Amy Coney Barrett’s Husband Has a New Client—and It’s Disturbing
Talia Jane – May 29, 2024
According to an exclusive report fromRolling Stone, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s husband, Jesse Barrett, is now repping Fox Corporation in a $3 million defamation suit, raising questions about conflicts of interest and personal enrichment enjoyed by conservative Supreme Court justices.
As Rolling Stonepoints out, the case is notable because Fox Corporation—the parent company of Fox News—is directly paying the family of a Supreme Court justice, which neither Barrett nor her husband are required to disclose. Barrett’s husband is a managing partner at SouthBank Legal, which opened its D.C. office—led by Barrett—after his wife joined the Supreme Court. Jesse Barrett’s list of anonymized cases on the SouthBank Legal website now includes “represented a prominent media company in a lawsuit alleging defamation.” That addition joins an already lengthy list of white-collar cases on his company profile, tucked between defending a Berkshire Hathaway company in an employment discrimination suit and defending an event promoter from fraud claims.
The defamation lawsuit Jesse Barrett has taken on alleges that Fox 32—a Chicago-area local station for Fox—ran a hit piece about Lavell Redmond who in 2021 was hired by the mayor of Dolton, Illinois, to work as a building code enforcement officer. The Fox report centers Redmond’s conviction for aggravated sexual assault of a minor, for which he pleaded guilty and served 24 years in prison, as the crux of the story while claiming Redmond was hired to enter “into Dolton homes and businesses to inspect them.” Redmond disputes this claim in his suit, according to Rolling Stone, noting that his work entailed inspecting building exteriors, not entering people’s homes.
The outlet later followed up on its reporting with news that Redmond had been arrested and may face new charges for violating the conditions of the sex offender registry—an accusation Redmond alleges is the direct result of Fox’s earlier misleading reporting on his job duties.
Barrett, representing Fox, filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, according to Rolling Stone. The motion to dismiss claims the suit was filed too late and that the corporation didn’t commit defamation because the “gist” of the reporting was “indisputably true” and characterized the central outrage of Redmond’s hiring—that a sex offender was entering people’s homes, which resulted in his arrest—as “immaterial details.”
While the relationship between conservative justices and right-wingers continuously raises ethical concerns, constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kreis noted the odds of Fox Corporation’s case being kicked up to the conservative-held Supreme Court are slim given that Barrett would have to recuse herself from the case, winnowing the number of Fox News–brained justices on the court.
“You don’t hire the spouse of a Supreme Court justice to represent you in major litigation unless (1) you think they’re competent to do so and (2) you don’t foresee going to the Supreme Court where the spouse would have to recuse and you might really want/need their vote,” Kreis wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Regardless, it’s entirely too convenient that the husband of a conservative Supreme Court justice is representing a conservative media company, and poses curious questions as to why Barrett, who is based in D.C., was tapped to represent the media company based in New York City for a lawsuit filed by a man in Illinois.
Don’t look up. South Korean authorities warned residents along the border with North Korea that an “air raid” was underway. But it wasn’t rockets that were incoming. Rather: floating overhead were more than 150 balloons carrying trash and what’s believed to be feces.
An emergency disaster text alert was sent across cities on Tuesday night, according to South Korean newspaper Hankyoreh, ordering residents to “refrain from outdoor activities and report [objects] to military bases when identified,” along with the message in English: “Air raid preliminary warning.”
The incursion comes days after North Korea warned it would retaliate against anti-Pyongyang leaflets sent over by activists in South Korea earlier this month.
South Korean news agency Yonhap reported that South Korea’s military detected the balloons flying and falling in various locations across the country from Tuesday evening to Wednesday morning local time, going as far as South Gyeongsang, a province more than 180 miles from the demilitarized zone border between the two countries.
The balloons appeared to carry trash—like plastic bottles, batteries, shoe parts, and even feces—a South Korea Joint Chiefs of Staff official said. The military is working with police to collect the materials for analysis, local paper Chosun Ilbo reported, and has advised residents not to come into contact with the droppings and instead report them to authorities.
This photo provided by South Korea Defense Ministry, shows trash from a balloon presumably sent by North Korea, in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, May 29, 2024. South Korea Presidential Office—AP
“Tit-for-tat action will be also taken against frequent scattering of leaflets and other rubbish by [South Korea] near border areas,” North Korea’s vice minister of national defense said on Sunday. “Mounds of wastepaper and filth will soon be scattered over the border areas and the interior of [South Korea] and it will directly experience how much effort is required to remove them.”
South Korea’s military condemned the act, saying on Wednesday that the balloons “clearly violate international law and seriously threaten our people’s safety.”
It’s not the first time North Korea has flown in garbage through balloons: in 2016, it sent what were initially feared to be biochemical substances but eventually turned out to be cigarette butts and used toilet paper.
North Korean defectors and activists in South Korea have also flown balloons the other way with propaganda payloads for years, in hopes of convincing North Korean residents to stand up against Kim Jong-un’s totalitarian regime. Pyongyang has long bridled against the practice, which it has labeled “psychological warfare.”
Park Sang-hak, center, a refugee from North Korea who runs the group Fighters for a Free North Korea, and South Korean activists prepare to release balloons bearing leaflets during an anti-North Korea rally near the border village of Panmunjom in Paju, South Korea, on April 15, 2011.Lee Jin-man—AP
Earlier this month, a group of North Korean defectors sent about 20 large balloons carrying some 300,000 leaflets criticizing Kim. The balloons also reportedly carried about 2,000 USB sticks containing K-pop content, including songs from members of Korean boyband sensation BTS. (Kim has called South Korean K-pop a “vicious cancer.”)
As tensions escalate between North and South Korea, experts emphasize that this kind of exchange of balloons remains far preferable to missiles. Peter Ward, a research fellow at the Sejong Institute, told Reuters: “These kinds of grey zone tactics are more difficult to counter and hold less risk of uncontrollable military escalation, even if they’re horrid for the civilians who are ultimately targeted.”
What a justice’s upside-down flag means for the Supreme Court
Mike Bebernes – Senior Editor – May 22, 2024
Photo illustration: Alex Cochran for Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images (Photo illustration: Alex Cochran for Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images)
What’s happening
Arecent report that an upside-down flag — a popular symbol of the “Stop the Steal” movement to reject the 2020 presidential results — flew outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in the days following the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol has created yet another scandal for a court that was already mired in controversy.
Late last week, the New York Times reported that neighbors had spotted the inverted flag at Alito’s Virginia home in mid-January 2020, just a few days before President Biden was inaugurated. Then on Wednesday, the newspaper published a followup story revealing that a flag featuring a different symbol popular among “Big Lie” proponents had flown outside Alito’s beach house in New Jersey.
The upside-down flag has historically been used as a distress signal by the U.S. military, but in recent decades it has been wielded by a variety of protest movements on both the left and the right. After Biden won the 2020 election, it was adopted by supporters of former President Donald Trump who subscribed to Trump’s lies that the race had been stolen, culminating in a Trump rally where his followers attacked the Capitol building to try to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.
Alito told the Times that he had “no involvement whatsoever” in flying the inverted flag at his home. It was raised, he said, by his wife in response to yard signs featuring “objectionable and personally insulting language” outside their neighbor’s home.
Legal experts told the Times and other news outlets that the flag was a clear violation of judicial ethics rules, which bar judges from making political statements that might undermine the public’s faith in their ability to be impartial in divisive cases. Unlike other federal courts, though, the Supreme Court enforces its own rules, meaning any response to the flag could only come from the justices themselves.
The judicial code also calls for judges to recuse themselves from cases in which their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” But like the ethics rules, recusal decisions are left up to individual judges. Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, for example, chose not to take part in recent cases challenging Harvard’s admissions procedures because of her involvement at the school both as a student and a member of its board. Though Alito has recused himself as much as any of his colleagues in recent years, he has thus far declined to step aside from cases involving the 2020 election.
Alito isn’t the only conservative justice on the court to face ethical questions related to the “Big Lie.” His colleague Clarence Thomas also faced calls to recuse himself from cases related to the election and Jan. 6, which he ignored, because of his wife’s involvement in efforts to overturn the results.
Thomas has also been at the center of controversy over his friendship with a wealthy conservative political operative, who reportedly brought Thomas along on dozens of lavish vacations over the past several decades. Alito has faced similar questions about his relationship with a different conservative billionaire who later had cases before the Supreme Court. Both justices have asserted that there is nothing improper about their actions. However, the incidents helped prompt the court to adopt a new voluntary ethics code.
Why there’s debate
Democrats have characterized the flag report as yet more evidence that at least two of the Supreme Court’s conservative justices can’t be trusted to fairly rule on anything related to Jan. 6. Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, insisted that both Alito and Thomas recuse themselves from any cases on the issue — including the question of whether Trump has presidential immunity from prosecution, which is currently being considered by the court. Durbin also reiterated his call, echoed by other members of his party, for Congress to pass legally-binding ethics rules for justices.
Some left-leaning legal analysts have gone even further, arguing that Alito’s willingness to have such an inflammatory symbol outside his home is a sign of how the Supreme Court’s conservative majority feels no obligation to display even the appearance of political impartiality.
Judicial experts also worry about how this situation might further erode the public’s faith in the country’s highest court, which has hit record lows in recent years amid a wave of recent scandals and deeply controversial rulings — most notably the decision that overturned abortion rights established by Roe v. Wade.
Some Republicans have said they wish Alito had given more consideration to how the flag might be perceived. But they have roundly rejected suggestions that it indicates he’s incapable of doing his job fairly, arguing that it’s absurd to make the assumption that his wife’s response to a neighborhood spat in any way reflects on his ability to make sound decisions on the court. In the eyes of many conservatives, this controversy — along with broader criticism of conservative justices — is part of a Democratic campaign to pressure the justices into issuing less-conservative rulings or delegitimize the decisions that don’t fit their liberal worldview.
What’s next
Some Senate Democrats have called for an investigation into the flag incident, but Durbin is opposed to the idea, meaning it likely won’t happen.
The court is expected to release decisions in two major Jan. 6 cases — one concerning charges brought against hundreds of people who stormed the Capitol, the other on Trump’s immunity claims — within the next few weeks.
Perspectives
Anyone who is OK with the Big Lie can’t be impartial on Jan. 6 cases
“Who can possibly think he will decide this case in a neutral manner? Of course, Justice Alito’s political leanings were already well-known. But the flag flying incident indicates he has strong views about the facts underlying this case. His decision seems pre-ordained.” — Leslie Levin, University of Connecticut law professor, to Salon
There’s zero reason to question Alito’s ability to rule fairly
“The left wants to tarnish Justice Alito’s reputation, as well as cause him to recuse himself from participating in any case involving Mr. Trump. No such recusal is necessary on ethical or any other grounds. The political views of spouses don’t dictate, or in our experience even influence, how a Justice will rule.” — Editorial, Wall Street Journal
Alito knows that there are no consequences, no matter how openly partisan he is
“The arrogance is bottomless. Why did the Supreme Court justice do this, or allow ‘Mrs. Alito’—on whom he pinned the blame—to do it? He knew it was petty. And he surely knew that, by conventional ethical standards, it was wrong. But he didn’t care because he knew that he stands beyond punishment for such acts.” — Michael Tomasky, New Republic
Liberals have lost the court, so they’ll take any chance to try to tear it down
“There are two transparent purposes of these: to intimidate the justices into trimming their sails for fear of more criticism, and (when that fails) to delegitimize their decisions and lay the groundwork for radical changes to destroy the Court in its longstanding form.” — Dan McLaughlin, National Review
The integrity of the next election is in serious danger with Alito on the court
“After this November’s general election, there are almost certainly going to be further legal challenges to the election results, just as there were in 2020. Alito will be on the court to hear Trump’s arguments in those cases, too. The flag, then, is just the latest reminder of a disturbing reality: that as the Republican party further radicalizes against democracy, the Supreme Court – the body which is tasked with checking these unconstitutional impulses – has become their ally.” — Moira Donegan, Guardian
The court’s critics are trying to turn a nonstory into a national scandal
“If you look hard enough, you can find disturbing symbols anywhere you look, but you must sometimes suspend logic and reason in order to do so. This does not seem like a situation where a sitting Supreme Court justice is supporting overthrowing election results; it looks like a situation where the New York Times is straining to make that the narrative.” — Liz Wolfe, Reason
Alito and Thomas shouldn’t be on the court at all
“There are currently strong grounds to impeach not just Samuel Alito but his fellow benchwarmer Clarence Thomas. Both judges have given evidence of disqualifying corruption as well as of their harboring insurrectionist sentiment.” — Jeet Heer, The Nation
Alito’s wife has every right to express any opinion she wants
“Mrs. Alito has both the constitutional right to express whatever political opinions she pleases, whether I like them or not, as well as a moral right to express them independently of her husband and his position on the court.” — Bret Stephens, New York Times
Trump’s Sleazy $1 Billion Shakedown of Oil Execs Gives Dems an Opening
Greg Sargent – May 11, 2024
Ever since Donald Trump descended that golden escalator in 2015, a central tenet of his bond with his supporters has been a simple promise to them: I have seen elite corruption and self-dealing from the inside, and I will put that know-how to work for you.
During that campaign, for instance, Trump could boast that not paying taxes “makes me smart,” knowing supporters would hear it in exactly those terms. More recently he has told the MAGA masses that in facing multiple criminal prosecutions, “I am being indicted for you,” as if he’s bravely journeying into the belly of the corrupt system mainly to expose how it’s victimized them.
A new Washington Post report that Trump made explicit policy promises to a roomful of Big Oil executives—while urging them to raise $1 billion for his campaign—is a powerful story in part because it wrecks what’s left of that mystique. In case you didn’t already know this, it shows yet again that if Trump has employed that aforementioned knowledge of elite corruption and self-dealing to any ends in his public career, it’s chiefly to benefit himself.
That counter narrative is a story that Democrats have a big opportunity to tell—if they seize on this news effectively. How might they do that?
For starters, the revelations seem to cry out for more scrutiny from Congress. Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who has been presiding over hearings into the oil industry as chair of the Budget Committee, says it’s “highly likely” that the committee will examine the new revelations.
“This is practically an invitation to ask more questions,” Whitehouse told me, describing this as a “natural extension of the investigation already underway.”
There’s plenty to explore. As the Postreports, an oil company executive at the gathering, held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort last month, complained about environmental regulations under the Biden administration. Then this happened:
Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.
Giving $1 billion would be a “deal,” Trump said, because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid thanks to him, according to the people.
Obviously industries have long donated to politicians in both parties in hopes of governance that takes their interests into account, and they explicitly lobby for this as well. But in this case, Trump may have made detailed, concrete promises while simultaneously soliciting a precise amount in campaign contributions.
For instance, the Post reports, Trump vowed to scrap Biden’s ban on permits for new liquefied natural gas exports “on the first day.” He also promised to overturn new tailpipe emission limits designed to encourage the transition to electric vehicles, and he dangled more leases for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, “a priority that several of the executives raised.”
“The phrase that instantly came to mind as I was reading the story was ‘quid pro quo,’” Whitehouse told me. He also pointed to a new Politico report that oil industry officials are drawing up executive orders for Trump to sign as president. “Put those things together and it starts to look mighty damn corrupt,” Whitehouse said.
So what would be the legislative aim of a congressional inquiry into all this, and what might it look like? One argument is that knowing what transpired between those executives and Trump could inform an analysis of what’s wrong with our campaign finance laws—and how to fix them, says Noah Bookbinder, president for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The rub here is this: It’s likely that what transpired between the executives and Trump is perfectly legal. It may not have risen to a solicitation of something of value directly in exchange for an official act. But determining whether it was as egregious as it seems, and examining how it may be permissible under current laws, would illuminate the gaping problems with them, Bookbinder noted.
“There’s a clear legislative purpose in determining what happened at the meeting,” Bookbinder said. If this really constituted “an attempt to link significant campaign contributions with specific policy promises,” Bookbinder continued, “that suggests a huge loophole that needs to be closed.”
Or, as Fred Wertheimer, the president of the watchdog group Democracy 21, told me, this episode “certainly looks like an offer of an exchange of policy for money.” Given that this was probably legal, Wertheimer added, Congress could “look at this as an example of what kind of corrupt campaign finance system exists today.”
Such a move could have second-order political effects. Republicans understand that when they use their power in Congress to kick up a lot of noise about something, it induces the media to make more of it than they otherwise might. Democrats could apply that lesson here.
Democrats could also highlight this affair as a clear indication of Trump’s broader priorities. This would entail pointing out that Trump has vowed to roll back Biden’s whole decarbonization agenda, meaning he’d cancel billions of dollars in subsidies and tax incentives fueling a manufacturing renaissance in green energy. This boom is happening in red areas, too: As Ron Brownstein reports, new Brookings Institution data shows that counties that backed Trump in 2020 are reaping outsize gains—including investments and jobs—from the transition to electric vehicles.
Yet Trump would like to see all this reversed, and he’s apparently dangling this before fossil fuel donors while demanding enormous campaign contributions from them. Making this all even more sordid, recall that Trump is channeling millions in donor money to high-priced lawyers who are defending him against multiple criminal prosecutions.
“Hundreds of thousands of good clean energy jobs have been announced, and whole communities are being revitalized as factories are being rebuilt,” Jesse Lee, a Democratic strategist who advises various climate groups, told me. “Trump is promising to crush it all in exchange for a $1 billion check from oil companies to pay his legal fees.” Trump also recently promised billionaire donors he’d keep their taxes low at another recent gala.
As The Atlantic’s David Graham details, Trump has long presented himself as an outsider—despite being a billionaire himself—by purporting to speak traitor-to-his-class blunt truths about how the rich buy politicians. This was always a transparent scam. Yet it seems even harder to sustain now that Trump has apparently placed himself at the center of that very same scam so conspicuously, making his own corrupt self-dealing as explicit as one could imagine.
If elected, Trump would throw into reverse our transition to a decarbonized future, one that’s creating untold numbers of manufacturing jobs—including in the very places that Trump has attacked Democratic elites for supposedly abandoning—all in exchange for mega-checks from chortling fat cats right out of the most garish of Gilded Age cartoons. For good measure, some of that loot could help Trump secure elite impunity for his own corruption and alleged crimes. We can’t say we weren’t warned. Trump has told us all this himself.
Donald Trump puts America on notice again: If he loses, he won’t go quietly
Doyle McManus – May 6, 2024
Insurrectionists storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after then-President Trump urged them to march to the building where lawmakers were certifying Joe Biden’s election win. (Associated Press)
Donald Trump has put America on notice: If he loses the presidential election, he reserves the right to encourage his followers to fight.
When Time magazine asked Trump whether the election would end in political violence if he loses, the former president replied: “If we don’t win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election.”
“If everything’s honest, I’ll gladly accept the results,” he later told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.”
When Trump says “it depends,” here’s the problem: He has never competed in an election that he acknowledged as fair.
Even when he won the presidential election of 2016, he claimed that Hillary Clinton and the Democrats rigged the count to deny him a popular-vote landslide, contending without evidence that millions of noncitizens had voted in California. The official inquiry he ordered up found no significant irregularities.
In 2020, when he lost to President Biden by 7 million votes, Trump not only claimed the result was illegitimate; he worked for months to overturn it, demanding that state officials “find” thousands of new votes in his favor. When his court challenges failed, he summoned supporters to Washington and urged them to march on the Capitol.
He returned to that apocalyptic theme last week, when he told supporters in Wisconsin that if Biden wins a second term, “we won’t have a country left.”
“Joe Biden is destroying our country,” Trump said at a rally. “The enemy from within is more dangerous than China and Russia. … I actually think our country is not going to survive.”
It was as if he was priming his followers for extreme measures if he doesn’t prevail.
And it was part of a long pattern. In January, he warned that if his four criminal indictments prevent him from winning, the result will be “bedlam in the country.”
“It’s the opening of a Pandora’s box,” he warned.
In March, he posted a video on his social media account showing an image of Biden hog-tied like a prisoner.
“He’s telling us what his intentions are, as he did before Jan. 6,” Juliette Kayyem, a terrorism expert at Harvard University, said recently on PBS. “The language is the language of incitement. … If he loses, we certainly know from what Trump has said — and we also know from what the FBI is telling us — that there are large groups and organizations that are preparing to continue the fight.”
As matters stand in the presidential campaign, that kind of 2020-style crisis may not recur, since Trump stands a good chance of winning.
The average of public opinion polls published by fivethirtyeight.com shows a dead heat in the national popular vote — but it shows Trump winning in all six of the most important swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Trump used a day off from his New York criminal trial Wednesday to campaign in Michigan and Wisconsin, where he returned to his warnings about an unfair election process.
“The radical-left Democrats rigged the presidential election in 2020,” he claimed untruthfully yet again. “We’re not going to allow them to rig the presidential election in 2024. We won’t have a country left … 2024 is our final battle.”
For months, Biden has sought to remind voters that Trump, if reelected, would run roughshod over the norms of American government and politics.
By reminding voters that he doesn’t accept the duty to recognize the result of an election he loses, Trump has paradoxically bolstered Biden’s case.
For some voters, this election may come down to a choice between preserving democracy and hoping for a return of the low inflation of the Trump years. They may not find it an easy choice.
A survey last year by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 38% of Americans believe the country needs “a leader who is willing to break some rules if that’s what it takes to set things right.” That substantial minority included 48% of Republicans.
When Time’s reporter asked Trump whether his rhetoric about overriding the Constitution and ruling as a “dictator for a day” might alienate voters, the former president disagreed.
In Trump immunity case, Supreme Court justices are Trumpists, not jurists
By Gene Nichol – May 1, 2024
Members of the U.S. Supreme Court, seated from left: Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan. Standing, from left: Associate Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson. JACK GRUBER Jack Gruber-USA TODAY
I’ll concede, readily, that in my old age I find it almost unbearable to listen to U.S. Supreme Court arguments. After all, I’ve been studying them, in one format or another, for many decades. This is the bench of Earl Warren, Thurgood Marshall, William Brennan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sandra Day O’Connor, John Marshall Harlan. It’s high ground. Or was.
Now there are other occupants. Massively different driving forces. Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, John Roberts, and the three Trump judges — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Committed enlistees in a Republican crusade. Untethered to law. Lifelong opponents of the high aspirations of independent judicial review. Warriors against the enforcement of the Constitution’s obligations to open and secure the channels of democracy.
It’s hard to hear them talk. To hear them speak as if they pursued actual inquiry — instead of Federalist Society shop talk. To see the masquerade. They’re delivering gold for Donald Trump in last week’s insurrectionist-immunity case. Like you knew they would.
First, there is no straight-faced claim in the case that Trump is immune from the operation of the criminal law. As Jack Smith’s brief put it: “a criminal scheme to overturn an election and thwart the peaceful transition of power is the paradigm example of conduct” that cannot be immunized. And, as the Court of Appeals had held, Trump’s actions sought to interfere with “the constitutionally established design for determining the presidential election” — which provides “no role” for the president. Of course it doesn’t. The framers weren’t nuts.
But Justice Gorsuch said he “wasn’t concerned about this case” — he wanted to “write a rule for the ages.” Of course he does. Gorsuch, Thomas, Kavanaugh and Alito “for the ages.” It makes one nauseous. And it’s the literal definition of judicial legislation.
But it does at least distract. They can simply ignore what Trump has done. (That’s what Republicans do.) Plus, it’ll take forever to craft an unnecessary set of rules. They’ll need more process. Tons of it. They received the memo. Delay, delay, then delay some more. And who knows, presidents may need to stage coups, sell nuclear secrets, assassinate opponents and pay off porn stars. Judges have to be pragmatic futurists — not originalists, not this day.
A second point. A test of imaginative powers. Imagine that Barack Obama had done what Donald Trump did. (I know that’s actually impossible, Obama is the anti-Trump.) But go with me. Assume it was Obama’s case before these faux-judges rather than Trump. Is there any possibility that Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett and Roberts would declare — even for a moment — that Obama was immune, or might be immune, or that his immunity should be examined, except to throw it on the trash bin of history?
I’ve been doing this for 40 years, and I promise there would be no possibility of that. None. No honest lawyer in the country would disagree with that assessment. These are partisans in charade. Nothing more. We should expect no more of them than we would Marjorie Taylor Greene or Matt Gaetz. They do the same work. They just pretend otherwise. They pose. They deserve the same level of respect we afford to the formal nutjobs.
They are also engaged, ironically, in bold, unprecedented election interference. Trumpists, not jurists.
The rest of us need to understand this. Clear eyed. If we are committed to the American democratic experiment, these pretenders must be disempowered – dismantled as the anti-democratic wrecking ball they’ve become. Worry not about the institution. There is no institution left to save. Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, George H.W. Bush and the Republican Party have already done that work. Fully.
Contributing columnist Gene Nichol is a professor of law at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. This story was originally published May 1, 2024.
By Eric Cortellessa, Palm Beach FLA. – April 30 2024
The former President, at Mar-a-Lago on April 12, is rallying the right at home and seeking common cause with autocratic leaders abroad.Photograph by Philip Montgomery for TIME
Donald Trump thinks he’s identified a crucial mistake of his first term: He was too nice.
We’ve been talking for more than an hour on April 12 at his fever-dream palace in Palm Beach. Aides lurk around the perimeter of a gilded dining room overlooking the manicured lawn. When one nudges me to wrap up the interview, I bring up the many former Cabinet officials who refuse to endorse Trump this time. Some have publicly warned that he poses a danger to the Republic. Why should voters trust you, I ask, when some of the people who observed you most closely do not?
As always, Trump punches back, denigrating his former top advisers. But beneath the typical torrent of invective, there is a larger lesson he has taken away. “I let them quit because I have a heart. I don’t want to embarrass anybody,” Trump says. “I don’t think I’ll do that again. From now on, I’ll fire.”
Six months from the 2024 presidential election, Trump is better positioned to win the White House than at any point in either of his previous campaigns. He leads Joe Biden by slim margins in most polls, including in several of the seven swing states likely to determine the outcome. But I had not come to ask about the election, the disgrace that followed the last one, or how he has become the first former—and perhaps future—American President to face a criminal trial. I wanted to know what Trump would do if he wins a second term, to hear his vision for the nation, in his own words.
Photograph by Philip Montgomery for TIME
What emerged in two interviews with Trump, and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants, were the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world. To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding. He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense. He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.
Trump remains the same guy, with the same goals and grievances. But in person, if anything, he appears more assertive and confident. “When I first got to Washington, I knew very few people,” he says. “I had to rely on people.” Now he is in charge. The arranged marriage with the timorous Republican Party stalwarts is over; the old guard is vanquished, and the people who remain are his people. Trump would enter a second term backed by a slew of policy shops staffed by loyalists who have drawn up detailed plans in service of his agenda, which would concentrate the powers of the state in the hands of a man whose appetite for power appears all but insatiable. “I don’t think it’s a big mystery what his agenda would be,” says his close adviser Kellyanne Conway. “But I think people will be surprised at the alacrity with which he will take action.”
The crowd at a Trump campaign rally in Schnecksville, Penn., on April 13.Victor J. Blue for TIME
The courts, the Constitution, and a Congress of unknown composition would all have a say in whether Trump’s objectives come to pass. The machinery of Washington has a range of defenses: leaks to a free press, whistle-blower protections, the oversight of inspectors general. The same deficiencies of temperament and judgment that hindered him in the past remain present. If he wins, Trump would be a lame duck—contrary to the suggestions of some supporters, he tells TIME he would not seek to overturn or ignore the Constitution’s prohibition on a third term. Public opinion would also be a powerful check. Amid a popular outcry, Trump was forced to scale back some of his most draconian first-term initiatives, including the policy of separating migrant families. As George Orwell wrote in 1945, the ability of governments to carry out their designs “depends on the general temper in the country.”
Every election is billed as a national turning point. This time that rings true. To supporters, the prospect of Trump 2.0, unconstrained and backed by a disciplined movement of true believers, offers revolutionary promise. To much of the rest of the nation and the world, it represents an alarming risk. A second Trump term could bring “the end of our democracy,” says presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, “and the birth of a new kind of authoritarian presidential order.”
Trump steps onto the patio at Mar-a-Lago near dusk. The well-heeled crowd eating Wagyu steaks and grilled branzino pauses to applaud as he takes his seat. On this gorgeous evening, the club is a MAGA mecca. Billionaire donor Steve Wynn is here. So is Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who is dining with the former President after a joint press conference proposing legislation to prevent noncitizens from voting. Their voting in federal elections is already illegal, and extremely rare, but remains a Trumpian fixation that the embattled Speaker appeared happy to co-sign in exchange for the political cover that standing with Trump provides.
At the moment, though, Trump’s attention is elsewhere. With an index finger, he swipes through an iPad on the table to curate the restaurant’s soundtrack. The playlist veers from Sinead O’Connor to James Brown to The Phantom of the Opera. And there’s a uniquely Trump choice: a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” sung by a choir of defendants imprisoned for attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, interspersed with a recording of Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. This has become a staple of his rallies, converting the ultimate symbol of national unity into a weapon of factional devotion.
The spectacle picks up where his first term left off. The events of Jan. 6, during which a pro-Trump mob attacked the center of American democracy in an effort to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, was a profound stain on his legacy. Trump has sought to recast an insurrectionist riot as an act of patriotism. “I call them the J-6 patriots,” he says. When I ask whether he would consider pardoning every one of them, he says, “Yes, absolutely.” As Trump faces dozens of felony charges, including for election interference, conspiracy to defraud the United States, willful retention of national-security secrets, and falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments, he has tried to turn legal peril into a badge of honor.
The Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol is a profound stain on Trump’s legacy, one that he has sought to recast as an act of patriotism.Victor J. Blue
In a second term, Trump’s influence on American democracy would extend far beyond pardoning powers. Allies are laying the groundwork to restructure the presidency in line with a doctrine called the unitary executive theory, which holds that many of the constraints imposed on the White House by legislators and the courts should be swept away in favor of a more powerful Commander in Chief.
Nowhere would that power be more momentous than at the Department of Justice. Since the nation’s earliest days, Presidents have generally kept a respectful distance from Senate-confirmed law-enforcement officials to avoid exploiting for personal ends their enormous ability to curtail Americans’ freedoms. But Trump, burned in his first term by multiple investigations directed by his own appointees, is ever more vocal about imposing his will directly on the department and its far-flung investigators and prosecutors.
In our Mar-a-Lago interview, Trump says he might fire U.S. Attorneys who refuse his orders to prosecute someone: “It would depend on the situation.” He’s told supporters he would seek retribution against his enemies in a second term. Would that include Fani Willis, the Atlanta-area district attorney who charged him with election interference, or Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA in the Stormy Daniels case, who Trump has previously said should be prosecuted? Trump demurs but offers no promises. “No, I don’t want to do that,” he says, before adding, “We’re gonna look at a lot of things. What they’ve done is a terrible thing.”
Trump has also vowed to appoint a “real special prosecutor” to go after Biden. “I wouldn’t want to hurt Biden,” he tells me. “I have too much respect for the office.” Seconds later, though, he suggests Biden’s fate may be tied to an upcoming Supreme Court ruling on whether Presidents can face criminal prosecution for acts committed in office. “If they said that a President doesn’t get immunity,” says Trump, “then Biden, I am sure, will be prosecuted for all of his crimes.” (Biden has not been charged with any, and a House Republican effort to impeach him has failed to unearth evidence of any crimes or misdemeanors, high or low.)
Such moves would be potentially catastrophic for the credibility of American law enforcement, scholars and former Justice Department leaders from both parties say. “If he ordered an improper prosecution, I would expect any respectable U.S. Attorney to say no,” says Michael McConnell, a former U.S. appellate judge appointed by President George W. Bush. “If the President fired the U.S. Attorney, it would be an enormous firestorm.” McConnell, now a Stanford law professor, says the dismissal could have a cascading effect similar to the Saturday Night Massacre, when President Richard Nixon ordered top DOJ officials to remove the special counsel investigating Watergate. Presidents have the constitutional right to fire U.S. Attorneys, and typically replace their predecessors’ appointees upon taking office. But discharging one specifically for refusing a President’s order would be all but unprecedented.
The U.S. border fence in Sunland Park, N.M..Victor J. Blue
Trump’s radical designs for presidential power would be felt throughout the country. A main focus is the southern border. Trump says he plans to sign orders to reinstall many of the same policies from his first term, such as the Remain in Mexico program, which requires that non-Mexican asylum seekers be sent south of the border until their court dates, and Title 42, which allows border officials to expel migrants without letting them apply for asylum. Advisers say he plans to cite record border crossings and fentanyl- and child-trafficking as justification for reimposing the emergency measures. He would direct federal funding to resume construction of the border wall, likely by allocating money from the military budget without congressional approval. The capstone of this program, advisers say, would be a massive deportation operation that would target millions of people. Trump made similar pledges in his first term, but says he plans to be more aggressive in a second. “People need to be deported,” says Tom Homan, a top Trump adviser and former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “No one should be off the table.”
For an operation of that scale, Trump says he would rely mostly on the National Guard to round up and remove undocumented migrants throughout the country. “If they weren’t able to, then I’d use [other parts of] the military,” he says. When I ask if that means he would override the Posse Comitatus Act—an 1878 law that prohibits the use of military force on civilians—Trump seems unmoved by the weight of the statute. “Well, these aren’t civilians,” he says. “These are people that aren’t legally in our country.” He would also seek help from local police and says he would deny funding for jurisdictions that decline to adopt his policies. “There’s a possibility that some won’t want to participate,” Trump says, “and they won’t partake in the riches.”
As President, Trump nominated three Supreme Court Justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, and he claims credit for his role in ending a constitutional right to an abortion. At the same time, he has sought to defuse a potent campaign issue for the Democrats by saying he wouldn’t sign a federal ban. In our interview at Mar-a-Lago, he declines to commit to vetoing any additional federal restrictions if they came to his desk. More than 20 states now have full or partial abortion bans, and Trump says those policies should be left to the states to do what they want, including monitoring women’s pregnancies. “I think they might do that,” he says. When I ask whether he would be comfortable with states prosecuting women for having abortions beyond the point the laws permit, he says, “It’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not. It’s totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions.” President Biden has said he would fight state anti-abortion measures in court and with regulation.
Trump’s allies don’t plan to be passive on abortion if he returns to power. The Heritage Foundation has called for enforcement of a 19th century statute that would outlaw the mailing of abortion pills. The Republican Study Committee (RSC), which includes more than 80% of the House GOP conference, included in its 2025 budget proposal the Life at Conception Act, which says the right to life extends to “the moment of fertilization.” I ask Trump if he would veto that bill if it came to his desk. “I don’t have to do anything about vetoes,” Trump says, “because we now have it back in the states.”
Presidents typically have a narrow window to pass major legislation. Trump’s team is eyeing two bills to kick off a second term: a border-security and immigration package, and an extension of his 2017 tax cuts. Many of the latter’s provisions expire early in 2025: the tax cuts on individual income brackets, 100% business expensing, the doubling of the estate-tax deduction. Trump is planning to intensify his protectionist agenda, telling me he’s considering a tariff of more than 10% on all imports, and perhaps even a 100% tariff on some Chinese goods. Trump says the tariffs will liberate the U.S. economy from being at the mercy of foreign manufacturing and spur an industrial renaissance in the U.S. When I point out that independent analysts estimate Trump’s first term tariffs on thousands of products, including steel and aluminum, solar panels, and washing machines, may have cost the U.S. $316 billion and more than 300,000 jobs, by one account, he dismisses these experts out of hand. His advisers argue that the average yearly inflation rate in his first term—under 2%—is evidence that his tariffs won’t raise prices.
Since leaving office, Trump has tried to engineer a caucus of the compliant, clearing primary fields in Senate and House races. His hope is that GOP majorities replete with MAGA diehards could rubber-stamp his legislative agenda and nominees. Representative Jim Banks of Indiana, a former RSC chairman and the GOP nominee for the state’s open Senate seat, recalls an August 2022 RSC planning meeting with Trump at his residence in Bedminster, N.J. As the group arrived, Banks recalls, news broke that Mar-a-Lago had been raided by the FBI. Banks was sure the meeting would be canceled. Moments later, Trump walked through the doors, defiant and pledging to run again. “I need allies there when I’m elected,” Banks recalls Trump saying. The difference in a second Trump term, Banks says now, “is he’s going to have the backup in Congress that he didn’t have before.”
Haley, Scavino, Wiles: AP (3); Bannon, Conway, Homan, LaCivita, Lighthizer, J. Miller, S. Miller, Trump, Vought: Getty Images (9)
Trump’s intention to remake America’s relations abroad may be just as consequential. Since its founding, the U.S. has sought to build and sustain alliances based on the shared values of political and economic freedom. Trump takes a much more transactional approach to international relations than his predecessors, expressing disdain for what he views as free-riding friends and appreciation for authoritarian leaders like President Xi Jinping of China, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, or former President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil.
That’s one reason America’s traditional allies were horrified when Trump recently said at a campaign rally that Russia could “do whatever the hell they want” to a NATO country he believes doesn’t spend enough on collective defense. That wasn’t idle bluster, Trump tells me. “If you’re not going to pay, then you’re on your own,” he says. Trump has long said the alliance is ripping the U.S. off. Former NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg credited Trump’s first-term threat to pull out of the alliance with spurring other members to add more than $100 billion to their defense budgets.
But an insecure NATO is as likely to accrue to Russia’s benefit as it is to America’s. President Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine looks to many in Europe and the U.S. like a test of his broader vision to reconstruct the Soviet empire. Under Biden and a bipartisan Congress, the U.S. has sent more than $100 billion to Ukraine to defend itself. It’s unlikely Trump would extend the same support to Kyiv. After Orban visited Mar-a-Lago in March, he said Trump “wouldn’t give a penny” to Ukraine. “I wouldn’t give unless Europe starts equalizing,” Trump hedges in our interview. “If Europe is not going to pay, why should we pay? They’re much more greatly affected. We have an ocean in between us. They don’t.” (E.U. nations have given more than $100 billion in aid to Ukraine as well.)
Trump has historically been reluctant to criticize or confront Putin. He sided with the Russian autocrat over his own intelligence community when it asserted that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Even now, Trump uses Putin as a foil for his own political purposes. When I asked Trump why he has not called for the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been unjustly held on spurious charges in a Moscow prison for a year, Trump says, “I guess because I have so many other things I’m working on.” Gershkovich should be freed, he adds, but he doubts it will happen before the election. “The reporter should be released and he will be released,” Trump tells me. “I don’t know if he’s going to be released under Biden. I would get him released.”
America’s Asian allies, like its European ones, may be on their own under Trump. Taiwan’s Foreign Minister recently said aid to Ukraine was critical in deterring Xi from invading the island. Communist China’s leaders “have to understand that things like that can’t come easy,” Trump says, but he declines to say whether he would come to Taiwan’s defense.
Trump is less cryptic on current U.S. troop deployments in Asia. If South Korea doesn’t pay more to support U.S. troops there to deter Kim Jong Un’s increasingly belligerent regime to the north, Trump suggests the U.S. could withdraw its forces. “We have 40,000 troops that are in a precarious position,” he tells TIME. (The number is actually 28,500.) “Which doesn’t make any sense. Why would we defend somebody? And we’re talking about a very wealthy country.”
Transactional isolationism may be the main strain of Trump’s foreign policy, but there are limits. Trump says he would join Israel’s side in a confrontation with Iran. “If they attack Israel, yes, we would be there,” he tells me. He says he has come around to the now widespread belief in Israel that a Palestinian state existing side by side in peace is increasingly unlikely. “There was a time when I thought two-state could work,” he says. “Now I think two-state is going to be very, very tough.”
Yet even his support for Israel is not absolute. He’s criticized Israel’s handling of its war against Hamas, which has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza, and has called for the nation to “get it over with.” When I ask whether he would consider withholding U.S. military aid to Israel to push it toward winding down the war, he doesn’t say yes, but he doesn’t rule it out, either. He is sharply critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, once a close ally. “I had a bad experience with Bibi,” Trump says. In his telling, a January 2020 U.S. operation to assassinate a top Iranian general was supposed to be a joint attack until Netanyahu backed out at the last moment. “That was something I never forgot,” he says. He blames Netanyahu for failing to prevent the Oct. 7 attack, when Hamas militants infiltrated southern Israel and killed nearly 1,200 people amid acts of brutality including burning entire families alive and raping women and girls. “It happened on his watch,” Trump says.
On the second day of Trump’s New York trial on April 17, I stand behind the packed counter of the Sanaa Convenience Store on 139th Street and Broadway, waiting for Trump to drop in for a postcourt campaign stop. He chose the bodega for its history. In 2022, one of the store’s clerks fatally stabbed a customer who attacked him. Bragg, the Manhattan DA, charged the clerk with second-degree murder. (The charges were later dropped amid public outrage over video footage that appeared to show the clerk acting in self-defense.) A baseball bat behind the counter alludes to lingering security concerns. When Trump arrives, he asks the store’s co-owner, Maad Ahmed, a Yemeni immigrant, about safety. “You should be allowed to have a gun,” Trump tells Ahmed. “If you had a gun, you’d never get robbed.”
On the campaign trail, Trump uses crime as a cudgel, painting urban America as a savage hell-scape even though violent crime has declined in recent years, with homicides sinking 6% in 2022 and 13% in 2023, according to the FBI. When I point this out, Trump tells me he thinks the data, which is collected by state and local police departments, is rigged. “It’s a lie,” he says. He has pledged to send the National Guard into cities struggling with crime in a second term—possibly without the request of governors—and plans to approve Justice Department grants only to cities that adopt his preferred policing methods like stop-and-frisk.
To critics, Trump’s preoccupation with crime is a racial dog whistle. In polls, large numbers of his supporters have expressed the view that antiwhite racism now represents a greater problem in the U.S. than the systemic racism that has long afflicted Black Americans. When I ask if he agrees, Trump does not dispute this position. “There is a definite antiwhite feeling in the country,” he tells TIME, “and that can’t be allowed either.” In a second term, advisers say, a Trump Administration would rescind Biden’s Executive Orders designed to boost diversity and racial equity.
A protester confronts members of the Minnesota National Guard after the murder of George Floyd.Victor J. Blue
Trump’s ability to campaign for the White House in the midst of an unprecedented criminal trial is the product of a more professional campaign operation that has avoided the infighting that plagued past versions. “He has a very disciplined team around him,” says Representative Elise Stefanik of New York. “That is an indicator of how disciplined and focused a second term will be.” That control now extends to the party writ large. In 2016, the GOP establishment, having failed to derail Trump’s campaign, surrounded him with staff who sought to temper him. Today the party’s permanent class have either devoted themselves to the gospel of MAGA or given up. Trump has cleaned house at the Republican National Committee, installing handpicked leaders—including his daughter-in-law—who have reportedly imposed loyalty tests on prospective job applicants, asking whether they believe the false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen. (The RNC has denied there is a litmus test.) Trump tells me he would have trouble hiring anyone who admits Biden won: “I wouldn’t feel good about it.”
Policy groups are creating a government-in-waiting full of true believers. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has drawn up plans for legislation and Executive Orders as it trains prospective personnel for a second Trump term. The Center for Renewing America, led by Russell Vought, Trump’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget, is dedicated to disempowering the so-called administrative state, the collection of bureaucrats with the power to control everything from drug-safety determinations to the contents of school lunches. The America First Policy Institute is a research haven of pro-Trump right-wing populists. America First Legal, led by Trump’s immigration adviser Stephen Miller, is mounting court battles against the Biden Administration.
The goal of these groups is to put Trump’s vision into action on day one. “The President never had a policy process that was designed to give him what he actually wanted and campaigned on,” says Vought. “[We are] sorting through the legal authorities, the mechanics, and providing the momentum for a future Administration.” That includes a litany of boundary-pushing right-wing policies, including slashing Department of Justice funding and cutting climate and environmental regulations.
Trump’s campaign says he would be the final decision-maker on which policies suggested by these organizations would get implemented. But at the least, these advisers could form the front lines of a planned march against what Trump dubs the Deep State, marrying bureaucratic savvy to their leader’s anti-bureaucratic zeal. One weapon in Trump’s second-term “War on Washington” is a wonky one: restoring the power of impoundment, which allowed Presidents to withhold congressionally appropriated funds. Impoundment was a favorite maneuver of Nixon, who used his authority to freeze funding for subsidized housing and the Environmental Protection Agency. Trump and his allies plan to challenge a 1974 law that prohibits use of the measure, according to campaign policy advisers.
Another inside move is the enforcement of Schedule F, which allows the President to fire nonpolitical government officials and which Trump says he would embrace. “You have some people that are protected that shouldn’t be protected,” he says. A senior U.S. judge offers an example of how consequential such a move could be. Suppose there’s another pandemic, and President Trump wants to push the use of an untested drug, much as he did with hydroxychloroquine during COVID-19. Under Schedule F, if the drug’s medical reviewer at the Food and Drug Administration refuses to sign off on its use, Trump could fire them, and anyone else who doesn’t approve it. The Trump team says the President needs the power to hold bureaucrats accountable to voters. “The mere mention of Schedule F,” says Vought, “ensures that the bureaucracy moves in your direction.”
It can be hard at times to discern Trump’s true intentions. In his interviews with TIME, he often sidestepped questions or answered them in contradictory ways. There’s no telling how his ego and self-destructive behavior might hinder his objectives. And for all his norm-breaking, there are lines he says he won’t cross. When asked if he would comply with all orders upheld by the Supreme Court, Trump says he would.
But his policy preoccupations are clear and consistent. If Trump is able to carry out a fraction of his goals, the impact could prove as transformative as any presidency in more than a century. “He’s in full war mode,” says his former adviser and occasional confidant Stephen Bannon. Trump’s sense of the state of the country is “quite apocalyptic,” Bannon says. “That’s where Trump’s heart is. That’s where his obsession is.”
Trump speaks at his last rally ahead of his criminal trial in Schnecksville, Penn., on April 13.Victor J. Blue for TIME
These obsessions could once again push the nation to the brink of crisis. Trump does not dismiss the possibility of political violence around the election. “If we don’t win, you know, it depends,” he tells TIME. “It always depends on the fairness of the election.” When I ask what he meant when he baselessly claimed on Truth Social that a stolen election “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump responded by denying he had said it. He then complained about the “Biden-inspired” court case he faces in New York and suggested that the “fascists” in America’s government were its greatest threat. “I think the enemy from within, in many cases, is much more dangerous for our country than the outside enemies of China, Russia, and various others,” he tells me.
Toward the end of our conversation at Mar-a-Lago, I ask Trump to explain another troubling comment he made: that he wants to be dictator for a day. It came during a Fox News town hall with Sean Hannity, who gave Trump an opportunity to allay concerns that he would abuse power in office or seek retribution against political opponents. Trump said he would not be a dictator—“except for day one,” he added. “I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill.”
Trump says that the remark “was said in fun, in jest, sarcastically.” He compares it to an infamous moment from the 2016 campaign, when he encouraged the Russians to hack and leak Hillary Clinton’s emails. In Trump’s mind, the media sensationalized those remarks too. But the Russians weren’t joking: among many other efforts to influence the core exercise of American democracy that year, they hacked the Democratic National Committee’s servers and disseminated its emails through WikiLeaks.
Whether or not he was kidding about bringing a tyrannical end to our 248-year experiment in democracy, I ask him, Don’t you see why many Americans see such talk of dictatorship as contrary to our most cherished principles? Trump says no. Quite the opposite, he insists. “I think a lot of people like it.” —With reporting by Leslie Dickstein, Simmone Shah, and Julia Zorthian
Trump Wants to Prosecute Biden. He Also Thinks Presidents Deserve Immunity.
Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman – April 30, 2024
Former President Donald Trump appears in the courtroom for his criminal trial at Manhattan Criminal Court in Manhattan, on Friday, April 26, 2024. (Dave Sanders/The New York Times)
When a lawyer for former President Donald Trump argued before the Supreme Court last week that his client should be immune from charges of plotting to subvert the last election, he asked the justices to picture a world in which former presidents were ceaselessly pursued in the courts by their successors.
“Could President Biden someday be charged with unlawfully inducing immigrants to enter the country illegally for his border policies?” the lawyer, D. John Sauer, asked.
What Sauer did not mention was that Trump has done as much as anyone to escalate the prospect of threatening political rivals with prosecution. In 2016, his supporters greeted mentions of Hillary Clinton with chants of, “Lock her up.” In his current campaign, Trump has explicitly warned of his intent to use the legal system as a weapon of political retribution, with frequent declarations that he could go after President Joe Biden and his family.
In effect, Trump has asked the Supreme Court to enforce a norm — that in the United States, public officials do not engage in tit-for-tat political prosecutions — that he has for years threatened to shatter. In promising to sic his Justice Department on Biden, Trump has laid the grounds for the very conditions that he was asking the justices to guard against by granting him immunity.
Trump’s perspective is that it is Biden who has politicized justice by pursuing him on multiple fronts as they face each other on the campaign trail. In making that argument, however, Trump has sought to evade the reality that no former president has been faced with as many allegations, or as much evidence, of wrongdoing as he has.
The two federal cases against Trump were brought by a special counsel operating largely independently of the Justice Department, while the two other criminal cases against him were brought by local district attorneys in New York and Georgia.
Paradoxically, should the Supreme Court decide that presidents do enjoy some degree of immunity for their official actions while in office, the ruling would deprive Trump of one of the major themes that he and his allies have promoted throughout the current campaign: that Biden needs to be held to account by the criminal justice system, despite the lack of compelling evidence that he has violated any laws.
And should Trump win in November, he would find it far more difficult, if not impossible, to bring a case against Biden for any actions Biden took in office.
Last spring, Trump vowed that if he was elected again, he would appoint a special counsel to “go after” Biden and his family. And as recently as two weeks ago, he posted a not-so-veiled threat on social media, saying that if the Supreme Court rejected his claims of presidential immunity, it would also “take away” Biden’s immunity.
Over the weekend, Eric Trump, one of Trump’s sons, weighed in about a future prosecution of Biden. Appearing on Fox News, he said that if the court denied immunity to his father, it would mean that “they” — he did not say exactly who he meant — would be able to pursue Biden for things like having depleted the national petroleum reserve.
“The floodgates are going to open,” Eric Trump said. “And I guarantee you Joe Biden will not have one foot outside of the White House doors before they start going after him legally.”
Such remarks have become a staple of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, as he has focused his political message on the four criminal cases he is facing.
History has already shown that the former president and his allies have been willing to use the judicial system against their perceived adversaries.
Trump’s Justice Department, under the control of former Attorney General William Barr, appointed a special counsel, John Durham, to investigate the investigators who launched the inquiry into connections between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump also repeatedly encouraged inquiries into his political critics, including Clinton; James Comey, whom he fired as the FBI director; and John Kerry, the former senator and secretary of state under President Barack Obama. (None of them were prosecuted.)
As president, Trump wanted a number of his perceived political enemies, including Comey, to be investigated by the IRS, according to one of his White House chiefs of staff.
For all of Trump’s promises to bring some sort of criminal investigation against Biden, however, the vows have come as actual evidence of offenses by the president has been hard to find.
After more than a year of investigation, House Republicans have seemed to retreat from their attempts to bring impeachment charges against Biden. A separate impeachment proceeding against Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s homeland security secretary, was quickly cast aside when it reached the Senate.
In February, special counsel Robert Hur said there was insufficient evidence to charge Biden with illegally holding on to classified documents after he served as vice president.
Given the long acceptance of the American legal principle that no one is above the law, Trump’s immunity claim seemed like a long shot when his lawyers took it before the Supreme Court.
Still, some of the court’s conservative justices appeared last week to accept Trump’s underlying argument that in a polarized political environment, all presidents could be charged with something when they got out of office if he did not receive the protections of immunity.
“It’s going to cycle back and be used against the current president or the next president,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh said, “and the next president and the next president after that.”
It is impossible to know just how much protection, if any, the justices will ultimately grant Trump in the election interference case. While none of them appeared to embrace his most extreme idea — that he could not be prosecuted at all unless first convicted at an impeachment trial — several seemed to agree that he might enjoy a limited form of immunity that would shield him from being charged for official actions central to his job.
As for Biden, all of the grounds for bringing a case against him that have been floated by Trump, his allies or his lawyers have had little basis in the law. Those grounds would be even harder to support if the Supreme Court were inclined to limit prosecutions based on a former president’s core official acts.
Eric Trump’s suggestion of going after Biden over his handling of the petroleum reserve, for instance, would seem to fall squarely within the realm of a president’s official duties. So would Sauer’s idea of prosecuting Biden for his border policy.
Even though some form of executive immunity could one day protect Biden against an attack from prosecutors under Trump, Michael Dreeben, a lawyer who argued for the Justice Department, told the court that it was neither necessary or desirable.
The criminal justice system, Dreeben said, already had “layered safeguards” in place to ensure against what he called “a runaway train” of rogue indictments.
What was far more worrying, Drebeen argued, was creating a form of immunity that could allow a president to commit crimes with impunity.
“The framers knew too well the dangers of a king who could do no wrong,” he said. “They therefore devised a system to check abuses of power, especially the use of official power for private gain.”
Trump on political violence in 2024: ‘If we don’t win, you know, it depends’
Jake Traylor and Scott Bland – April 30, 2024
Mark Peterson
Former President Donald Trumpsaid in a new interview with Time magazine that he doesn’t think there will be political violence around the 2024 election because he believes he’ll win — but that it “always depends on the fairness of an election.”
The comments came along with a statement that Trump would “consider” pardoning every person who has been charged or convicted for rioting at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after the then-president rallied his followers against what he has repeatedly and baselessly called a “rigged” election.
Trump also answered questions digging into his campaign position on abortion policy being left up to the states — and deflecting questions pressing him on any potential federal action, including his position on whether abortion medication should be available. And Trump reinforced past statements he has made on Russia doing “whatever the hell they want” to NATO countries who don’t pay their “fair share” and the extent of a military crackdown he plans to order on illegal immigration.
When Trump was asked in an initial interview about the prospect of more political violence in 2024, after the events following the 2020 election, he said no. “I think we’re gonna have a big victory. And I think there will be no violence,” Trump said.
But asked in a follow-up conversation about what will happen if he doesn’t win, Trump was equivocal.
“Well, I do think we’re gonna win,” Trump answered. “We’re way ahead. I don’t think they’ll be able to do the things that they did the last time, which were horrible. Absolutely horrible. So many, so many different things they did, which were in total violation of what was supposed to be happening. And you know that and everybody knows that. We can recite them, go down a list that would be an arm’s long. But I don’t think we’re going to have that. I think we’re going to win. And if we don’t win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election.”
Trump also said that he’d be reluctant to hire people for a second administration who thought President Joe Biden won the 2020 election: “I wouldn’t feel good about it,” he said.
On the people charged and convicted of violent acts as Congress was preparing to certify the 2020 election results on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump complained that they’ve faced a “two-tier system” but, when pressed, said, “I would consider that, yes,” when asked if he’d consider pardoning every single person prosecuted for their actions on Jan. 6.
‘The states are going to have to be comfortable or uncomfortable, not me’
Trump’s rare long-form interview included him talking through his position on leaving abortion policy up to states. When asked directly if he was comfortable with states deciding to punish women who access abortions after the designated state-specific ban, Trump said: “I don’t have to be comfortable or uncomfortable. The states are going to make that decision. The states are going to have to be comfortable or uncomfortable, not me.”
Then, asked if women’s pregnancies should be monitored by state governments to ensure they don’t get abortions after a certain timeline ban, Trump said: “I think they might do that. Again, you’ll have to speak to the individual states.”
Trump also dodged on the question of whether women should have access to abortion pills. As the interviewer noted that Republican allies of Trump have called “for enforcement of the Comstock Act, which prohibits the mailing of drugs used for abortions by mail,” Trump said he will be making a statement later but declined to outline his position.
“I will be making a statement on that over the next 14 days,” Trump said. In the follow-up interview on April 27, Time noted that Trump had not yet made the statement even though two weeks had passed.
“I’ll be doing it over the next week or two,” Trump said. “But I don’t think it will be shocking, frankly. But I’ll be doing it over the next week or two.”
Trump recently said that it should also be up to individual states to determine any penalty for doctors who perform abortions outside state law. He labeled a question about what he’d do on potential federal legislation on abortion a hypothetical “because it won’t happen. You’re never going to have 60 votes.”
‘I can see myself using the National Guard and, if necessary, I’d have to go a step further’
When asked about immigration, Trump reiterated a consistent campaign promise to use the U.S. military to remove undocumented immigrants from the country.
And Trump said he’d be willing to use other parts of the U.S. military besides the National Guard to address issues inland as well as the border, saying, “I can see myself using the National Guard and, if necessary, I’d have to go a step further.” When the interviewer noted the law preventing the deployment of the military against civilians, Trump claimed undocumented immigrants weren’t civilians and said: “These are people that aren’t legally in our country. This is an invasion of our country.”
Trump has previously vowed to relocate thousands of overseas U.S troops to the southern border to crack down on border security as well as promising to terminate “every open border policy of the Biden administration.”
Trump also floated the idea of migrant detention camps, calling it a “possibility” but something he hopes “we shouldn’t have to do very much of.”
At the core of Trump’s immigration promises over the last year is the use of local law enforcement, though policy specifics surrounding the idea have been scarce.
When asked to clarify, Trump proposed “police immunity from prosecution” and left the door open to possible incentives from the federal government for state and local police departments.
‘If you’re not going to pay, then you’re on your own’
Trump told Time, “Yeah, when I said that, I said it with great meaning, because I want them to pay. I want them to pay up. That was said as a point of negotiation. I said, Look, if you’re not going to pay, then you’re on your own. And I mean that.”
Trump also backed up comments that he wouldn’t “give a penny” to Ukraine unless other European countries started supporting Ukraine in “equalizing” amounts.
“I said I wouldn’t give unless Europe starts equalizing,” Trump said. “They have to come. Europe has to pay. We are in for so much more than the European nations. It’s very unfair to us. And I said if Europe isn’t going to pay, who are gravely more affected than we are, if Europe is not going to pay, why should we pay?”
Trump also conceded that a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine looks “very, very tough,” and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “rightfully” been criticized for the fact that Hamas was able to attack Israel on Oct. 7.
Why an Immunity Ruling in Trump’s Favor Might Not Alter the Shape of His Trial
Prosecutors believe Donald J. Trump’s official acts in trying to overturn the election should be admissible evidence even if the Supreme Court rules they cannot be the basis of the charges.
Charlie Savage – April 29, 2024
Even if the Supreme Court declares that former President Donald J. Trump cannot be charged for official acts, the special counsel, Jack Smith, may still be able to present a jury with the same set of evidence in the case. Credit…Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
But it is far from certain that such a ruling would derail the election subversion case against him. In fact, there is a scenario in which the court could render such a ruling without altering the charges or the array of evidence that the special counsel, Jack Smith, wants to present to a jury.
Mr. Trump faces four criminal counts over his efforts to overturn his loss of the 2020 election, but none are exclusively centered on conduct Mr. Trump undertook in his capacity as president. Rather, the indictment tells a story that mixes both official acts with private ones, meaning actions Mr. Trump took in his role as a candidate for office. It then declares that each charge arises from the entire picture.
Among the accusations: Mr. Trump spread false claims of voter fraud, plotted to recruit false slates of electors from swing states, pressured Vice President Mike Pence to use their existence to block Congress’s certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s Electoral College victory, and urged lawmakers to use the attack on the Capitol by his supporters to delay any vote.
As of yet, no court has decided which of Mr. Trump’s actions are considered official presidential conduct, versus private, unofficial campaign activity. But during oral arguments before the Supreme Court on Thursday, Justice Amy Coney Barrett floated the possibility that Mr. Smith could “just proceed based on the private conduct and drop the official conduct.”
Crucially, however, a lawyer for Mr. Smith, Michael R. Dreeben, said that even if the court ruled out basing charges on Mr. Trump’s official actions, prosecutors believed that they could still lawfully present evidence about the official conduct as relevant context that would help jurors understand Mr. Trump’s private acts.
“There’s really an integrated conspiracy here that had different components,” Mr. Dreeben said. Mr. Trump, he added, used his official powers to try to ensure his private efforts to overturn the election were more likely to succeed, and the jury will need to see the entire picture to understand the sequence, why each step occurred and the gravity of the conduct.
Mr. Dreeben added that the facts of Mr. Trump’s official acts are relevant for interpreting his “knowledge and intent” about his private conduct.
A lawyer for Mr. Trump, D. John Sauer, urged the court to adopt a very different remedy. Not only should it find that Mr. Trump had immunity for his official actions, he said, but it should omit them from the case. Still, he acknowledged that Mr. Trump could be charged over private actions while he was president.
“The official stuff has to be expunged completely from the indictment before the case can go forward,” Mr. Sauer maintained.
But instead of eliminating any mention of official acts from the case, Mr. Dreeben said, the judge should simply instruct the jurors that they may consider the information about Mr. Trump’s official actions only as a guide. They would add to the jury’s understanding of Mr. Trump’s knowledge and intentions regarding his private actions, but would not be subject to criminal culpability, Mr. Dreeben said.
Samuel Buell, a Duke University professor of criminal law, said it was “quite ordinary” that information is admitted as relevant evidence even though it is not about an action that would itself be subject to a criminal charge. It is particularly common, he said, in cases involving conduct that occurred over a period of time and involved coordination among multiple people.
Still, this case, Mr. Buell noted, is complicated by its “novel territory.” Several justices, he said, had signaled concern about a ruling that would deter future presidents from exercising the powers of their office in a way the country needs for fear of future prosecution.
The bid to recruit false slates of electors may best illustrate how the competing visions of a remedy could play out should the court rule that Mr. Trump cannot be charged for his official actions.
According to the indictment, Mr. Trump worked with a private lawyer to oversee the electors’ recruitment, then pressured Mr. Pence to cite their existence as a reason to block the certification of Mr. Biden’s electoral victory.
If that effort to recruit fake electors were deemed an act that Mr. Trump undertook in his private capacity as a candidate for office, the jury could, of course, be told about it. But under Mr. Sauer’s vision, prosecutors could not raise Mr. Trump’s subsequent attempt to cajole Mr. Pence.
Under Mr. Dreeben’s view, prosecutors could do so because it is relevant to understanding Mr. Trump’s motive for soliciting the electors to start. In this instance, the trial would look more or less the same, no matter the court’s decision.
Should the justices narrow what kinds of actions can be the basis of charges against Mr. Trump, it would raise the question of what conduct in the indictment counts as official versus private. It would not be surprising if courts were to eventually deem his interactions with executive branch subordinates like Mr. Pence and Justice Department officials to have been official, and his efforts with campaign lawyers and aides as private.
Indeed, under questioning by Justice Barrett, Mr. Sauer conceded that a number of actions cited in the indictment sounded private.
Those included Mr. Trump’s work with a private lawyer to spread knowingly false claims of election fraud to spearhead his challenges to the election results; conspiring with another private lawyer to file a court document containing lies to support a challenge; and directing an effort to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification of Electoral College results.
Mr. Dreeben offered a more expansive interpretation of what counts as a private act. For example, Mr. Sauer maintained that the president “communicating with Congress about matters of enormous federal concern” should be understood as an official act. But Mr. Dreeben said that Mr. Trump’s actions in “trying to exploit the violence after Jan. 6 by calling senators and saying ‘please delay the certification proceeding’” were private campaign activity.
Regardless of how the court rules, its decision to take the immunity case has already helped Mr. Trump by delaying a trial that was once scheduled for March. He has long pursued a strategy of running out the clock on legal troubles, and if he can push off any trial until after the election and prevail in becoming president again, he could simply scuttle the case.
If the Supreme Court decides there is some immunity for Mr. Trump’s official acts, the dispute would most likely next return to Judge Tanya S. Chutkan to distinguish which alleged actions in the indictment count as official and which as private.
To the extent prosecutors and defense lawyers disagree about how to consider some of Mr. Trump’s conduct, such a proceeding could preview parts of any eventual trial, including potential witness testimony about his words and deeds.
But Professor Buell said that if the judge ultimately ruled against Mr. Trump on one or more such matters, he probably could not appeal back up to the Supreme Court before a trial. Courts usually treat disputes over the nature of evidence as matters to be appealed after a guilty verdict, he said.
