SCOTUS rescues the gerrymander
ROGER FITCH ESQ • WEDNESDAY, JULY 3, 2019
US Supreme Court washes its hands of election rigging ... Redistricting ... Trump lawlessness ... The president losing droves of court cases ... Financial irregularities ... Cosmetic inquiries guarantee that no one is responsible for war crimes ... Persecution of migrant children ... Roger Fitch reporting from Washington
"Redistricting is like an election in reverse! Usually the voters get to pick the politicians. In redistricting, the politicians get to pick the voters! [It's] the only legalized form of vote-stealingleft in the United States" - late Republican strategist and mapmaker Thomas Hofeller
The last opinions of the supreme court term are out, and the most tragic - Rucho v Common Cause, about partisan voting districts - could join Plessey v Ferguson in infamy. Gerrymanders, presently skewed heavily in favour of Republicans, are henceforth to be treated as political matters into which state, but not federal, courts may inquire. More here on the latest Republican election-rigging, using supreme court proxies.
Final court rulings dealt with a four-letter trademark; agency-deference, double-jeopardy, another "faith" bakery claim and the census question, where the justices unexpectedly deferred a decision.
Although the court decision was initially accepted by the government, Trump intervened and ordered the DoJ to find a way to add the question to the April 2020 US census.
The census turnaround arose from late developments in an unrelated North Carolina gerrymandering case: fresh evidence of Republican bad faith in the Trump administration's massively unpopular initiative to make citizenship a key part of the federal census.
The goal - to drive Hispanics and others out of the census totals - would reduce the count of target groups and cost some states not only population-based federal services but also some likely Democrat legislative constituencies, including Texan and Californian seats in congress.
It was hoped that Chief Justice John Roberts would intervene to protect the reputation of the court in the politically-charged gerrymandering and census cases, but it was only the latter, where the CJ joined court liberals in a remand: possibly a temporary feint, as the majority seem bent on furthering Republican Party fortunes, even at the cost of representational democracy.
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Nixon: cruised to victory while Watergate unfolded
Despite daily doses of Trump lawlessness including receipt of financial benefits funnelled through Trump hostelries (more here) and other probable breaches of the US constitution's emoluments clause, congress is primarily interested in Trump's obstructions of justice, including the Mueller investigation itself; the Special Counsel's resignation statement seemed to invite impeachment - an opportunity resisted by the Democrat leader, Nancy Pelosi.
Some noted that Nixon's articles of impeachment described obstructions of justice quite similar to those of Trump, and a Times writer helpfully drafted Trump impeachment articles. Despite such impeachment comparisons, it's worth recalling that Nixon won re-election as Watergate unfolded; today's newly-legalised gerrymanders and a creaky constitution might still enable a troubled Trump to steal home again.
Meanwhile, the president's compulsive distortions of his balance sheets provide fertile grounds for investigation, and his obstructions of congressional oversight are being knocked down by federal district courts.
In DC, Obama-appointee Amit Mehta ruled against Mr Trump in a case of congressional subpoenas for records maintained by Mazars, the Trump Organisation accountants (more here), and the next day, a Manhattan federal court ruled against Trump in the Deutsche Bank litigation. Corruption aside, Congress has a valid interest in tax audit legislation to justify its subpoenas.
In the same week, New York State passed legislation making it easier to provide financial information to Congress that could entangle Trump. Thanks to the new supreme court decision upholding "separate sovereigns" as an exception to double jeopardy, New York can prosecute, for state crimes, those whom Trump may pardon for similar federal crimes.
The Washington Monthly estimates Trump has lost 63 court cases. Even so, the politicised DoJ has begun "rejecting" federal court orders, and the threat of a Trump unbound by law is frightful to contemplate. The economist and law prof Neil Buchanan has pessimistic projections for 2020 and beyond that effectively treat Trump as an incipient dictator, difficult to dislodge from office.
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Durham: patsy investigator for successive administrations
If only Barack Obama had possessed the cojones to prosecute and convict malefactors from the Bush administration for corruption and war crimes, lawless abuses of the "war on terror" and the CIA's torture regime, the Republican brand might have been so badly damaged that the party would have been unable to regroup and gain power under a Donald Trump. Leading party people would have been unavailable, in jail or tainted by disgrace.
The Obama DoJ's cautious approach was to conduct narrow investigations that declined to hold anyone responsible, and allowed Bush villains to emerge unscathed, claim vindication and hold high office again, along with sundry pardoned criminals from previous Republican administrations, e.g. odious neocons like Eliot Abrams.
The preferred instrument for these cosmetic inquiries has been John Durham, a career US Attorney who conducted superficial reviews of CIA misbehaviour at the behest of both the Bush and Obama attorneys general, each time conveniently absolving those involved.
Durham first considered the CIA's notorious destruction of torture tapes, a violation of various laws and court orders that was carefully carried out by the current CIA director, Gina Haspel. Durham's other absolution was even more shameful, letting the CIA off the hook for torture that led to death. The only CIA-related cover-up Durham didn't manage was the exculpation of the CIA's accomplices, the torture memo hacks in the Bush administration, carried out by a DoJ fixer in-house.
Curiously, John Durham has now been selected by Donald Trump's AG to conduct an investigation where the government desires an incriminatory finding, and it involves both the CIA and FBI. A cynic might say the CIA faces critical examination for - daring to investigate Trump.
If Durham had found wrongdoing in his Bush/Obama investigations, any resulting prosecutions and convictions might have been erased by Trump. Under the uniquely-American practice of a single person setting up the whole government, the president could have proceeded to resolve all staffing problems by pardoning and rehabilitating party operatives that previous governments had convicted and put away.
As it is, Trump continues to pardon undeserving rightwing martyrs, and dodgy businessmen like Conrad Black, who perspicaciously penned an adulatory biography of the president. Having few convicted Republicans left to pardon, the president now seems set on a mischievous course of pardoning accused or convicted US war criminals. More here and here.
He evidently admires their grit and determination, and has, as a model, Richard Nixon's "patriotic" intervention on behalf of William Calley. There's more history here, and a list of Trump's pardons for crimes he evidently finds acceptable or praiseworthy.
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No need for toothbrushes
If official cruelty were an impeachable offence, congress might consider Trump's determination to make life harder for the unfortunate and poor: prosecuting Good Samaritans who help migrants, and separating newborn infants from their mothers. In a shocking 9th circuit case, a hapless DoJ lawyer even claimed migrant children could be made to sleep on concrete floors and be denied soap and toothbrushes
