Are Trump and Musk killing all the lawyers?
'The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers' is one of William Shakespeare's most famous lines. President Trump hasn't called up Seal Team Six to kill any yet, but he has fired a lot of them and gone after still more.
Justice John Paul Stevens, in a 1985 opinion, noted that the line is uttered by 'a rebel, not a friend of liberty,' and that 'Shakespeare insightfully realized that disposing of lawyers is a step in the direction of a totalitarian form of government.'
Trump doesn't like lawyers, at least ones he isn't retaining to defend him in court. In Trump's first term, government lawyers repeatedly advised him that he could not do the things he sought to do. In Trump 2.0, the lawyers who might say, 'You can't do this, Mr. President' have been given their walking papers.
Trump has sacked the upper echelon of career lawyers in the Justice Department in an orgy of termination, even as he filled the leading posts with his own former defense attorneys. He sidelined the department's venerated Office of Legal Counsel, bypassing its traditional role of vetting draft executive orders and appointing no acting chief. Last month, Attorney General Pam Bondi added to the purge, sacking the top lawyer at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, a 23-year veteran of the agency.
This metastatic purging of lawyers has also spread to the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired the top judge advocates general. As three-star lawyers in uniform, JAGs give independent and nonpolitical advice about the laws of war and domestic legal constraints that Congress has imposed on the armed forces.
Trump doesn't like judges either; the ones who decide against him are just 'woke' lawyers in robes. His attacks on the judiciary dangerously undermine the rule of law. Trump's allies don't like judicial decisions adverse to the administration either. After a New York judge issued a temporary restraining order barring Elon Musk's access to Treasury Department systems, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) declared, 'This has the feel of a coup — not a military coup, but a judicial one.'
Temporary restraining orders and injunctions are hardly revolutionary. We teach about them in every law school in the country. Such orders freeze the status quo for a short time, so that the judge can get the information he or she needs to make a more considered decision about whether a further stay during the pendency of the case is merited.
Musk, cruder than Lee, takes things a step further. He calls on judges to be impeached just because he doesn't like their decisions. Then, in a transparent effort to destabilize the judiciary, he calls for judges to be fired, ignoring the fact that the Constitution gives them life tenure. Federal judges do not serve at the pleasure of Musk.
Musk is now obsessed with the idea of impeaching judges, posting about it constantly on his social media site: 'The only way to restore rule of the people in America is to impeach judges. No one is above the law, including judges.'
This is utter nonsense, but it is dangerous nonsense.
What set Musk off is that a federal judge in Maryland issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Department of Education and the Office of Personnel Management from sharing sensitive records with his DOGE outfit. Later, another judge gave the government until March 10 to provide information about DOGE's problematic activities at the Treasury Department.
There are about 100 active lawsuits currently challenging Trump's torrent of executive orders. Many of these have resulted in temporary injunctions or restraining orders, and there are certainly more to come.
Trump wants to investigate everyone in sight, and an inquisition requires a Torquemada. Enter Ed Martin, a 2020 election denier, now acting and soon to be Trump's nominee for U.S. Attorney in Washington.
Martin took to his job with a political relish that could not escape attention. He sacked some 30 attorneys who had worked January 6 Capitol riot cases, then ordered some of his remaining prosecutors to investigate their own colleagues for potentially committing an unspecified crime by prosecuting those defendants in the first place. What crime did these lawyers conceivably commit, except to uphold their duty to the Constitution and the rule of law?
And the icing on the cake was yet to come. Martin vomited a post on Musk's X about how former Special Counsel Jack Smith had received $140,000 in free legal services from the august D.C. law firm of Covington and Burling, growling, 'Save your receipts, Smith and Covington. We'll be in touch soon.'
Shocking! But what is the crime?
Trump readily gave his blessing, stating that he'd be seeking vengeance on Covington, nullifying its security clearances and government contracts. No good deed goes unpunished.
Justice Robert Jackson, while FDR's attorney general, delivered an oft-quoted speech on Dec. 1, 1940, called the 'Federal Prosecutor.' His words have become an article of faith.
Jackson totally rejected the weaponization of the justice system, saying, 'If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his cases, it follows that he can choose his defendants. Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted. … It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself.'
And it's not just the judges and the lawyers. Already the Trump administration has come for non-lawyer federal employees, transgender people, immigrants, the press, epidemiologists, scientists and more.
Maybe one day soon they will come for you.
James D. Zirin, author and legal analyst, is a former federal prosecutor in New York's Southern District. He is also the host of the public television talk show and podcast ' Conversations with Jim Zirin.'
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Yahoo
14 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump aides want Texas to redraw its congressional maps to boost the GOP. What would that mean?
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The Hill
17 minutes ago
- The Hill
ICE raids accelerate, protests spread
Evening Report is The Hill's P.M. newsletter. Sign up here or subscribe in the box below: Thank you for signing up! Subscribe to more newsletters here THE WHITE HOUSE vowed Wednesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids would continue 'unabated,' as protests spread from Los Angeles into other major American cities. Demonstrations have sprung up in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago, Austin, Denver, San Francisco and other major cities. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) sought to rally the nation to his side, as U.S. Marines prepared to join National Guard troops dispatched to keep the peace in Los Angeles. 'This isn't just about protests here in Los Angeles,' Newsom said in a direct-to-camera address. 'This is about all of us. This is about you. California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next. Democracy is next. Democracy is under assault before our eyes.' 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Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Musk regrets some of his Trump criticisms, says they 'went too far'
Musk regrets some of his Trump criticisms, says they 'went too far' Elon Musk, the world's richest person and Donald Trump's former advisor, says he regretted some of his recent criticisms of the US president (Kevin Dietsch) (Kevin Dietsch/GETTY IMAGESvia AFP) Elon Musk, the world's richest person and Donald Trump's former advisor, said Wednesday he regretted some of his recent criticisms of the US president, after the pair's public falling-out last week. "I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far," Musk wrote on his social media platform X, in a message that was received favorably by the White House. Musk's expression of regret came just days after Trump threatened the tech billionaire with "serious consequences" if he sought to punish Republicans who vote for a controversial spending bill. Their blistering break-up -- largely carried out on social media before a riveted public since Thursday last week -- was ignited by Musk's harsh criticism of Trump's so-called "big, beautiful" spending bill, which is currently before Congress. ADVERTISEMENT Some lawmakers who were against the bill had called on Musk -- one of the Republican Party's biggest financial backers in last year's presidential election -- to fund primary challenges against Republicans who voted for the legislation. "He'll have to pay very serious consequences if he does that," Trump, who also branded Musk "disrespectful," told NBC News on Saturday, without specifying what those consequences would be. Trump also said he had "no" desire to repair his relationship with the South African-born Tesla and SpaceX chief, and that he has "no intention of speaking to him." But after Musk's expression of regret, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump was "appreciative," adding that "no efforts" had been made on a threat by Trump to end some of Musk's government contracts. "The president acknowledged the statement that Elon put out this morning, and he is appreciative of it," Leavitt said. ADVERTISEMENT According to the New York Times, Musk's message followed a phone call to Trump late on Monday night. Vice President JD Vance and Chief of Staff Susan Wiles had also been working with Musk on how to broker a truce with Trump, the report said. - 'Wish him well' - In his post on Wednesday, Musk did not specify which of his criticisms of Trump had gone "too far." The former allies had seemed to have cut ties amicably about two weeks ago, with Trump giving Musk a glowing send-off as he left his cost-cutting role at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). But their relationship cracked within days, with Musk describing the spending bill as an "abomination" that, if passed by Congress, could define Trump's second term in office. Trump hit back at Musk's comments in an Oval Office diatribe and from there the row detonated, leaving Washington stunned. ADVERTISEMENT Trump later said on his Truth Social platform that cutting billions of dollars in subsidies and contracts to Musk's companies would be the "easiest way" to save the US government money. US media have put the value of the contracts at $18 billion. With real political and economic risks to their falling out, both already appeared to inch back from the brink on Friday, with Trump telling reporters "I just wish him well," and Musk responding on X: "Likewise." Trump had spoken to NBC on Saturday after Musk deleted one of the explosive allegations he had made during their fallout, linking the president with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was accused of sex trafficking. bur-arp/aha
