by
George
Sontag
The
most egregious anti- constitutional
actions ever taken by members
of
what we
now call the Deep State are confirmed with the publication of fired
FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s new book detailing how the FBI
and Justice Department plotted what
is basically a coup d’etat’ to
remove President Trump from office for firing FBI Director James
Comey.
Instead
of waiting for the proper appointment of a new FBI head and allowing
him/her to set the tone of any investigation, they decided
that they were the ones that should take action and discussed
wiretapping and using the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to
remove President Trump. They
acted to create an independent counsel over obstruction that never
happened as a retaliatory move for Comey’s firing.
The
discussions about invoking the 25th
Amendment was serious, it was also ridiculous because
McCabe and Rosenstein had no authority
to invoke the 25th
Amendment. The 25th Amendment does not permit the deputy attorney
general to trigger the process for removing an incapacitated
president. By its own terms, it can only be invoked by the president
himself, or by the vice president in conjunction with a majority of
the Cabinet (or a congressionally authorized committee).
On
the other hand, while talk about invoking the 25th Amendment was
serious, it is also ridiculous. The 25th Amendment was adopted in the
years shortly after President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination
to address the potential problem of a president who is rendered
physically or mentally unable to perform his duties – as, for
example, President Woodrow Wilson was by a stroke. The amendment is
not a substitute for the Constitution’s impeachment process: If you
believe a president is guilty of criminal, abusive, or incompetent
behavior – the remedy is for Congress to impeach him, not to
declare him physically or psychologically unfit.
The
fact is that the amendment has nothing to do with the situation
McCabe and Rosenstein believed they were confronting - a president
who is either potentially obstructing an investigation or not up to
the obligations of the office. In addition, neither McCabe nor
Rosenstein was a Cabinet officer. All they could do was speculate
about which Cabinet officials might be amenable to considering a 25th
Amendment ploy; and they quickly dismissed the idea because they
realized they were nowhere close to a Cabinet majority, let alone to
a green light from the vice president.
But
these elitist Justice Department and FBI officials who believe that
the end justifies using any means were joined by Lisa Page and Peter
Strzok of the FBI – knew how to get around the intent of the law
and the Constitution. They were on a mission to remove Trump from
office for daring to fire Comey and other perceived atrocities to the
status quo. They even thought they were part of the 25th Amendment,
which empowers only the Cabinet and Congress to remove the president
from office in extraordinary circumstances.
There
has been a good deal of commentary this week about whether McCabe and
Rosenstein were seriously brainstorming about a coup attempt. McCabe,
himself, and others say Rosenstein was deadly serious when he
discussed invoking the 25th Amendment and wiretapping against
President Trump in an effort to remove the president from office.
Rosenstein says he was just joking around. No one was in a joking
mood when these discussions took place. McCabe was in the midst of
formally opening a criminal investigation of the president, and
Rosenstein was handwringing over the possible appointment of a
special counsel.
No,
they were not joking. They wanted more believable accusations so they
decided that if you’re going to convince people that the president
is unfit, you need evidence of his unfitness. McCabe and Rosenstein
discussed considering whether they could secretly come into the White
House, the Oval Office, wearing a wire to capture Trump saying things
that were incriminating or crazy. They could then use such recordings
to try to convince top administration officials that the president
needed to go.
Harvard
Law professor Alan Dershowitz said any justice official who discussed
the 25th Amendment in the context of ousting the president "has
committed a grievous offense against the Constitution," adding
that using the 25th Amendment to circumvent the impeachment process
or an election, "is a despicable act of unconstitutional power
grabbing."
Evoking
the 25th Amendment, Dershowitz added, would be a fundamental misuse
of its original purpose. He said it was originally "about
Woodrow Wilson having a stroke. It’s about a president being shot
and not being able to perform his office." He
emphatically stated that
the Department of Justice’s discussions to employ the 25th
Amendment to oust President Trump-- if true-- is ‘clearly an
attempt at a coup d’etat’
Every
Democrat, Republican and Independent American should stop angling for
partisan advantage and agree, regardless of who is helped or hurt,
that these officials acted without proper authority in discussing the
possibility of removing a duly elected President and are responsible
for unprecedented damage to our democracy and our political system.
As
they dress up their resistance in high-minded rhetoric about
protecting the Constitution. But in reality, it is the ruling elite
that is undermining democratic norms, by subverting the core of our
democratic process. The American idea is that “we the people”
should be in charge, through the representatives we elect. The Deep
State has a different idea: not “We the People” but “You the
People, ruled by We the Elite.” We
are still not out of the woods.
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