Therapeutic the Wounds of Political Persecution: A Roadmap For Restoring the Rule of Legislation and Public Confidence on the Division of Justice.
Pam Bondi’s Division of Justice has arguably a very powerful agenda for any company throughout the government department of the incoming administration. Over the past 4 years, People have noticed justice be systematically desecrated and attacked by vengeful actors, working shamelessly in tandem with Merrick Garland’s corrupt DOJ, with an agenda to censure – and even imprison – these with opposing or dissident political opinions.
On the identical time, they ran roughshod over these timeless constitutional guardrails crucial for preserving justice in the US, such because the presumption of innocence and due strategy of regulation. These nefarious actors bought away with their lawfare with digital impunity. The protections granted to folks like Fani Willis, Jack Smith, and Alvin Bragg originate finally within the instance set by Garland’s DOJ who dutifully carried out the marching orders of his commander-in-chief.
Lawfare turned the rule of the day, and America’s authorized establishments paid a mighty value for it. People witnessed their subsequent President be ruthlessly prosecuted in a banana republic present trial in Manhattan, Washington, and Fulton County. Marxist district attorneys, with the monetary backing of George Soros, Reid Hoffman, and different leftist radicals, eroded the rule of regulation on this nation by launching the primary all-out political persecution (which additionally stood as essentially the most brazen type of election interference in American historical past) of a significant occasion politician within the historical past of the US, bookending the darkest chapter within the historical past of American justice. In a phrase, justice was placed on the chopping block. Had it not been for the political miracle that was November’s historic ele
ction victory, the US could be in a a lot bleaker place; for all intents and functions, the sunshine of American freedom would have been vanquished for good. No basic constitutional rights would have been assured beneath a regime led by Kamala Harris, together with the unassailable rights to talk, assemble, and worship God, as enumerated within the First Modification, or the protections of due course of, like the best to a good and neutral tribunal, as enshrined within the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Accordingly, a lot of the division’s sources should be allotted to restoring public confidence within the rule of regulation and integrity to our judicial establishments over the subsequent 4 years. Paramount amongst these issues will embody each reforms that may facilitate public belief that justice is being carried out pretty and impartially.
Moreover, the DOJ ought to embrace its electoral mandate to advocate for concrete insurance policies that may assist information jurisprudence all through the federal authorities with respect to how prosecutors, courts, and even administrative businesses handle necessary constitutional points introduced earlier than them.
The latter would possibly embody, for instance, suggestions for courts to use a broad building of presidential energy, one which respects the Supreme Courtroom’s recognition of broad-based immunity for presidential actions, a call that’s completely in line with a unitary executive. The latter may also embody suggestions to the civil rights division, as however one instance, for courts and prosecutors to retain a rigorously originalist construction of constitutional law, one that doesn’t freely undergo improvements, like substantive due course of, or a spirited understanding of equal safety with its innumerable manufactured “protected courses,” which has no foundation within the textual content of the Fourteenth Modification or another provision within the Structure itself.
To that finish, I’d describe the principle agenda objects for the incoming DOJ as the next three classes: 1) restoration of the rule of regulation and public confidence within the administration of justice; 2) authorized assist for a unitary government by which the federal forms is immediately accountable to the President of the US alone, guaranteeing strong protections are in place to permit the President full authority over his government department; and three) assist form and implement the administration’s general coverage agenda, significantly with respect to aiding businesses like DHS and ICE perform the “largest deportation program of criminals within the historical past of America.”
With respect to the primary class, the President could have a chance to launch each retributive and restorative justice. Each are crucial, significantly within the aftermath of the final 4 years, which has noticed the emergence of a two-tier system of justice, one which persecutes political conservatives and Trump supporters by and huge, whereas permitting numerous violent criminals – together with unlawful alien repeat offenders that pose grave risks to Americans – off the hook.
This two-tier system of justice has been referred to as, in a associated context, “anarcho-tyranny”: heavy-handed justice is leveled in opposition to in any other case law-abiding Americans, whereas true criminals are for no matter cause given a free cross repeatedly. In lots of circumstances, resembling what occurred to a tragic variety of J6 defendants (see here, here, here, and here), what in any other case ought to have been a misdemeanor at worst was elevated to a felony, and the persecuted was compelled right into a dehumanizing sentencing continuing that on the finish of it left the defendant spiritually demoralized and financially bankrupted.
Judicial sources are recklessly expended on make-believe crimes, ensuing within the type of egregious abuses that have been recurrent all all through the Biden years: from the deployment of FBI brokers upon Catholic plenty to having the DOJ label dad and mom who challenged public college boards for woke curricula and covid mandates as “home terrorists,” grouped in with al-Qaeda or ISIS.
The judicial temperament that drives this hostile method is one born out of woke ideology and completely divorced from widespread sense rules of justice, and definitely the Structure. A part of Bondi’s grand agenda must be restoring public religion in what’s so clearly a damaged justice system; to revive parity, justice must be administered actually and pretty once more.
Those that the general public have good cause to imagine have gotten away with no accountability – from Mark Milley to Anthony Fauci to Alvin Bragg and Fani Willis to the Epstein listing disclosures — (as I have written about previously at good length) should be prosecuted if there may be ample proof to assist a case in opposition to them, to the fullest extent of the regulation. Republicans should start to be taught that the Left is so efficient with their lawfare – and practically incarcerated a former and future President for all times, whereas he was on the marketing campaign path, no much less – as a result of they’re unafraid to make use of the levers of energy given them. The Proper should begin to take a lesson from the Left’s playbook and start to do the identical.
That isn’t to say that Republicans ought to go off on witch-hunts, copying their Leftist counterparts, making circumstances out of skinny air, within the pursuit of pure retaliation. That isn’t justice, however revenge, and revenge ought to by no means be tolerated. The rule of regulation should be our guiding mild; that’s the solely wellspring upon which true justice can spring. However Republicans should additionally not shrink back from apparent information introduced to them and shirk from their public duties to implement the regulation and maintain criminals – particularly those that breached the general public belief by their repeated miscarriages of justice that has carried out irreparable hurt upon our establishments – accountable, as soon as and for all.
The general public accountability measures also needs to embody the institution of unbiased commissions. An apparent instance of this could be one designed to show the reality behind the occasions of January 6, 2021, and one other with the mandate to lastly discredit and maintain accountable those that peddled the Russian collusion hoax over the previous eight years. Furthermore, the worst perpetrators of these bogus narratives who nonetheless retain safety clearances – folks like John Brennan, Adam Schiff, James Clapper, Peter Strzok, Lisa Web page, and numerous others – who abused the privileges afforded to them, will need to have these clearances taken away completely.
These are the sorts of accountability measures that should be enacted, on day one, with the intention to start to proper the wrongs of the Trump period. As a result of a lot of that persecution originated from throughout the DOJ and intelligence businesses, just like the FBI, over which the previous has jurisdiction — the DOJ ought to take its prerogative critically and spearhead these fees out of recognition that the general public has a proper to be made entire once more for the untold hurt exacted by these businesses to establishments of public life — in addition to the Structure itself, maybe the best casualty of all.
On presidential energy, the Justice Division has the power to help regulation enforcement businesses – like Homeland Safety – which has major jurisdiction over the mass deportation initiative, by dashing up hearings and guaranteeing for an orderly and environment friendly course of that’s largely unencumbered by governmental obstruction. The DOJ’s function within the mass deportation marketing campaign is instrumental as a result of it could actually assist decide the pace with which the marketing campaign takes place. In lots of circumstances, governmental logjams are based mostly on pending litigation; the DOJ thus has an obligation to maneuver issues alongside by guaranteeing a well timed appeals course of for the immigration courts, that are managed by EOIR, part of the DOJ.
The place particular person state governments could be out of compliance with federal regulation, resembling unlawfully housing unlawful aliens by sanctuary cities and different such insurance policies, the DOJ could have an obligation to research and prosecute these circumstances as they come up to guard the general public’s well being and security. These efforts can go a good distance in direction of serving to the President ship on arguably his most necessary promise to the American folks, all whereas guaranteeing that it’s carried out orderly and effectively in accordance with preserving the person liberties of everybody concerned, and placing the perfect pursuits of the general public at the beginning.
The above presents solely a preliminary define of the insurance policies DOJ may help implement. The nitty gritty particulars of every will naturally be hashed out with time. However from the beginning, DOJ’s priorities should middle on restoring integrity in a system that has been tarnished irrevocably by the earlier administration. It will solely be completed by reviving justice in its true and authentic which means. The Structure, not activist attorneys and judges, should be the tenet for DOJ coverage: its textual content and authentic which means and goal should maintain supreme – for that would be the solely approach “a authorities of legal guidelines, not of males,” could be saved – and public confidence restored.
