Apart from the taxpayer-funded lawfare being waged against former President Donald Trump by leftist prosecutors in New York, Atlanta, and Washington, there is no clearer proof that the Left has embraced “by any means necessary” as its credo than the politicization of Secret Service protection of President Joe Biden’s presidential rivals.
Not only has Biden’s Department of Homeland Security denied five requests for Secret Service protection from independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the flimsiest of grounds, but now the Democratic congressman from Mississippi who chaired the kangaroo court Jan. 6 committee is proposing to strip Trump of his Secret Service detail if he were convicted in any of the politically motivated trials he’s facing.
Never mind that this brazen legislation, championed by Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., has no chance of being enacted by Congress or that the courts would surely enjoin it as unconstitutional if it were. Its sheer coldbloodedness is appalling.
Thompson knows full well that if any of Trump’s trials—which the former president calls “witch hunts”—were to end in a prison sentence and he had no Secret Service protection behind bars, he would have a target on his back for attack by other inmates. (Think Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murder in the killing of George Floyd, who barely survived a Nov. 24 stabbing in prison in Arizona.)
Such is the Trump Derangement Syndrome that has suffused the Left. What other possible reason than bloodlust would motivate Thompson to sponsor such sociopathic legislation—even though he surely knows that it reeks of being an unconstitutional bill of attainder?
The Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School states that courts apply a legal test to determine whether legislation violates the ban on bills of attainder under Article 1, Sections 9 and 10 of the Constitution by determining whether the law “targets specific named or identifiable individuals or groups.”
Thompson’s Disgraced Former Protectees Act, introduced April 19, includes only one “identifiable individual”: Donald Trump.
Thompson is the ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, which brings us back to disgraced Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ repeated denial of Secret Service protection for Kennedy since he announced his candidacy just over a year ago.
Given that the independent presidential hopeful’s father and uncle were both assassinated, it’s beyond appalling that Biden and Mayorkas can’t even be shamed into authorizing Secret Service protection for him.
Even many of Kennedy’s own relatives who have inexplicably endorsed Biden’s reelection bid over their own kin have asked for a security detail for him—to no avail.
At an April 18 event in Philadelphia at which Biden was endorsed for reelection by several members of the extended Kennedy clan (including two of RFK Jr.’s own siblings), the president obliquely alluded to the assassinations. “Your family … has endured such violence,” he said.
If they expected authorization of Secret Service protection as a show of presidential gratitude for turning their backs on their own relative, they were sadly mistaken.
Mayorkas asserts that Kennedy doesn’t qualify for Secret Service protection. As recently as March 28, the homeland security chief wrote to the Kennedy campaign: “Based on the facts and the recommendation of the advisory committee, I have determined that Secret Service protection for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not warranted at this time.”
That’s patently false, inasmuch as Mayorkas and the president have wide latitude in authorizing the protection. You could ask then-President Jimmy Carter, who in 1980 extended it to then-Sen. Ted Kennedy, RFK Jr.’s uncle, after he launched an insurgent Democratic primary challenge to Carter.
It’s as if Biden and Mayorkas actually want harm to befall the scion of the legendary political family because they fear his independent candidacy will siphon enough votes away from the incumbent to ensure Trump’s return to the Oval Office next January.
What is that if not “by any means necessary”? One thing is certain: It’s not as if Biden’s spendthrift administration is trying to save federal taxpayer dollars by withholding the protection.
Kennedy rightly characterizes the repeated denial of protection as the “weaponization of government” and “a political scandal.”
A day after the most recent denial, his attorney, Aaron Siri, in a letter to Mayorkas, called it “capricious, an abuse of discretion, and clearly politically motivated,” adding:
If any harm befalls Mr. Kennedy or any other member of the public who may be injured or killed in any incident that arises due to lack of Secret Service protection to the candidate and the deterrent it affords, we will seek to hold you accountable.
Translation: The president and his lackey Mayorkas will have blood on their hands.
Originally published by The Washington Times