89 Former Defense Officials Condemn Trump

It has become increasingly clear that Donald Trump views himself as a monarch or similar type of autocrat who is above the law and who views personal loyalty to him as far more important than the U.S. Constitution or defending the constitutional rights of American citizens.  It is only about him and he has threatened to use members of the U.S. military against citizens - much like was done in former Soviet block nations in the past (Trump might be wise to remember what happened to Romanian strongman Nicolae Ceausescu to whom the UK's Boris Johnson has compared Trump).  In response, 89 former Defense Department officials - including a number of former Secretaries of Defense - in an op-ed in the Washington Post have condemned Trump's actions and called for the U.S. military to never be used against American citizens exercising their constitutional rights.  Here are column highlights:

President Trump continues to use inflammatory language as many Americans protest the unlawful death of George Floyd and the unjust treatment of black Americans by our justice system. As the protests have grown, so has the intensity of [Trump’s] the president’s rhetoric. He has gone so far as to make a shocking promise: to send active-duty members of the U.S. military to “dominate” protesters in cities throughout the country — with or without the consent of local mayors or state governors.

On Monday, [Trump] the president previewed his approach on the streets of Washington. . . . . As part of the show of force that Trump demanded, military helicopters made low-level passes over peaceful protesters — a military tactic sometimes used to disperse enemy combatants — scattering debris and broken glass among the crowd. He also had a force, including members of the National Guard and federal officers, that used flash-bang grenades, pepper spray and, according to eyewitness accounts, rubber bullets to drive lawful protesters, as well as members of the media and clergy, away from the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church. All so he could hold a politically motivated photo op there with members of his team, including, inappropriately, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Looting and violence are unacceptable acts, and perpetrators should be arrested and duly tried under the law. But as Monday’s actions near the White House demonstrated, those committing such acts are largely on the margins of the vast majority of predominantly peaceful protests.

As former leaders in the Defense Department — civilian and military, Republican, Democrat and independent — we all took an oath upon assuming office “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States,” as did the president and all members of the military, a fact that Gen. Milley pointed out in a recent memorandum to members of the armed forces. We are alarmed at how the president is betraying this oath by threatening to order members of the U.S. military to violate the rights of their fellow Americans.

Beyond being unnecessary, using our military to quell protests across the country would also be unwise. This is not the mission our armed forces signed up for: They signed up to fight our nation’s enemies and to secure — not infringe upon — the rights and freedoms of their fellow Americans. In addition, putting our servicemen and women in the middle of politically charged domestic unrest risks undermining the apolitical nature of the military that is so essential to our democracy. It also risks diminishing Americans’ trust in our military — and thus America’s security — for years to come.

[W]e call on [Trump] the president to immediately end his plans to send active-duty military personnel into cities as agents of law enforcement, or to employ them or any another military or police forces in ways that undermine the constitutional rights of Americans.

The members of our military are always ready to serve in our nation’s defense. But they must never be used to violate the rights of those they are sworn to protect.

Is Trump’s Pardon of Joe Arpaio an Impeachable Offense?

There is no debate as to the power of the president to grant pardons.  However, some are making the case that there are improper uses of such power and that Der Trumpenführer pardon of white nationalist Joe Arpaio is so inappropriate that it constitutes an impeachable offense. One piece appeared in the New York Times.  Another can be found at Slate where the author takes the position that Trump has perverted and abused the powers of his office - one of the very things that the Founding Fathers fear having thrown off the rule of an absolute monarch, George III.  Here are excerpts from the piece:

The founders included in the Constitution a congressional power to impeach presidents primarily to respond to misuse by the president of express or implied powers given him elsewhere in the document.

Presidents and other officials can be impeached for conduct not involving the exercise of a specific official power if it intrudes somehow into the sphere of public duty. And impeachment can be proper in the case of a heinous private criminal offense that so far undercuts the moral authority and personal credibility of the offender that he can no longer effectively perform his office.

But, to the founders, the main point of impeachment was that there must be a remedy when a president perverts the powers of his office, either for personal or political self-aggrandizement or, regardless of motive, when the president’s acts threaten the proper distribution of authority among the coordinate branches or otherwise offend either law or fundamental governing norms.

The pardon of Arpaio plainly falls within this core conception of properly impeachable offenses.

• It is an impeachable offense precisely because it involves the exercise of a constitutionally created presidential power.

• The use of the pardon power in this case is a direct assault on core constitutional rights, statutory civil rights laws of the United States, and the authority of courts to enforce those laws.

• It therefore threatens constitutional civil liberties generally, as well as the viability of congressionally authorized statutory law, and it is a direct attack on the constitutional powers of the judiciary as a coordinate branch of government.

• Accordingly, this pardon threatens to undercut one of the indispensable, foundational norms of American constitutional order: the rule of law.

One could, of course, make some version of the foregoing argument about many presidential pardons. Every pardon undercuts a prior judicial decision and vitiates a court’s judgment that the defendant violated a criminal statute and ought to be punished. But here, as elsewhere in the impeachment realm, context and motive matter.

In deciding whether this pardon is impeachable, it matters that its effect is to devalue constitutional and statutory protections of a vulnerable minority. It matters that its effect (and rationally inferable purpose) is precisely to undercut the power of the judiciary to enforce the law against officials who believe they can violate it with impunity. And it matters that President Trump’s motive in issuing the pardon is so transparently political. This is not a considered judgment that a particular individual has been unfairly treated by corrupt judges, a flawed process, or an unjust law. It is, instead, a transparent pander to a politician’s political base.

The fact that the Constitution grants the president the theoretical power to behave in this way does not deprive Congress of the power to conclude that the exercise of that power is so contrary to constitutional principles and democratic norms that it constitutes an impeachable offense.

[T]he Republicans controlling both houses have so far shown no disposition to take these steps. But, should that political obstacle ever dissolve, there is now at least one constitutionally sound basis upon which impeachment could be based.