Washington Crime Report
Roger Fitch Esq Tuesday, November 18, 2025The Supreme Court's failure to rein in a lawless president ... A credulous and weak chief justice ... Federal judges critical of Supreme Court ... MAGA fortunes changing ... Revealing off-year election results ... Trump's shakedowns and litigation try-ons ... Urging the military onto US citizens ... Roger Fitch emerges from hibernation
“Everything the Trump Administration Does Must be Presumed Irregular” – Norman Eisen
There’s no doubt that crime is a problem in Washington. The current president, convicted criminal Donald Trump, continually breaks the law through Orwellian edicts, purported “executive orders”, tracts and brain spasms that are by turns laughable, alarming and downright crazy. Most are without authority.
Since Roger Fitch’s June report, many new EOs have been published with flagrantly lawless purposes; (executive) crime persists in Washington, even if Trump himself is immunised from penal consequences.
Many of the fledgling dictator’s oracular rants have been successfully attacked in federal district courts of the US, struck down or enjoined by judges who were appointed by Democrats, Republicans and Trump himself.
These trial court rulings and injunctions are quickly enjoined or dissolved by appellate courts whose hands have been tied by the credulous Jacobin rabble who control the supreme court. At the high court, the status quo to be maintained pending a decision is always that which benefits the Republican president.
As the great progressive supreme court justice Robert H Jackson once joked, “We are not final because we are infallible but we are infallible only because we are final”.
It’s an idea embraced literally by the current supreme court majority, who now issue Trump-friendly “interim” rulings with no opinion or reasons at all. One of the most significant decisions for which the court did issue an opinion, last year’s Trump v US, is responsible for it all.
Why give a career offender complete criminal immunity, and not expect him to commit every crime in the book (including murder)? After 10 months under Trump, there’s little left of the Ten Commandments.
As the Nation’s writer Elie Mystal says,
“This is the classic Republican judicial dance to justify anything that Trump does. First, the judges say that the president might be right, even in the face of demonstrable evidence that he’s wrong. Then, they say that we cannot use Trump’s own (illegal, unconstitutional, abhorrent) words against him, and have to pretend that he didn’t literally confess to his own illegal motivations for doing a thing. Lastly, they’ll say that their order authorizing Trump to do whatever violent thing he wants to do is ‘temporary’ and promise a full hearing ‘on the merits’ at some point in the future, by which time whoever it is Trump wanted to kill or deport will already be dead or gone …
“Republican justices essentially tell us to ignore Trump when he’s telling the truth about himself, but listen to Trump when he’s lying about the rest of us … Chief Justice John Roberts and his Republican cabal first used this move way back in 2018 in Trump v. Hawaii, when Roberts authorized Trump’s Muslim ban, and since nobody ever punished Roberts for his legal vandalism, he’s been using the same playbook ever since.”
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There could still be consequences in the states, where the MAGA fortunes are changing. As the retiring Nancy Pelosi observed:
“[W]hile the President may enjoy absolute immunity courtesy of his rogue Supreme Court, those who operate under his orders do not. Our state and local authorities may arrest federal agents if they break California law – and if they are convicted, the President cannot pardon them.”
Illinois Governor Jay Pritzker has said much the same.
Meanwhile, the 2025 off-year state and local elections are done, and the results are revelatory. It seems that Donald Trump’s shocking and illegal implementation of the radical Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 plan, together with the shameless barbarism of the Trump administration – composed in equal parts of cruelty, greed and revenge – are a gift for Democrats that just keeps giving.
Considerable waverers and fence-sitters from the 2024 election cycle – the low-information voters, the misled ethnic groups – have been peeled off from the religious cranks and white male racists that form the core of the MAGA movement.
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Trump’s vengeful cases against individuals and organisations he dislikes are legendary. He’s been successful in some of his quests for payoffs, extorting cash and favours from cowardly law firms, timid universities and the oligarch-controlled media, but when he fails to settle baseless and lawless litigation, there’s now increasing judicial blowback, e.g, against Trump’s astonishing $15 billion defamation shakedown of the New York Times.
Initially dismissing the clumsy Trump v NYT, Florida federal judge Steven Merryday was caustic:
“[T]he complaint is decidedly improper and impermissible … The reader of the complaint must … endure … repetitive, and laudatory (toward President Trump) but superfluous allegations … a complaint remains an improper and impermissible place for the tedious and burdensome aggregation of prospective evidence, for the rehearsal of tendentious arguments, or for the protracted recitation and explanation of legal authority putatively supporting the pleader’s claim … a complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective – not a protected platform to rage against an adversary. A complaint is not a megaphone for public relations or a podium for a passionate oration at a political rally …”
Trump’s defamation protection racket, like his assassinations, is also employed overseas.
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There’s also increasing judicial resistance to Trump’s attempted militarisation of American life. In Portland, Oregon, the Trump-appointed district court judge Karen Immergut has come down hard on Trump’s breaches of law, using ICE thugs and hijacked National Guard forces.
Federal judges throughout the country are criticising the supreme court’s lack of guidance for lower courts. A group comprising dozens of sitting federal judges anonymously complained to the NY Times.
Individual judges are also speaking their minds, both appeals judges and district courts.
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One of the most alarming developments is Trump’s sinister infiltration of the military, culminating in the bizarre stunt in which the incompetent Defence Secretary (Trump’s “Secretary of War”), former FOX TV host Pete Hegseth, summoned 800 generals and admirals from around the world in order to listen to a highly improper Trump diatribe and Hegseth’s gratuitous observations on obese military officialdom – the Commander in Chief obviously excepted.
As Paul Krugman afterwards observed:
“If America still had a fully functioning democracy, Donald Trump’s speech to the assembled generals would have ended his presidency. Trump treated the event like a political rally and was clearly taken aback by the refusal of the audience to applaud or laugh at his jokes. Delivering a nakedly partisan speech to a mandated assembly of military officers was a gross violation of the Hatch Act. The content – telling the officers to be ready to use force against U.S. citizens – was clearly an impeachable offense. In an earlier era, Trump’s incoherent ranting would have paved the way for his immediate removal from office under the 25th Amendment.” ≈ ≈ ≈
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