Courts believe they can bar a candidate not convicted of any crime, much less charged with the actual crime in question, from a ballot. Judges believe they can decide whether someone is guilty before stripping them of their property without any kind of jury of their peers. The Special Counsel believes he need not follow the regular process, and that President Trump should face trial in record time.
Last week, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that former President Donald Trump is barred from the 2024 primary and general election ballots because of a clause in the 14th amendment passed in the wake of the Civil War. The clause itself reads quite plainly for a legal document, “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.” The CO Supreme Court made their ruling that this clause applies to the leading candidate both in his party and nationally as of this writing, even though the clause itself does not specify it applies to the presidency (perhaps they forget that one while drafting it?) and the former President in question has not been charged, much less convicted of the crime of “insurrection” or “rebellion.” The court, meanwhile, is composed of seven judges, all of whom were appointed by Democrats. Even so, three out of the four Democrat appointees dissented. Justice Carlos Samour Jr. captured the absurdity of the decision this way, “I cannot agree with the majority that the chimeric proceedings below gave President Trump process commensurate to the interest of which he has been deprived. Nor did the proceedings below protect the interest Coloradans have in voting for a candidate of their choosing. Of course, if President Trump committed a heinous act worthy of disqualification, he should be disqualified for the sake of protecting our hallowed democratic system, regardless of whether citizens may wish to vote for him in Colorado. But such a determination must follow the appropriate procedural avenues. Absent adequate due process, it is improper for our state to bar him from holding public office. More broadly, I am disturbed about the potential chaos wrought by an imprudent, unconstitutional, and standardless system in which each state gets to adjudicate Section Three disqualification cases on an ad hoc basis. Surely, this enlargement of state power is antithetical to the framers’ intent.” However you feel about President Trump personally and whatever opinions you may have on his role in what transpired on January 6, 2021, the end result is that four unelected justices believe they are empowered to silence the voices of millions. If democracy were ever at risk as progressives frequently claim, it does not get much worse than this. Few things are more important in a democracy than the right of citizens to freely choose their leaders and many a dictator has remained in power through sham elections where they are the only person on the ballot, but apparently this is not a concern in Colorado – or anywhere else.
Democrats, in general, reacted to this decision with full throated support if not outright glee, not for democracy as they claim but for autocracy, a world where they decide who you can vote for and who you cannot. “The Court appropriately held that Trump is disqualified from being [on] the ballot,” Representative Ted Lieu said in a post on X. “[As] an impeachment manager, it was very clear to me that the evidence showed Trump called for and incited the mob on January 6.” Representative Pramila Jayapal also posted on X, “Good, the former President incited an attack on our democracy and there should absolutely be consequences.” Representative Adam Schiff said “It’s about time.” Representative Jason Crow described the decision as “right” and noted “The Constitution protects the right to vote and bars candidates who abuse the process or engage in insurrection. Donald Trump has done both.” Even President Joe Biden said, “It’s self-evident. You saw it all. Now, whether the 14th Amendment applies, I’ll let the court make that decision. But he certainly supported an insurrection. No question about it. None. Zero. And he seems to be doubling down on about everything.” The mainstream media was equally enthused about depriving citizens of the right to vote for their candidate of choice. John Nichols, writing for The Nation claimed without any irony, “the 14th Amendment Is the Constitutional Remedy for Trump’s Assault on Democracy,” which sounds awfully similar to “we must destroy democracy in order to save it” because “Lawyers, scholars, and historians have long argued that the 14th Amendment disqualifies Trump. Now, the Colorado high court has agreed.” John Avlon, writing for CNN, claimed the decision was “absolutely right,” even going so far as to insist that politics had nothing to do with it, “The Colorado Supreme Court’s decision made clear that this was about applying the letter of the law, not partisan wish-fulfillment” despite that, self-evidently, partisan wishes were most certainly fulfilled. A supposedly “conservative” legal scholar, J. Michael Luttig, called one of the most undemocratic decisions in United States history, “masterful,” as in “a masterful judicial opinion of constitutional law” that “will stand the test of the time” including at the Supreme Court. He too insisted it was not political in the least, saying “Trump had every opportunity in the Colorado court to present his side of the case. He presented it. He lost. And so, at this point, he’s had, I think, his shot.” Underlying all of these opinions is the implicit belief that the voters, as in the key party in any democracy, do not get to decide for themselves who they can vote for or why. They will decide for you, and they will hide behind the Constitution to do it even though there have been no charges or convictions for the actual crime that’s supposed to bar one from office, assuming the clause applies in the first place.
Nor is the progressive belief that judges have the power to deprive individuals of their rights without either voters or a jury of their peers unique to Colorado. In New York City, Judge Arthur Engoran believes he can strip the former President of both his property and his right to do business in the state entirely on his own, ruling both on the merits of a supposed fraud case and on the penalties. As The New York Times put it, “When 11 weeks of chaotic courtroom wrangling ended Wednesday, the fate of Mr. Trump’s civil fraud trial began to move behind the scenes and into the hands of Arthur F. Engoron, the unconventional New York judge overseeing the case. And because the judge will decide the verdict — there is no jury — he will determine the future of Mr. Trump’s role in his family business.” Judge Engoran had previously ruled – once again, entirely on his own – that the former President committed fraud by inflating the value of his real estate holdings to secure favorable loans, despite that no party involved in the transactions has made this claim, no loan has gone unpaid, and no one has been harmed. The battle is now over “how steep a penalty the former president would face” and Judge Ergeron will be the sole decider once again. “Ms. James has indicated that she may press for a fine above the $250 million she originally sought, concluding that he reaped more ill-gotten gains than was once thought. She has also asked the judge to bar Mr. Trump from running a business in the state, banishing him from the world that made him famous decades ago. The attorney general’s arguments seemed to persuade the judge, and under the powerful New York law underpinning the case, he has broad authority to punish Mr. Trump.” “The judge has extraordinary powers to fashion a remedy to curtail and punish the misconduct, meaning bad news for Trump,” explained Steven M. Cohen, a former official in the attorney general’s office, now a founding member of the Blue Raven LLP law firm who teaches corporate law at New York Law School. Rarely do “powerful laws” and “extraordinary powers” go hand in hand with democratic principles, meaning this is bad news for anyone who believes in any kind of limited government, and in fact, the judge has already used these means to punish the former President by dissolving some of his companies, “But interviews with legal experts and a review of court rulings suggest that the judge may have lacked the authority.” In a year of ridiculous understatements, this might well be the champion of them all. No one truly believes a Constitutional Republic with protected rights including private property is supposed to work this way. Under any reasonable reading of the Constitution, judges are not empowered – entirely on their own – to take your house from you because you claimed more assets than you had on your application even though you paid your mortgage on time and in full. By this standard, you could have paid off the mortgage entirely, own your home free and clear, and a judge could strip it from you anyway, and yet this is what a solid minority of the country believes should happen to former President Trump.
This same segment is also nonplussed – if not downright excited – about the three criminal cases in which the former President was indicted at the state and local level, once for his handling of classified documents and twice for his potential involvement in January 6th. Once again, we are told that all of these cases are being handled unfairly and impartially, “by the book” as President Barack Obama might say, or at least according to the letter of the law, but somehow we aren’t supposed to notice a few salient points. First, the prosecutors, departments, and local and federal governments behind these indictments are all members of or controlled by the opposing party, if not animated by an outright hatred of the former President. In some cases, the judges are not exactly unbiased either. Judge Tanya Chutkhan, who is presiding over the January 6 cases, had previously asked in open court why President Trump was not in jail already. Second, in many cases, the charges are based on novel applications of the law that have never been used in this fashion in the past. “Obstruction of an official proceeding,” for example, was originally implemented to deal with financial crimes after the Enron scandal. Whatever they may say, it has been entirely unclear this entire time whether these laws can be applied in this fashion or apply to the President at all. The Supreme Court will be the ultimate arbiter, but in the meantime, point three: Why would anyone trust any of these decisions or any of these laws in light of the rulings we are aware of right now? If the courts believe they can strip citizens of their right to vote for their preferred candidate or strip them of their property, entirely on their own, why would anyone have faith in any of their decisions or in democracy itself? This dovetails in the fourth point: The actions in question are most certainly not being carried out “by the book.” Special Counsel Smith and the Trump-hating Judge Chutkan are both seeking to conduct an incredibly complex trial on an accelerated time frame, bypassing the usual processes. The average January 6th defendant was given two years before their case went to trial. They propose to give a former President less than half that at 7 months, despite a much thornier case than a normal citizen.
Counsel Smith even sought to bypass the normal appellate court procedure, and requested immediate action from the Supreme Court to resolve important legal questions over potential Presidential immunity specifically because the high court would likely not hear this case until next fall, if not later. Even normally friendly media outlets described such a move as “highly unusual,” given the huge stakes of conducting a prosecution that cannot be separated easily from the political implications. Given those political implications – and the fact that President Trump remains the clear choice of somewhere over 40% of the population – one would think following the established appeals procedure, as in the normal “democratic process” they all claim to love so much, would be absolutely essential. Why would any Trump supporter fully trust the outcome if they leapfrogged the usual processes simply to conduct the case on an accelerated schedule? The cynic would say that they do not care in the least what the average voter thinks, all they care about is getting a potential conviction and putting the former President in jail before the election. Equally telling was the media’s reaction when President Trump went to the Supreme Court and simply requested to let the Court of Appeals perform its normal function. One would swear it was the former President and not the Special Counsel that was seeking special treatment, when CNN’s “analyst” Jeremy Herb described it as “perhaps his most brazen delay tactic yet. He urged the high court not to get involved right now in the question of whether he is immune from federal prosecution for alleged crimes committed while in office – his latest attempt to ask the legal system to effectively bend to his political will.” That this is precisely the opposite of what happened is not relevant in their minds as they blather about saving democracy. Last Friday, the Supreme Court rejected the Special Counsel’s plea – as it should have if anyone cares about the the vaunted democratic processes – and the shrieking about their political involvement was immediate. This time CNN’s Joan Biskupic claimed “The new Donald Trump election controversies give the Supreme Court a chance to seize the moment as the justices’ stature continues to shrink,” but “the court made clear it is not ready to take charge. It rejected a request by special counsel Jack Smith to decide whether former Trump should be shielded for alleged crimes while in office.” Somehow, she entirely failed to mention that the appellate courts are the usual venue at this stage of the process.
Ultimately, the purpose of the Constitution and all of the traditions and procedures that flow from it is to protect citizens from the government by enumerating certain specific powers and granting inalienable rights, but – whatever these progressive, anti-Trump forces may claim about their motives or their dutiful application of the law – the end result is a perversion of this core principle. They are more than willing to bypass key procedures when it suits them, whatever the impact on democracy. To see these maneuvers and others cheered on by the opposition party when they are targeted at a candidate currently leading the presidential race next year can only be seen as nakedly partisan, however they may insist otherwise because, if any succeed, it will necessarily advance their political goals. The term conflict of interest is frequently floated around, but this goes well beyond the appearance of potential bias: Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media are seeking to remove their chief competition from contention, doing it under the cover of protecting democracy while only protecting their own power. By any conceivable measure, this is not democracy and they well know it, but of course, they will not stop. Instead, they will argue that President Trump is such a uniquely malign influence that he and he only requires these extreme measures, despite what his ardent supporters may believe. Of course, these tactics will not end with him. It will only be a matter of time before future politicians considered undesirable are subject to the same treatment, and once again everyone knows it. They have not yet succeeded and the courts might well rule the right way, ending this consolidated attack on our principles and our values, but if they get their way in these matters, 2023 will long be remembered as the year Democrats tried to kill democracy itself. There is simply no other way to spin it.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 