By The Diary
Justice is not prepared for a president like Donald Trump who does not wait for any confirmation of the legality of his actions before proceeding. Despite the margin of impunity, sooner or later judges are curbing the excesses of presidential authority.
An example is the White House projects to satisfy the president’s ego, such as the gigantic ballroom in the White House and the Kennedy Center, which he named after former President John Kennedy, to whom the cultural and artistic center was dedicated. Both were detained by federal judges.
The judges applied the basic logic that authorization for these transformations of federal buildings corresponds to Congress. A reasonable argument that was anticipated, but ignored by Trump who accuses the judges of non-public attack for ruling against him.
These are not isolated events. Another federal judge voided the agreement between Trump and the Justice Department to settle a $10 billion lawsuit against the government for retroactive tax amnesty for Trump, his family and his organization. Included in that agreement is the creation of a $1.8 billion fund for invaders of Congress in 2021 and anyone who claims to have been persecuted by Joe Biden’s government.
The White House strategy was to make an absurd demand – Trump was one of more than 400,000 taxpayers whose tax returns were exposed by an investigation – and then quickly make the agreement and avoid going before the judge. The idea was to avoid having to defend in court the absurd conflict of interest between Trump the citizen, Trump the president and Attorney General Todd Blanche, who was Trump’s non-public lawyer.
The judge rejected the agreement and asked for explanations. We hope this continues this trend of federal judges scrutinizing the actions of Trump, who acts as if he owns a company. It makes decisions and implements them immediately as if the fait accompli gave it non-existent legality.
Resentment and revenge are characteristics of Trump who uses the Federal Attorney’s Office as if they were his lawyers, to punish those he perceives as enemies.
The last straw is the federal investigation for perjury against E. Jean Carroll, who won a multimillion-dollar civil suit against Trump in a sexual abuse case. The president’s legal appeals appear to be insufficient.
We hope that the judges will dismiss this case like that of so many other people who fell out of favor with Trump, but that at the time of trial common sense prevailed, eliminating the charges due to lack of merit.
The Supreme Court remains Trump’s last defender, but even though it rejected the tariffs, it is sometimes unpredictable. Meanwhile, lower court judges are showing, repeatedly, that they are the heroes capable of upholding the law in these dark times.
