The Rule of Law and Our Democratic Form of Government Are Under Attack

The collective actions of the Trump Administration during its first year in office threaten both the Rule of Law and our democratic form of government. The Administration has embarked on a concerted and well-planned strategy to unify power in the Executive, bypassing Congress and Congressional mandates, undermining and seeking to control independent federal agencies, weaponizing the Department of Justice in an effort to seek retribution against perceived enemies and to intimidate and threaten those who oppose it, abusing the pardon power, and deploying the military, ICE, CBP to American cities resulting in the suppression of lawful protests, unlawful detentions and the killing of two American citizens. The efforts to destroy the Rule of Law and our democratic institutions include the following:

• Deploying armed military and masked ICE, CBP and Bureau of Prisons agents in military gear to American cities under the pretext of public safety and immigration enforcement resulting in terror, chaos and the wholesale violations of fundament civil liberties. Federal agents have assaulted bystanders and protestors, used pepper-spray and tear gas on peaceful protestors, handcuffed and detained teenagers, broke into homes without a judicial warrant and unlawfully detained American citizens.
• The Administration’s unlawful invasion of American cities came to a head with the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Alex Pretti was an American and ICU nurse with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs who was shot and killed by federal agents while he was filming their actions and helping a woman whom the agents had pushed to the ground. Renee Good, an American citizen and mother of two, was shot and killed by an ICE agent as she peacefully tried to drive home. The agent, who was in no danger of personal injury, expressed his true motives when immediately after shooting Ms. Good he exclaimed “f**king bitch”. Within a matter of hours JD Vance and Kristi Noem characterized Ms. Good as a “domestic terrorist” and defended the killing without any investigation. When asked about the shooting the President said she was “very, very disrespectful to law enforcement”. The DOJ has declined to cooperate with state law enforcement in an investigation and instead is investigating Ms. Good and her widow. As a result of their frustration over how the DOJ is investigating the deaths of Mr. Pretti and Ms. Good, fourteen federal prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s office have resigned.
• As we have written in earlier articles, the Administration has engaged in a persistent and public effort to weaponize the Justice Department against the President’s perceived enemies. The Attorney General has created a weaponization task force in DOJ and has fired attorneys and FBI agents who were assigned to cases involving then former President Trump. DOJ has installed loyal temporary US Attorneys who have been disqualified by a number of federal judges. DOJ unsuccessfully sought indictments against James Comey and Letitia James. It continues to investigate Senator Adam Schiff and others. And most recently the US Attorney for the District of Columbia issued subpoenas to the Federal Reserve and to Chairman Jerome Powell in an apparent pressure campaign to force the Fed to do the President’s bidding on interest rates. Chairman Powell has courageously spoken out against the Administration’s efforts to pressure him and the Fed.
• The President has abused the pardon power not to correct an injustice or to recognize rehabilitation but to advance his political and personal agenda. On his first day in office the President pardoned roughly 1,500 people charged with offenses related to the January 6 riot at the Capitol, including people convicted of violent crimes against law enforcement officers. Since then the President has issued pardons or clemency to politicians such as George Santos, Rod Blagojevich and Tennessee state Senator Brian Kelsey, to individuals convicted of money laundering such as Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, to 23 anti-abortion activists convicted of blockading the entrance to an abortion clinic and intimidating staff and patients, and most recently to Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former President of Honduras, convicted of conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States and sentenced to 45 years in prison. These pardons threaten the Rule of Law by undermining prosecutors, judges and juries and the legitimacy of the justice system.
• Attacking the free press by politicizing the Federal Communications Commission, personally suing media outlets, banning the AP from the White House press pool, effectively barring reporters from a presence in the Pentagon, executing an unprecedented search warrant at the home of a Washington Post journalist and most recently arresting two journalists who were covering a protest at a church in Minesota.
• The FBI executed a search warrant and seized county election records and ballots from Fulton County, GA. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was in attendance.
• The President, and others in his administration have insulted and called for the impeachment of judges who ruled against the administration. These actions have resulted in judges and their families being threatened and have undermined public confidence in the judiciary, a separate and coequal branch of our government.
• Todd Blanche, the second highest ranking official at the Department of Justice, has called the administration’s relationship with the federal courts “a war”. Department of Justice lawyers have misled and outright lied to federal judges and have defied lawful orders of Courts. As a result of these developments, a growing number of federal judges have ended a practice called the “presumption of regularity”, the tradition of assuming that representations of fact by Justice Department lawyers to federal judges are accurate.

As GLRL has called out in previous statements, the above are just some of the actions the administration has taken to undermine the Rule of Law and our democratic institutions, including attacking the judiciary, gutting federal agencies created and funded by Congress, attempting to remove members of independent agencies and intimidating law firms and colleges and universities. We must speak out and take action against these imminent threats to our democracy.