands for. Arguably, you sold your country out."

But after Barr became attorney general two months later, he appointed the U.S. attorney in St. Louis, Jeff Jensen (JD, St. Louis Univ., '98), to review Flynn's case. In June 2019, Flynn retained new a lawyer — Sidney Powell (JD, North Carolina, '78), a far-right conspiracy theorist. Powell wrote directly to Barr, urging him to conduct an internal review and throw out Flynn's conviction. A week later, Trump congratulated Flynn for retaining Powell, tweeting that she was a "GREAT LAWYER."

Shortly before the July 2019 trial at which Flynn was supposed to be a cooperating witness against his former business associate, he suddenly became uncooperative and prosecutors did not call him to testify. Powell then asked Judge Sullivan to nullify Flynn's conviction on the grounds that prosecutors had engaged in misconduct — claims that the judge rejected. As Flynn's sentencing approached in early January 2020, prosecutors withdrew their earlier recommendation of probation and urged Flynn's incarceration for as long as six months.

As with Roger Stone, things then changed abruptly and mysteriously in Flynn's favor. And as with Stone, Barr and his confidant, interim US Attorney for the District of Columbia Timothy Shea, made it happen. On May 7, Shea's office took the unprecedented step of moving to drop all charges against Flynn. Shea alone signed the motion with no line prosecutors joining. It included no affidavits or declarations supporting its many new factual allegations. No motion to vacate the government's prior, contrary filings and representations accompanied the filing.

The defenders of the rule of law stepped forward again. One of Flynn's prosecutors withdrew from the case and Judge Sullivan invited amicus briefs on the unusual motion. Then he assigned a former federal judge to oppose the Justice Department's move and to determine whether Flynn should be found in criminal contempt for lying to the court when he had pled guilty — twice.

Flynn's attorney sought a writ of mandamus in the District of Columbia circuit court of appeals. That, in turn, forced Judge Sullivan to hire an attorney, Beth Wilkinson (JD, Virginia, '87), to answer the mandamus petition. The circle was complete: A judge defending the rule of law now needed his own lawyer to defend himself.

In her brief on Judge Sullivan's behalf, Wilkinson wrote, "It is unprecedented for an Acting U.S. Attorney to contradict the solemn representations that career prosecutors made time and again, and undermine the district court's legal and factual findings, in moving on his own to dismiss the charge years after two different federal judges accepted the defendant's plea."

What began in March 2019 with Barr's false spin and outright lies to assuage a president's obsession with the Russia investigation had exploded into a multidimensionalassault on the rule of law itself. No limiting principle has guided Barr's abuses, but he has encountered resistance. Individually and together, attorneys — especially litigators — have stepped forward:

More than 1,000 former federal prosecutors from Republican and Democratic administrations signed an open letter stating that, but for the fact that Trump was a sitting president, Mueller's proof would have led to Trump's indictment for obstruction of justice.

In connection with Roger Stone's sentencing, more than 2,600 former prosecutors and other DOJ attorneys from Republican and Democratic administrations signed an open letter condemning Barr for "interference in the fair administration of justice," "openly and repeatedly flouting" the fundamental principle of "equal justice under law," and calling on Barr to resign. They wrote, "Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are not constitutional republics; they are autocracies."

The president of the New York State Bar Ass'n issued a statement saying, "The intervention by senior Department of Justice officials in the sentencing of Roger Stone is an assault on a bedrock principle of the rule of law — the apolitical administration of justice. Our nation was founded on the principle that everyone must be treated equally in the eyes of the law…"

More than 2,000 former Justice Department officials from Republican and Democratic administrations signed an open letter stating that Barr had "once again assaulted the rule of law" in seeking the dismissal of Flynn's case. "Attorney General Barr's repeated actions to use the Department as a tool to further President Trump's personal and political interests have undermined any claim to the deference that courts usually apply to the Department's decisions about whether or not to prosecute a case," they wrote.

Judge Sullivan and the appeals court received numerous amicus briefs supporting the district court's exercise of judgment when deciding whether to accept the government's motion to dismiss the federal criminal charges against Flynn. Filings in support of the judge came from former federal judges, former Watergate prosecutors, legal scholars, and the New York City Bar Ass'n.

ABA President Judy Perry Martinez issued a statement declaring, "Public officials who personally attack judges or prosecutors can create a perception that the system is serving a political or other purpose rather than the fair administration of justice. It is incumbent upon public officials and members of the legal profession, whose sworn duty it is to uphold the law, to do everything in their power to preserve the integrity of the justice system."

What's next? Federal judges enjoy lifetime tenure that prevents Trump from purging the bench of his perceived judicial enemies. But Trump and his key Senate enabler with a law degree, Sen. Mitch McConnell (JD, Kentucky, '67), have boasted about filling federal judgeships at a brisk pace. Those judges must demonstrate their independence. With their actions, they have a unique opportunity to reaffirm that "equal justice under law" and "no one is above the law" are not empty platitudes, but guiding principles of our democracy.

Pundits often understate Barr's conduct as violating "norms." It is more accurate to say that he and Trump are at war with the rule of law. Federal judges and litigators throughout the country have become first-responders in the fight. The front lines have formed in courtrooms throughout the country, but lawyers away from the immediate field of battle are also making a difference.

So which side are you on?

In this war, there are no bystanders.

This article appears in the Fall 2020 issue of Litigation – The Journal of the Section of Litigation of the American Bar Association.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-and-his-cronies-must-be-brought-to-justice-but-more-will-be-required/

no lnx

trump and his cronies must be brought to justice — but more will be required

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly September 15, 2020

Over the weekend, David Atkins wrote a piece titled, “To Save Democracy, Democrats Must Hold Trump Officials Accountable.” He ended by noting that “people have to go to jail for what has happened, or there probably won’t be a democracy worth saving for long.”

Reaching a similar conclusion, Jonathan Chait has a piece in the latest edition of New York Magazine titled, “Lock Him Up? For the Republic to survive Trump’s presidency, he must be tried for his crimes. Even if that sparks a constitutional crisis of its own.”

Trump’s reversals of Obama-era police reforms and his open contempt for the law send a signal about whom the law constrains and whom it protects. The fashioning of a more equal society means sending a different message: The rule of law must bind everyone, just as it protects everyone. A world where the power of the state can be brought to bear against a person who was once its most famous symbol of wealth is one where every American will more easily imagine a future in which we are all truly equal before the law.

Even with that conclusion, Chait raises important considerations. One of them is that, along with everything else, Trump has politicized crime. As Chait suggests, “crimes has ceased to denote violations of written law and become instead a catchall description for any anti-Trump activity.” That provides the kind of closure mechanism the president’s supporters use to not only wall themselves off from facts, but reinforces the narrative of Trump being the victim of lawbreakers out to get him. It must, therefore, be taken as a fact that approximately 40 percent of the population will view prosecution of Trump and members of his administration as political payback from the opposition, regardless of its grounding in evidence.

That leads to the major dilemma Chait outlined.

The prospect of an electorally defeated Trump, though glorious, would immediatelyset off a conflict between two fundamental democratic values: the rule of law and mutual toleration. The rule of law is a banal yet utterly foundational concept that the law is a set of rights and obligations, established in advance, that apply equally to everybody…

Mutual toleration means that political opponents must accept the legitimacy and legality of their opponents. If elected leaders can send their opponents to prison and otherwise discredit them, then leaders are afraid to relinquish power lest they be imprisoned themselves…

If the government is run by lawbreakers, though, the state faces a dilemma: Either the principle of equal treatment under the law or the tradition of a peaceful transition of power will be sacrificed. It’s hard to imagine any outcome under which the rule of law survives Trump unscathed.

This president’s criminality means that we will be forced to choose between two foundational principles of democracy: the rule of law or mutual toleration. Chait makes the case that protecting the rule of law is more important, recognizing the threat that poses to a peaceful transition of power.

What I appreciate about Chait’s analysis is that he takes what would otherwise be the unintended consequences of his position into consideration. Those are the kinds of difficult choices that, more often than not, don’t present us with clear options of right vs wrong or good vs evil.

But given that both Atkins and Chait frame their arguments in terms of what will be required to save democracy, it is important to also recognize that, should Biden win in November, prosecuting Trump and members of his administration will be necessary, but not sufficient to complete the task.

Many of the ways that Trump has corrupted our democracy don’t constitute crimes that can be prosecuted in court. Some of those could be addressed for the future by passing new laws, such as requiring presidential candidates to release their tax returns and a more complete requirement for divestment from business interests.

Others, however, involved the breaking of norms that have developed over decades and don’t lend themselves to legal remedies. As an example, one of the major contributors to the erosion of the rule of law is the breakdown of independence between the president and the attorney general. Even cases that could be prosecuted have been covered up by Bill Barr, such as Trump’s obstruction of justice in the Mueller investigation.

It becomes difficult to imagine how that wall can be constructed via legislation, and yet the way that expectation has been destroyed over the last few years threatens the rule of law even more profoundly than it would be if Trump isn’t prosecuted after leaving office. When the attorney general turns a blind eye to a president who violates the Constitution, this country is in serious jeopardy.

Of course, we might not even be having this discussion if Republican senators hadn’t dismissed the evidence against Trump that was produced during the impeachment trial. Having a major political party that is willing to embrace lawlessness in order to stay in power is perhaps the biggest threat to democracy that we face today. There is no easy remedy to that one.

The rather pessimistic conclusion therefore, is that, even if Biden wins and the Trump administration is held legally accountable, our democracy will remain imperiled. It always has been. It’s just that we can now see how.

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920 an

omg

Full frontal attack on rule of law’: Trump sanctions top ICC officials probing US war crimes in Afghanistan

us mil in afgan, but also israeli palestine

an 720

From the full Editorial Board of the Washington Post:

THERE ARE no doubt thousands of people in federal prison who deserved a presidential commutation more than Roger Stone. But after President Trump’s intervention on Friday, Mr. Stone will serve none of his prison sentence. The president may have had the power to help his longtime friend. But that does not make it any less a perversion of justice — indeed, it is one of the most nauseating instances of corrupt government favoritism the United States has ever seen.

***

The United States is supposed to be a place in which laws apply equally to all. And while it never has — and never will — live up to that ideal in full, no modern president before Mr. Trump has so clearly renounced it. The president seems to be doing his best, within the confines of the U.S. constitutional system, to emulate the gangster leadership of Russian President Vladimir Putin, a man whose ruinous reign Mr. Trump has always admired. If the country needed any more evidence, Friday confirmed that the greatest threat to the Republic is the president himself.

BO commented on in con call]

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lock her up, rule of law

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/its-not-just-a-chant-at-trumps-rallies-or-lame-wordplay-in-his-tweets-its-his-call-to-fascist-rule/

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see roy cohn for full txt

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/sadism-crime-and-a-love-of-lies-what-3500-lawsuits-reveal-about-trumps-true-nature/

no lnx

Sadism, crime and a love of lies: What 3,500 lawsuits reveal about Trump’s true nature

Written by History News Network April 11, 2020

American presidents before Donald Trump had some record of public achievement in politics, government or the military before they were elected. Donald Trump lacked any of those credentials, but brought his astounding history of involvement in thousands of lawsuits to the nation’s highest office. This trove of cases from more than 45 years reflects Trump’s contempt for ethical standards and for the US Constitution and the rule of law, the foundation of American democracy.

As a perennial litigant, Trump weaponized the law to devastate perceived enemies, to consolidate power, to frustrate opposing parties, as former federal prosecutor and acclaimed author James D. Zirin illuminates in his compelling and disturbing history of Trump’s use and abuse of the law, Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Trump in 3,500 Lawsuits (All Points Books)....

James D. Zirin: He has continued and I think he will continue. And I think the rule of law has been seriously undermined.

:{:{}:

Our democracy has been seriously compromised because the framers of the Constitution never thought the system would work this way. Republican senators deserve part of the blame because of their need to retain power or whatever, they did not respect the oath they took to be fair and impartial judges of the facts and the law, but instead voted along party lines to acquit him.

Robin Lindley: Trump said sometime in the 90s, as you note in your book, that “I love to have enemies.” I think most of us wouldn’t feel that way and it seems pathological to me. What did you think when you found that quote from him?

James D. Zirin: Most politicians are controversial and have political enemies. I think Trump relishes that perhaps more than others and he loves to attack them personally. We know Biden is “Sleepy Joe” and Elizabeth Warren is “Pocahontas” and Bernie Sanders is “Crazy Bernie.” He has nicknames for everyone and he revels in trashing them rather than addressing the merits of anything they propose.

Robin Lindley: The mentality of an eight-year-old bully, it seems. You write that Trump’s experience in lawsuits reflects “his inmost ulterior motivation.” This comes out in your responses, but could you sum up your sense of his character, motivation, and morality based on your extensive research?

James D. Zirin: His virulent combination of anti-science, anti-law, ignorance, irrational conspiracy theorizing, instability, narcissism and vindictiveness has led us to national catastrophe. If he is re-elected, I fear for the republic and the American people.

Robin Lindley: As you demonstrate, Trump is an anomaly in terms of the adversarial system. Do you have anything to add on his abuse of legal process?

James D. Zirin: Look, the adversary system is the crown jewel of our legal system. We got it from the British. The idea is that you had lawyers on both sides who were partisan, who were like the Knights Templar who rode into battle on behalf of somebody or other in the Middle Ages. That has been the best way of getting at the truth. In contrast, in civil law countries like France or Germany, the judge conducts the inquiry. The judge might ask questions of the lawyers, but the lawyers don’t develop the evidence on both sides.

But adversary doesn’t mean enemy. What Trump has demonstrated is that we have a great legal system and we all have the benefit of it. But there are also limitations for the law and those limitations can be exploited by someone determined to beat the system, and that’s what Trump has done.

Robin Lindley. Thank you, Mr. Zirin and congratulations on your groundbreaking and compelling book on the life of Donald Trump through the perspective of his thousands of lawsuits. It’s been an honor to talk with you.

This article was originally published at History News Network

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-lashes-out-with-a-dangerous-lie-at-the-federal-judge-overseeing-roger-stones-case/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/the-roger-stone-debacle-is-a-true-crisis-and-the-house-must-force-bill-barr-to-testify/

no lnx

The Roger Stone debacle is a true crisis — and the House must force Bill Barr to testify

Written by Daily Kos February 11, 2020

by Hunter

This cannot go on. Three top prosecutors (which may turn into four) in the Roger Stone case have now withdrawn after Attorney General William Barr’s Department of Justice ordered them to revise their guideline-based recommendations on Stone’s sentencing. This happened the morning after Donald Trump tweeted that he “cannot allow” the prosecutors’ recommended sentencing of Stone, an ally and key stonewaller in the Robert Mueller investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russian government hacking in the 2016 elections.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/republicans-dont-even-pretend-to-care-about-laws-now-what-they-unleash-after-impeachment-will-be-really-ugly/

no lnx

Republicans don’t even pretend to care about laws now. What they unleash after impeachment will be really ugly

Written by Heather Digby Parton / Salon December 16, 2019

In the past, despite their differences, our political leaders were in agreement that to at least preserve the ideals behind our democratic system it was important to pay lip service to the spirit of the law. For instance, during the Iraq war, the Bush administration committed war crimes. But officials didn’t come right out and say, “Yes, we torture people. What are you going to do about it?” There were consequences to openly defying the law, which they knew could get quite serious down the road. They understood that to openly endorse war crimes was to let an ugly, dangerous genie out of the bottle. So they claimed it wasn’t actually torture and pretended that they believed torture was wrong, insisting they would never do such a thing.

The old-fashioned trope that describes this is, “Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.” It’s certainly not an ideal way for leaders to behave. They should follow the law and the Constitution, and if they don’t they should be held accountable. But declaring war on virtue all together and embracing vice as your organizing principle is what mobsters and tyrants do. That’s what’s happening under President Trump.

During the 2016 campaign, he proudly declared that he meant to torture, kill civilians and “take the spoils” of war if he wanted to. Today, he’s pardoning war criminals and bringing them up on stage at political events. While he does lie profusely and conspires with his henchmen, much of his alleged criminal behavior in the White House has been done right out in the open. He admitted he fired former FBI Director James Comey because Comey was investigating him. He dangled pardons and intimidated witnesses in public statements. Most recently he released a transcript of a phone call in which he tried to coerce a foreign leader to smear his political rival, calling it “perfect.”

Now Republican leaders are following his lead. They don’t bother to pretend that they are following rules anymore, or make arguments based on a common understanding of what the Constitution requires. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has announced he has no plans to even feign seriousness with the Senate impeachment trial of Trump. He has said right out in the open that he planned to follow the president’s lead and do whatever Trump wants him to do.

But it’s Trump’s most ardent sycophant, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who is really letting it all hang out:

Graham was in Qatar this past weekend for that nation’s annual international forum, looking for every camera he could find to flagrantly defy the oath he will take before he sits as a juror in the Senate trial. He told CNN, “This thing will come to the Senate, and it will die quickly, and I will do everything I can to make it die quickly.” When asked if he thought that was an appropriate thing to say under the circumstances, he replied, “Well, I must think so because I’m doing it. I am trying to give a pretty clear signal I have made up my mind. I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here. What I see coming, happening today, is just partisan nonsense.”

That’s not how it’s supposed to work. Graham, of all people, knows this. He is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and was a House manager during Bill Clinton’s impeachment. There are dozens of YouTube clips floating around that show Graham arguing for open-minded fairness in that trial. Let’s just say that if Graham’s a hypocrite, which he is, it’s not in service of any virtue. It’s in service to Donald Trump, the Republican Party and himself.

Graham does seem to have a strategy with all this loose talk. The argument between the White House and the senators who want to put this behind them as quickly as possible continues to rage over whether or not to hold a full trial with witnesses called by both sides or a pro forma process that takes the reports offered by the House Judiciary Committee and simply votes up or down on whether to convict. The president signaled on Friday that he was open to either approach but reports keep surfacing that he wants to put on a big show and leading Senate Republicans are having a hard time talking him out of it.

I suspect that Graham and McConnell have cooked up a deal with Trump for the perfunctory proceeding and a quick acquittal, with the promise that they will pursue the Ukraine charges against Joe Biden and the Democratic Party in the Senate after the trial is over. Graham has been promising investigations ever since he took the gavel in January, but hasn’t managed to get any of it done yet.

Trump may hold him to his latest promise. He might agree to a short trial, but he wants his pound of flesh. So does his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the former hero of 9/11 who is now staring down the barrel of a federal indictment.

Giuliani just returned from Ukraine where he’s been “gathering evidence” on a couple of brand new scandals allegedly involving Adam Schiff, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. He’s been tweeting about some of it and it all sounds absolutely bonkers.

Giuliani has met with the president to tell him all about this stuff and you can be sure that, acquittal or not, Trump will not let it go.

Graham told Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation” on Sunday, “Rudy, if you want to come and tell us what you found, I’ll be glad to talk to you. We can look at what Rudy’s got on Joe Biden, Hunter Biden and anything else you want to look at after impeachment. But if Rudy wants to come to the Judiciary Committee and testify about what he found, he’s welcome to do so.”

After that we’ll have Bill Barr’s extravaganza starring his hand-picked special counsel, John Durham next summer., just in time for the conventions. And who knows what Trump’s foreign friends have on tap?

It’s clear that impeachment is just a bump in the road for Trump and the Republicans. Once it’s over, they plan to continue with the lies and smears and betrayals without even taking a breath. The main lesson they have learned from his leadership is that it’s a waste of time to even pretend to care about the rule of law or the Constitution unless it serves their partisan political needs. That ugly genie is out of the bottle now, and I don’t know what it will take to put it back in.

Heather Digby Parton, also known as “Digby,” is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.

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aha: authoritarians need to degrade/capture courts/rule of law:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/environmental-activists-have-higher-death-rates-than-some-soldiers/

Claudelice Silva dos Santos was shocked but not surprised when her brother and his wife were murdered. For years José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espírito Santo da Silva had been on the receiving end of death threats and attacks for their work combatting illegal logging and deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rain forest, where they lived. “We knew that there was a high risk that it could happen,” Santos says. “But we always believed that it never would happen, that the resistance, the visibility of our fight—all the things we did to prevent the killing—would work out.”

Santos’s relatives were among more than 1,500 people across 50 countries to be murdered in retaliation for protecting land, water, forests and other natural resources between 2002 and 2017. The annual death toll doubled over that 15-year period, and the killings tended to take place in countries with high levels of corruption and weak rule of law, according to study findings published Monday in Nature Sustainability. As the authors report, in that period, murders of environmental defenders outweighed the combined deaths of soldiers from the U.K. and Australia deployed to overseas war zones.

“These cases include everything from award-winning people who were successful in garnering international support to others who were very much operating at the local level,” says Mary Menton, a research fellow in environmental justice at the University of Sussex in England and a co-author of the new study. “Oftentimes it’s individuals killed, but there have also been cases of massacres.”...

CPP kill

Still, Cramer and other Republicans praised the return to "federalism." Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) used a floor speech this morning to rail against the Clean Power Plan and hail a return to the "rule of law"with the Trump administration's greenhouse gas regulation.

Deadly serious’: Read fired Navy Secretary’s scathing letter in wake of Trump’s attacks on ‘the rule of law’

"I cannot in good conscience obey an order that I…

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/fundamentalism-and-authoritarianism-how-the-party-of-law-and-order-become-the-party-of-crooks-and-crime

no lnx many

Fundamentalism and authoritarianism: How the party of ‘law and order’ became the party of crooks and crime

Written by Paul Rosenberg / Salon November 24, 2019

Whatever happened to the Republicans as the “party of law and order”? True, Richard Nixon, who first branded the party that way, was lying when he famously said, “I am not a crook.” Both Watergate and the Iran-Contra scandal rank among the most notorious examples of executive branch lawlessness in our nation’s history. But through it all, the narrative commitment to the brand never wavered. It was a source of moral and political strength, always to be contrasted with “soft on crime” Democrats, however contrary the front-page facts might be.

But not anymore. As noted here by Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of rhetoric whose book, “Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump” (table of contents here), will be published next year, it’s the Democrats who are the party of law and order in the impeachment drama, while the GOP is the party of conspiracy:

Democrats, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are betting that public opinion will move toward impeachment and removal once more information is made public. To try to shape public opinion they are relying on a law-and-order frame that tells Americans that the impeachment inquiry is legitimate and legally justified.

Democrats are positioning themselves as the only ones willing to uphold the rule of law and the Constitution.

Republicans, led by President Trump, are counting on their power to frame reality to prevent the public from moving toward impeachment.

The GOP is relying on a conspiracy frame that tells Americans that the impeachment inquiry is illegitimate and part of a plot to destroy America.

Of course the rhetoric of conspiracy isn’t entirely synonymous with that of crooks and criminals — but when you start to insist that career law-enforcement officials are all in on it, and you’ve abandoned the “law and order” frame to the Democrats, the crooks and criminals stench is difficult to dispel. And it’s not happening in isolation, either — above and beyond the plethora of scandals Trump generates, and the lockstep support Republicans are giving him.

That lockstep support is perhaps the most striking difference between now and Watergate-a difference most readily understood via the role of asymmetric polarization and negative partisanship, which cautions us not to expect the kind of gradual but inexorable opinion shift seen 45 years ago in response to the buildup of evidence.

In turn, dramatically increased polarization is a predicted result of historical trends described by structural demographic theory (SDT), which I wrote about previously in October 2016, reviewing “Ages of Discord,” an analysis of American history by evolutionary anthropologist Peter Turchin. SDT identifies three underlying factors contributing to increased levels of political instability: mass immiseration (stagnant or falling wages, worsening health, declining well-being), elite overproduction (increased competition for wealth and power), and fiscal distress (a product of both public debt and trust in public institutions). Mass immiseration helps fuel elite overproduction, since stagnant or falling wages leaves more money for elites, and the increased competition that results reduces broad cooperation and intensifies elite fragmentation (which also contributes to fiscal distress). In America, political polarization is a prime indicator of that fragmentation.

The fact that polarization has been asymmetric deserves special attention, as it’s not yet implicated in SDT. But it can be credibly explained. In “The Authoritarian Dynamic,” Karen Stenner presented compelling evidence that expressed intolerance resulted primarily from two factors: an innate predisposition to intolerance, demanding obedience and conformity, (“authoritarianism”) interacting with increased societal threat, particularly dissension in public opinion and loss of confidence in political leaders. Thus, there is both a logical reason for the expression of authoritarianism to increase as political instability rises, and motivation for either authoritarian or opportunistic elites to strategically manipulate conditions to intensify this process.

One can read “The Long Southern Strategy” (Salon interview with co-author Angie Maxwell here) as a coherent history of how GOP-affiliated elites have pursued just such a strategy over the past 50-plus years.

“Authoritarian attitudes peak not only when social conditions change, but also if folks are made to feel like social conditions are changing (even if they aren’t),” Maxwell said. “The threats are recycled, renewed with a sense of urgency, stoking a fire that is always smoldering. It isn’t a natural rise in authoritarian attitudes, it is an orchestrated rise in authoritarian attitudes.”

SDT suggests that it may be both, but without the orchestration it would be much more manageable, and much less prone to produce lawless behavior.

One can also view conservative legal activism as a key component in that process, as well as a profound influence on elite politics as a whole. At the time of Watergate, authoritarians were more evenly divided between the parties, but they’ve become much more concentrated in the GOP since then. As their experience of threat has risen, they’ve become more inclined to lawlessness — although it’s not tolerated on the part of others, of course!

In short, the lawlessness at the top of the GOP isn’t new — just vastly more blatant than it was during Watergate. But the infrastructure supporting, defending and excusing it is dramatically more powerful and robust, and the authoritarian mass base is much more consolidated within their voter base.

Aside from impeachment itself, three other developments this month underscores the GOP’s broader embrace of lawlessness, in contrast to its decades-long self-branding. First, there is Trump’s pardoning of three war criminals, burnishing his brand of support for official lawlessness and thuggish brutality. He may mistakenly believe this endears him to the military — which wants nothing to do with them — but it’s also meant to hype authoritarian support among his most rabid supporters.

Second, his Roy Cohn-style attorney general, William Barr, delivered a widely criticized authoritarian screed to the Federalist Society, portraying the impeachment inquiry as dangerous to the rule of law, rather than warranted by Trump’s self-professed crimes.Third, legal scholar Steven Calabresi, chair of the Federalist Society’s board of directors, wrote a pair of opinion articles accusing Democrats of violating Trump’s rights, one of which, according to Steven Mazie, the Economist’s Supreme Court correspondent, “reads like the first draft of an op-ed by a MAGA middle-schooler who was inspired by Jacob Wohl’s erstwhile Twitter account.”

The combination of Trump’s blatant endorsement of lawlessness and the double-whammy high-profile embarrassments of Calabresi and Barr reflects something much broader and profoundly troubling. The latter two offer striking indicators of just how seriously this is impacting establishment conservatism, in a way that can’t be fobbed off on Trump alone, while Trump’s pardons of war criminals — following earlier pardons, including that of ex-Sheriff Joe Arpaio — not only enable brute lawlessness in uniform, but points towards outright valorization in the future, especially if performed in direct support of Trump himself.

To better understand the role of the conservative legal movement, I turned to two law professors I’ve interviewed before: Eric J. Segall, author of “Originalism as Faith,” to help illuminate the role that faith has played in this process, and David Pozen, co-author (with Joseph Fishkin) of the paper, “Asymmetric Constitutional Hardball,” which starts making sense of how the political asymmetry discussed above impacts norm-violating practices, with profound systemic results. In that paper, Fishkin and Pozen write:

The “restorationist” constitutional narratives and interpretive theories promoted by Republican politicians and lawyers, [this] Essay suggests, serve to legitimate the party’s use of constitutional hardball.

While this has surely been the elite focus of the actors involved, movement conservatives have also made remaking the Supreme Court and the entire judicial branch central to their politics in ways progressives have not, and this means engaging in authoritarian mobilization via threat manipulation, as described in “The Long Southern Strategy.”

Originalismplays a key role in this, but the meaning of that term shifted sharply in the process. At first, Segall told me, the originalist position argued that judges shouldn’t be engaged in moral reasoning:

It’s not for judges to select the best moral position for a country, it’s for people who are elected to do it. Unless judges can point to something in the text of the Constitution or something clear in the history, then judges should say look, the Constitution doesn’t speak to this, vote on it.

Originalism, at first, “was inextricably tied to deference. That’s the only way that works.”

But that all changed when conservatives gained control of the court in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Segall says: “After 12 years of Reagan-Bush judges, the people who embraced originalism dropped the deference part.” That meant a return of moral reasoning, “because history cannot answer modern problems,” and while conservatives won’t admit that, “it’s true and they act that way.” The Constitution is silent about the rights of transgender people or the definition of marriage, to cite obvious examples.

So originalism flip-flopped from being highly deferential to political bodies to highly resistant. Despite this 180, its symbolic function stayed the same, Segall told me:

Originalism provides a symbolic foundation for the GOP and its adherents to argue their politics are the politics of the framers, who this country tends to venerate. While the way that originalism is justified and practiced has changed in legal academia, the way it functions symbolically for mass propaganda and voter mobilization purposes for party elites has not — and this is arguably the main reason for its continued stature.

Supposed fidelity to the framers is a powerful means of virtuous identity-formation: “I’m a real American, I vote to seat judges who follow the Constitution as written.” That’s the narrative promoted for the GOP base. Why let the far messier facts get in the way?

At one level, Segall rejected the premise I presented. While Nixon and Reagan campaigned on law and order, for example, “They were not the law and order party by any stretch of the imagination,” he said. “Iran-Contra was more lawless than anything we’ve seen before Trump. And one would have to stretch one’s definition of law and order to think that Richard Nixon really believed in that.”

Perhaps the principal actors, like presidents and other party leaders, have not changed much, I suggested. But the party as a whole has — both the voters and the increasingly polarized representatives in Congress.

Segall agreed:

I don’t think this is complicated. Most things in life are complicated. I don’t think this is. What changed everything, in my opinion — about constitutional law, about the Republican Party, about the dynamics of our country — was the unification of the evangelicals with the Republican Party over abortion in the late 1970s. That changed everything.

About a third of the public in any nation holds authoritarian views, he argued, a figure confirmed by Karen Stenner. Segall continued:

That third in America got united with the Republicans and has created a force where I don’t think that third represents the other two thirds at all. But because of our political system, because of the Electoral College, because of we don’t vote for the president by majority vote, for all the counter-majoritarian reasons that we have in our government, that third has enormous power and Reagan knew it. And that’s how Reagan came to power. He doesn’t come to power without that third. and And there’s no question Trump doesn’t come to power without that third.

In fact, the 2009 study “Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics” showed that there was an ongoing realignment around authoritarianism, such that the GOP today is significantly more authoritarian than it was in the 1980s, and issue views are more consistently aligned with whether people are more or less authoritarian — meaning that Trump is significantly more dependent on authoritarian support than Reagan was.

Segall sees Roe v. Wade as crucial to that development— the combination of “abortion as a moral issue” and the narrative that a few liberal lawyers in Washington were “ramming it down our throats,” adroitly exploited Reagan and his supporters.

Angie Maxwell, co-author of “The Long Southern Strategy,” takes a broader view:

The legalization of abortion alone was not what merged evangelicals with the GOP. It was the rise of second-wave feminism and the ERA, along with an assertion of reproductive rights, that triggered a reactionary Christian fundamentalism, that included biblical literalism. To win those voters required a certain amount of posturing by non-fundamentalist candidates like Reagan. The coded language of Nixon is, in many ways, a soft con. Reagan was a more likable con. Phyllis Schlafly, of course, was the “housewife who was never home” con.

Over time, Roe’s importance has solidified, because of how much organizing has been done around it and so much mythology has been built up. This importance highlights another fundamental misrepresentation by the originalists, Segall notes: “They claim that ‘living constitutionalists’ just make principles up. That’s not true. It’s a demonstrably false, bad straw man. Justice [William O.] Douglas relied on five constitutional provisions to find the right to privacy” in Griswold, the decision that laid the foundation for Roe.

“That’s lot more than the court did in Seminole Tribe, Shelby County v Holder, or any of the conservative decisions,” he said. “All judges are trying to anchor their value judgments in some indirect way to the text of the Constitution. They’re all doing the same thing.” Originalists falsely claim otherwise — both to claim the authority of the Framers, and to obscure the arbitrary and capricious nature of their own reasoning, as well as the impoverished nature of their moral vision and their concept of American democracy.

David Pozen suggests a number of ways to view what the latter-day originalists are advancing. One of those frames is “authoritarian constitutionalism,” he said via email. “Alexander Somek describes it as accepting many governance features of constitutional democracy, ‘with the noteworthy exception of . . . democracy itself.’”

The Republican penchant for voter suppression and gerrymandering certainly lends itself to such a description. “There is also a resonance with what Mark Tushnet has described as ‘mere rule-of-law constitutionalism,’ Pozen said. “The forms of legality are respected, at least nominally, but many of the thicker, substantive commitments are drained of meaning.”

What both of these approaches share is important to note, and dangerous: They’re hard to distinguish from genuine democracy through the fog of misdirection that originalists routinely deploy.

Pozen also recommended “The Rule of Law” as a Concept in Constitutional Discourse” by Richard Fallon Jr.

As Fallon details, there are numerous different models of, and elements to, the rule of law. Arguably some of the conservatives you describe are employing relatively narrow, formalist or historicist conceptions of the rule of law and neglecting its substantive and legal process dimensions. … There is also a separate concern that they are trying to narrow the community of persons to whom rule-of-law obligations are thought to be owed in the first place.

Both these possibilities seem highly likely outcomes if you’re devoted to plugging 21st-century pegs into 18th-century holes.

Pozen also considered the recent antics of Calabresi and Barr:

When Barr asserted in his Federalist Society speech, categorically and without any evidence, that contemporary ‘conservatives tend to have more scruple over their political tactics and rarely feel that the ends justify the means,’ my first instinct was to assume that he was gaslighting us.“Has he ever heard the two words ‘Mitch McConnell’? But perhaps even more concerning is that possibility that — owing to some combination of motivated reasoning, epistemic closure and partisan media bubbles — Barr really believes it.

Segall says he wasn’t surprised by this, noting that Iran-Contra independent prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, a lifetime Republican appointed to the federal bench by Dwight Eisenhower, said that George H.W. Bush’s Christmas 1991 pardon of former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger “was one of the great cover-ups in American history at the highest levels of executive branch government.”

Who encouraged Bush to pardon Weinberger? Our current attorney general, who held the same post during the last two years of the elder Bush’s administration. “Barr takes credit for not only persuading Bush to make those pardons, but that it was the right thing to do,” Segall notes. “We knew what Barr was that day. We didn’t have to wait until now to know what that man stands for. His Federalist Society talk was nothing new.”

In fact, Nixon defenders like Ronald Reagan, have flourished in the GOP, far more and far longer than Republicans like Walsh or Robert Mueller or John Dean who have broken with their party to stand for the rule of law. As Iran-Contra cover-up king, Barr was carrying on a GOP tradition. Segall elaborated further:

[Barr’s] statements that the executive power, the president, has been losing power consistently over the last few decades is demonstrably false, idiotic and obviously wrong. With the exception of the immediate aftermath of Watergate, the presidency has grown in power consistently for the last 40 or 50 years, and for him to say it hasn’t is “Twilight Zone” material.

It’s a “Twilight Zone” episode designed specifically to cast Trump as the victim. Why let facts get in the way of that?

As for Calabresi’s argument that Trump has Sixth Amendment rights in impeachment proceedings, Segall noted that he’s on an email list with many “very famous” and “not so famous” law professors, “and 98% of them were just aghast … thinking it was the worst argument, with no basis in the text of the Constitution.”

Segall went on to say that it was “crazy” to argue that Sixth Amendment rights apply in House impeachment proceedings, which are more like a grand jury indictment than a trial. He also thinks Calabresi’s argument about a Senate impeachment trial is “obviously wrong,” but offers a caveat:

I think it is no more wrong than equal state sovereignty [a John Roberts invention] in Shelby County. I think it is no more wrong than state sovereign immunity from lawsuits from citizens of their own state [a Rehnquist invention] in Seminole Tribes of Florida vs Florida. I think it is no more wrong than 30 other Supreme Court cases I can give.

So, since the Supreme Court does such nonsense all the time, “Having law professors do it strikes me as not that bad.”

As for the matter of Trump’s pardons for war criminals, here’s what Seagal told me:

I said on Twitter the other day — jokingly — “Does anybody think Trump is pardoning all these war criminals because he’s building a cadre of war criminals to help him maintain power when he loses power?” And I was kidding about that, because there aren’t that many of them. I am, however, sincerely concerned that it feels like Trump wants to derive loyalty from people like that sheriff in Arizona [Joe Arpaio], that he is trying to build a group of people who are devoted to him who appear to be essentially lawless. And that is very troubling.

Indeed, it reminded me of a description of how small-town bullies and sadists had been empowered in Stalin’s Russia, as described by Ian Hughes in “Disordered Minds: How Dangerous Personalities Are Destroying Democracy.” I reached out to him for additional comment.

“Bullies, narcissists and sociopaths exist in every walk of life and in every town and city in every country,” Hughes said. “If encouraged by a pathological leader, this minority will enthusiastically step forward to act beyond the law, to target opponents, and violently assert their pathological values. If this process has the support of a critical mass of the general population, as Trump has, history suggests that societies can find themselves powerless to stop further descent into darkness. In my view, the American public should see the impeachment hearings as a wake-up call that time is running out.”

We should also view the Ivy League Federal Society antics of Calabresi, Barr and those who cheer them on in the same harsh light. Their obfuscations of the law erode both the protections it should afford equally to all, as well as the faith people must feel in the law for it to function properly. They are, in their own ways, more dangerous to the law than any mere criminal, for they undermine it from within.

“As through this world I travel, I meet lots of funny men,” Woody Guthrie wrote in “Pretty Boy Floyd the Outlaw.” “Some will rob you with a six gun, and some with a fountain pen.”

thru looking glass? mirror crypto?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/16/attorney-general-barr-accuses-democrats-using-oversight-powers-try-cripple-executive-branch/

wapo no lnx

Attorney General Barr accuses Democrats of ‘war’ on Trump in speech decried as partisan

Attorney General William P. Barr described a “war” against a “duly elected government” at a conference of the Federalist Society. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

Hannah Knowles

November 16, 2019

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Attorney General William P. Barr accused Democrats on Friday of using their oversight powers to sabotage the executive branch, criticizing the “resistance” to President Trump and what he called a broader erosion in the commander in chief’s rightful authority.

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The Trump appointee described a “war” against a “duly elected government” at a conference of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group that has played a key role in the administration’s efforts to seat record numbers of right-leaning federal judges.

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“The fact of the matter is that, in waging a scorched earth, no-holds-barred war of resistance against this administration, it is the left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law,” Barr told his audience of lawyers at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel.

To critics, the speech was overly partisan and even “authoritarian.” It prompted some calls for Barr’s impeachment from lawyers and legal scholars, many of whom believe his views of presidential power are too expansive. Barr says the Constitution’s creators envisioned a strong executive.

His speech came amid a newly public, high-stakes phase of Democrat-led investigations into the White House, as impeachment hearings examine whether Trump abused his office to secure a foreign country’s probe of his political rival. Barr recently declined Trump’s request that he hold a news conference defending Trump in the inquiry by saying the president broke no laws in a call to Ukraine’s president, individuals familiar with the situation told The Washington Post....

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/06/13/sidney-powell-michael-flynn-s-new-attorney-anti-mueller-conspiracy-theorist-and-fox-regular/223921

many lnx pix

Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn’s new attorney, is an anti-Mueller conspiracy theorist and Fox regular

Blog ››› June 13, 2019 12:01 PM EDT ››› MATT GERTZ

Melissa Joskow / Media Matters

President Donald Trump praised former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s decision to replace his legal team with Sidney Powell, a conservative attorney, conspiracy theorist, and harsh critic of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe who has made dozens of appearances on Fox News and Fox Business in recent years.

“General Michael Flynn, the 33 year war hero who has served with distinction, has not retained a good lawyer, he has retained a GREAT LAWYER, Sidney Powell,” Trump tweeted Thursday morning. “Best Wishes and Good Luck to them both!”

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

General Michael Flynn, the 33 year war hero who has served with distinction, has not retained a good lawyer, he has retained a GREAT LAWYER, Sidney Powell. Best Wishes and Good Luck to them both!

87.9K

3:21 AM - Jun 13, 2019

32.4K people are talking about this

After pleading guilty to charges of lying to the FBI in December 2017, Flynn began cooperating with Mueller’s team. Last week, he fired his legal team, a move that “triggered speculation in legal and political circles that he’s considering backing out of his plea deal with the government in a play for a presidential pardon,” according to Politico.

Powell’s hiring should bolster that conjecture. She is a former federal prosecutor who specializes in federal appeals in commercial litigation, but has carved out a sideline as a Fox pundit. According to her website, “Sidney the Media Figure is highly sought to comment on current legal issues and government investigations—especially the special investigation lead by Robert Mueller and his chief lieutenant Andrew Weissmann,” who the site describes as the “true villain” of her 2014 book, Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice.

Indeed, Powell is one of a handful of lawyers that Fox’s pro-Trump hosts have relied upon to put a legal gloss on their alternative narrative that Mueller’s investigation was the result of an illegal anti-Trump conspiracy by the “deep state.” She has used Fox’s platform to claim the probe “was set up, basically, to impugn this presidency and to make it as hard as possible for Mr. Trump to carry out his duties” and to describe investigators as “creeps on a mission to destabilize and destroy this president.”

While Powell has a lower profile than more regular legal commentators like Alan Dershowitz or Victoria Toensing, the former federal prosecutor has still made more than two dozen appearances on Lou Dobbs’ Fox Business show, and at least nine additional weekday interviews on Fox News, since January 2018.

Powell has an extremely active presence on Twitter, where she has argued that Flynn’s prosecution is a “horrific injustice” and that Mueller’s team engaged in “obstruction” by “hiding evidence that exonerates him.” As part of a pattern of frequently amplifying conspiratorial rants about the Mueller probe, Powell has also repeatedly retweeted major accounts that promote the QAnon conspiracy theory and shared articles from Alex Jones’ conspiracy theory website, Infowars (in October 2017, Powell was also interviewed by then-Infowars Washington bureau chief Jerome Corsi.).

Powell’s conspiratorial Twitter musings are not limited to the Mueller probe. She has repeatedly tweeted about George Soros, the Jewish billionaire philanthropist who is regularly targeted with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. In December, she accused the Federal Reserve of deliberately trying to “#crash the market” as part of a deliberate plot to destroy Trump “and enrich #Soros & themselves. #Soros has done it before.”

She has also tweeted that “#Islam is only ‘religion’ of which I am aware that seeks to destroy others & would disenfranchise > 1/2 world population.”

Powell’s website sells T-shirts describing Mueller and six other key law enforcement figures in the case as “Creeps on a Mission.” The shirt is “a great gift for those who know the Mueller investigation of the President is its own crime,” according to the website.

One of Powell’s “other websites” is CreepsOnAMission.com, which breaks down the iconography of the shirt and provides capsule descriptions of the purported malfeasance of the people it depicts. It also embeds clips on that theme from the Fox shows of Sean Hannity and Mark Levin, claims “Mueller and his Hillary favored henchmen” are trying “to ensnare anyone he can reach within the circle of President Trump,” and urges readers to “Support President Trump & Our Mission” by wearing the shirt “to show your support for President Trump & The Rule of Law!”

Hannity frequently cites Powell’s book for its harsh criticism of Weissmann, a veteran federal prosecutor and former general counsel at the FBI who became a key member of Mueller’s team.

On Wednesday, Hannity praised Flynn’s hiring of Powell, arguing that a “change of course certainly looks imminent” for Flynn because “Powell said 16 months ago he should withdraw” his guilty plea.

Embedded video

Matthew Gertz

@MattGertz

Sean Hannity on Flynn hiring Sidney Powell: "Thank goodness... Powell said 16 months ago, blasting the Mueller witch hunt, is now taking over. No word if he plans to withdraw, but a change of course certainly looks imminent. Powell said 16 months ago he should withdraw that plea"

5:14 AM - Jun 13, 2019

See Matthew Gertz's other Tweets

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Indeed, in a February 2018 op-ed for The Daily Caller, Powell wrote that Flynn should withdraw his plea because the newly appointed judge in his case, Emmet G. Sullivan, was likely to dismiss the charges against him. (Powell was one of a series of Flynn defenders who misinterpreted one of Sullivan’s orders to speculate that the judge believed Flynn might have been the victim of prosecutorial misconduct.)

In another op-ed published shortly before Flynn’s sentencing hearing in December, Powell claimed that Mueller had obstructed justice by supposedly destroying or suppressing evidence he was required to provide to Flynn’s legal team. On Fox, she speculated that because of this, Sullivan would “throw the entire prosecution of Gen. Flynn out for egregious prosecutorial misconduct.”

Instead, at the hearing, the judge rejected the notion that Flynn had been mistreated by investigators, blasted Flynn himself, and convinced him to delay sentencing and continue working with Mueller’s team rather than risk jail time.

After signing on as Flynn’s lawyer, Powell said in a statement that Flynn “will continue to cooperate with the government in all matters.” But Fox commentator Sara Carter, whose slanted reporting from pro-Trump sources helps fuel the Fox counternarrative on Mueller, said on Hannity’s program that Powell also stressed to her in an interview that “it would take about 90 days to get through [Flynn’s] file,” which could delay any sentencing and leave open the possibility that he could withdraw his plea.

Fox’s pro-Trump commentators have been urging Flynn to withdraw his plea since he pleaded guilty in the first place. They have also been calling on the president to pardon Flynn and other purported “victims” of Mueller’s investigation -- a notion Trump’s team has reportedly entertained.

If Trump does ultimately pardon Flynn, the former national security adviser would be only the latest recipient in a series of clemency decisions influenced by the network.