Do establishment operatives think themselves so secure that their persecution of former President Donald Trump will never boomerang on them?
During a Supreme Court hearing on Thursday regarding the question of presidential immunity, Justice Brett Kavanaugh warned of a slippery slope in politically motivated prosecutions of presidents.
“It’s not going to stop,” Kavanaugh predicted, according to the Washington Examiner.
The Trump-appointed justice made that prediction to attorney Michael Dreeben, a former deputy solicitor general with the Department of Justice.
According to his faculty page at Harvard Law School, Dreeben worked for special counsel Robert Mueller on the investigations that sprang from the Russia “collusion” hoax — the baseless assertion that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election.
On Thursday, Dreeben argued on behalf of special counsel Jack Smith, the latest establishment-selected legal hack charged with destroying Trump’s anti-establishment political movement.
In this particular case, Smith has indicted Trump for allegedly attempting to overturn the disputed results of the 2020 presidential election, citing the then-president’s actions and the events surrounding the Capitol incursion of Jan. 6, 2021.
In other words, the slippery slope Kavanaugh predicted has already arrived. The danger lies not in the future but right in front of him.
Still, the justice’s comment made it clear that without some standard that distinguishes public from private behavior, presidents could face a perpetual threat of political retribution.
Are the charges against Trump politically motivated?
“It’s going to cycle back and be used against the current president or the next president and the next president and the next president after that,” Kavanaugh told Dreeben, according to the Examiner.
Kavanaugh, of course, made a sound argument — at least in theory.
In a constitutional republic with democratic elections, those who wield power have an incentive not to persecute their political opponents. After all, the powerful should expect that someday they will find themselves out of power.
When dealing with Trump and his supporters, however, establishment operatives have not behaved as if they ever expect to find themselves out of power.
For instance, on April 16, the Supreme Court heard arguments pertaining to the DOJ’s aggressive use of a 22-year-old federal obstruction statute in its prosecutions of more than 300 Jan. 6 defendants. The statute in question had nothing to do with the events of Jan. 6, but the DOJ has perverted its intended meaning so as to charge Jan. 6 defendants with felonies punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Should the high court overturn the Jan. 6 defendants’ convictions under the statute, two of Smith’s four charges against Trump would vanish.
In other words, President Joe Biden’s DOJ has taken the most vindictive course possible toward Trump and Jan. 6 defendants.
Thus, if Kavanaugh is correct, Biden has reason to fear the boomerang.
So why doesn’t the president appear concerned about it? Do he and his establishment operatives at DOJ know something that no one else does?
