Reforms Needed to save our Federal Republic
In an article titled: Post-Roger Stone: Ten ideas for repairing Trump’s justice system By Jennifer Rubin, She writes:
“President Trump granting clemency to his crony Roger Stone, who served as the go-between for the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, on practically the eve of Stone’s incarceration for multiple crimes attendant to his coverup on behalf of the president, is grotesquely corrupt but unsurprising.”
She recounts the latest Cassus Belli of Trump's perfidy
She notes that “Stone virtually confessed to a quid pro quo,” (To me he was boasting), telling Howard Fineman,
“He [Trump] knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him. It would have eased my situation considerably. But I didn’t.”
I don't think anyone with integrity doesn't feel that this wasn't a high crime and a misdemeanor.Rubin writes:
“Silence for clemency. A separate system of justice for the president’s henchmen. This is the very definition of corruption.”
Former Candidate Romney put it baldly in a tweet:
"Unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president." Link to Tweet
She reports:
“By this action, President Trump abused the powers of his office in an apparent effort to reward Roger Stone for his refusal to cooperate with investigators examining the President’s own conduct,”
She also reports how House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) said in a written statement released Friday:
“No other president has exercised the clemency power for such a patently personal and self-serving purpose.”
Actually, her hero George Herbert Walker Bush, exercised his clemency and pardon powers in 1992 for just such a patently corrupt and self serving cause when he pardoned the perps in the Iran Contra scandal. But what counts with Republicans is what they are doing now, so I can forgive past crimes as long as folks have seen the light. This post is about her suggestions for fixing the problems. I'm endeavering to analyze the problem by critiquing her suggestions. Most of them are obvious or things that were taken out of the law due to misuse or to protect the wrong people. Any reforms made should be based on firm Constitutional Grounds. And if that is not adequate, it might take a Constitutional Amendment.
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Trump Got His Chaika
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Stating the Casus Belli for Reform
She then states the obvious, that.
“Stone’s clemency should remind all Americans of the necessity of removing Trump at the ballot box and seeking a full accounting of Attorney General William P. Barr’s role in running interference for the president (e.g., spinning the Mueller report, turning a blind eye toward criminality in the Ukraine scandal, intervening to block Stone’s and Michael Flynn’s punishments).”
The thing, is, he should have been impeached for this behavior. Turning out Trump won't fix the self serving, manipulative and piratical behavior of the current GOP. Genuine reforms are needed. And she makes a nod to that in her next statement:
“It should remind voters that if not for the spinelessness of every Republican senator save Utah’s Mitt Romney, Trump would not have survived impeachment to seek vengeance on witnesses (e.g., Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman), corruptly protect his friends and incompetently manage a pandemic, leading to the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands. With the pardon of Stone, we can affirm that Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins’s assertion that he learned his lesson from impeachment was delusional.”
All well and good. I'm citing her article because she talks about what process reforms are needed to prevent a recurrance. If we don't overcome Trump, we can thank the groundwork created by her and other Republicans in their hypocritical approach to law and regulation. Trump just took the corruption of the Bushes and Reagan Administrations to a whole new level. But what she's talking about in this article are things some Republicans are finally catching on, were needed all along!
Will Jennifer Rubin's Ten Proposals fix it?
She introduces the subject, by restating the obvious;
“However, we will need far more than an electoral shellacking of Republicans to address the damage Trump has done to the Justice Department and the rule of law.”
She states Ten simple measures that would begin to repair our justice system:
- A thorough redo of the special counsel/independent counsel law is necessary. The counsel’s final report should be issued to Congress and/or the courts, depriving a potentially corrupt attorney general or president the opportunity to pre-edit or spin it. Additional legislation should clarify that a special counsel is empowered to make specific findings of illegality. The DOJ guidelines preventing prosecution of the president while still in office should be revisited.
Comment: The Independent Counsel needs to work for a new Federal Inspector's General Service, which will work for Congress to report to and assist the Congress in determining if changes in administrative law, regulation or foundational law are needed, or if personnel are engaging in impeachable offenses. The enabling law needs to define high crimes and misdemeanors, Treasonable offenses and Bribery/extortion. The offices should probably be within the General Services Administration or the Government Accounting Office and also be embedded in each Department, Agency and Federal Service, provide ombudsmen services to employees and officers alike, and have limited powers including:
- Full Power to investigate complaints from inside or outside the government.
- Full Power to represent and protect whistleblowers and conversely the accused.
- Power to make findings on the facts.
- At least one division or office with power to examine classified information and work with the House Intel Committee.
- Power to refer to management for discipline.
- Power to adjudicate managment discipline for personnel working for the Federal Government
- Power to refer to Congress for disciplinary measures including impeachment.
- Power to enforce administrative ethics rules, and subpoenas, short of firing.
- Power to Conduct Performance reviews semi annually of senior officers and to vett appointees and recommend or not recommend confirmation.
The hiring authority for these Inspector Generals, Omsbudsmen and the like would rest, collaboratively for the most part, with the President and the Judiciary, in performance review cases – with the House of Representatives; or with the Senate when the house impeaches. The House or the Courts would have the power to appoint Special Prosecutors for cause from the pool of qualified lawyers. Federal Judges would serve on these Administrative courts picked from a Pool of Federal Judges approved by Congress and having a record of "good behavior." Federal Lawyers would serve the ombudsmen or whistleblower corps, appointed by the admin courts handling the complaint.
These officers would also assist Congress in investigating their area of responsibility and help them get the right people before Congress to answer questions.
- Congress must reassert the power of the purse. The executive branch must report all holds/impounds on congressionally appropriated funds. “Emergency” powers should be reexamined, tightened and clarified to prevent the sort of unilateral misappropriation of funds we saw regarding the wall.
This is overdue! If it's not too late!
- Severe criminal penalties should be exacted for revealing the identity of whistleblowers or threatening and/or punishing federal employees for providing truthful testimony.
Putting the execution of this in administrative courts under supervision of Congress and the executive, and removing the absolute powers of the President here, requires these positions to be tied to the impeachment power, even if impeachment is not the goal of the courts, but good government and integrity is. It is the first behind Congress's power.
- A new, speedy enforcement mechanism is required for contempt of Congress citations, allowing lawmakers to get a swift and definitive resolution of its conflicts with the executive branch.
Administrative courts would fix this.
- We need a barrier between the White House and Justice Department to prevent political interference in specific cases, targets of investigation and prosecutorial recommendations. Any such communications must be logged and made available to the inspector general and/or Congress.
We'll need to codify a lot of things that once were treated as customery.
- Legislation should specify that solicitation of campaign help from a foreign government is illegal. All contacts between a campaign and representatives of a foreign government must be disclosed (akin to the law governing foreign agents).
This requires McConnell to no longer be the Senate Majority Leader. That bill is on his table.
- Beefed-up ethical training and guidelines for Justice attorneys should reaffirm they are obligated to report to the inspector general and/or courts any political interference in cases involving the president, his relatives and associates. Justice employees should face immediate termination for misrepresenting facts and/or law to a court or Congress (or failing to report orders to do so). Violation of DOJ ethical guidelines should trigger automatic referral to the attorney’s home-state bar authority for professional discipline.
Great idea, and can be enforced by the Impeachment Power. This also would meet Chief Justice Roberts insistence on reforms being constitutional.
- The order of succession (before confirmation of a replacement) in the event of termination or resignation of the attorney general or a U.S. attorney should be written into law.
This was in the regulations. Those regulations need to be codified and backed by law.
- The president and vice president must be required to release 10 years of tax returns and to place all financial holdings in a blind trust. In addition, Congress must strengthen enforcement of conflicts of interest rules for the executive branch, enact penalties for Hatch Act violations, set out specific procedures for divestment of business holdings by all senior executive branch employees and mandate reporting of foreign emoluments (which can be defined by statute). A right of private action should be available to seek disgorgement of moneys received in violation of the emoluments clause.
We need to examine all candidates for any office and make similar requirements to run for office. We also need to review their performance before the next election.
- Congress should enact a proposed law directing DOJ to provide Congress with “all investigative materials related to an offense for which the President pardons an individual if the offense arises from an investigation in which the President, or a relative of the President, is a target, subject, or witness.”
Again, this should be in order to ensure that Congress can fulfil it's requirements related to impeachment.
This is overdue. We Democrats (at least the majority) have gone out of our way to work with Republicans (I was one when I was a kid), and the Republicans gave us #Trumptater as punishment. It's still a good idea. I don't know if Republicans have learned anyting.
“Should Democrats win the White House and the Senate majority, there may be real incentive for Republicans to join Democrats in passing such measures. Trump has demonstrated that legal norms are not sufficient to prevent gross executive overreach. The solution must entail legal restraints on the executive branch to prevent future presidents from following Trump’s example and to restore confidence in the Justice Department.”
Her ideas are good. I just have some ideas for how to make them work.
Source Article; https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/12/ten-ideas-post-trump-reform/
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