Donald J Trump has had his fill of legal problems. He hates judges (except those who side with him) and his wrath knows no bounds. Look at the following quote, “I expect the…, legal profession to understand that the nation is not here for them, but they are here for the nation . . . . From now on, I shall intervene in these cases and remove from office those judges who evidently do not understand the demand of the hour.”
It would be easy to look at that quote and picture Donald Trump standing at a lectern speaking to an excited MAGA crowd. You would be close, but that quote was from Adolph Hitler in a speech to the Reichstag on April 26,1942. At that moment the German Fuhrer dissolved the last remnants of judicial independence in Germany.
Hitler had loyal judges, and their rulings supported the oppression, discrimination, and eventual genocide that Hitler deemed necessary. They regularly suppressed the law and allowed tyranny to supplant justice.
Currently, we have a Supreme Court which regularly is divided along political rather than legal lines. If a verdict supports conservative views, the law can be twisted like a pretzel to support an outcome already determined before any judicial analysis. We regularly see this regime use venue shopping to steer lower court cases to sympathetic jurisdictions.
We have already seen the Trump regime use and abuse the legal system. He ignores court rulings with which he disagrees knowing that he will get his way long before matters can be decided through proper judicial channels. By the time legal decisions can be reached, it can be too late.
We have seen Trump use the power of his office to even attack private law firms that have aggrieved him in the past. We have seen ICE officials use court proceedings to round up immigrants who have been charged but not convicted of crimes. A judge allegedly allowed an immigrant to use a side exit to avoid capture and the FBI came in and arrested the judge.
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| Watch Hitler Speak at this link. |
In Hitler’s case, he asserted that the communist threat required such emergency measures, and he branded them terrorists. Trump has branded all immigrants as terrorists, regardless of status, who fit his rather vague profile of various gangs. With that justification, he has invoked wartime powers to suspend habeas corpus for anyone with the wrong tattoo or who wears the wrong clothing.
While we haven’t yet reached the complete breakdown of the legal system as was the case 83 years ago, we are not far from having a similar form of authoritarian government.
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