The President Visits Justice
Last Friday, President Trump made a rare presidential appearance at the Justice Department to deliver his law enforcement agenda to "his" attorneys.
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Justice in Brief
In the Northern District of Georgia, eight members of the GoodFellas gang were indicted for violating RICO with underlying offenses including attempted murder, assault, and carjacking.
In the District of Columbia, several defendants were arraigned following their extradition from Mexico for their roles in a continuing criminal enterprise that involved murder plots, drug distribution and money laundering.
In the Southern District of Texas, eight people entered guilty pleas to a conspiracy to monopolize services to people who illegally move goods from the United States to Central American countries.
Updates…
A federal district court judge in Kentucky appointed by President Trump rejected the Justice Department’s argument that Donald Trump’s January 6 pardons extend to acts committed after January 6.
The President’s Law Enforcement Agenda
On March 14, President Donald Trump traveled to the Justice Department to address employees and others in the government connected with federal law enforcement. Since the beginning of the century, this was only the third time a president appeared at the Justice Department and the first time the President offered a major policy address. In the speech, amidst the rhetoric and tangents, President Trump provided his vision for the Justice Department. He identified violent crime, fentanyl and weaponization as his three main priorities.
Violent Crime
President Trump spent considerable time discussing violent crime. Reducing violent crime is a typical Republican federal law enforcement priority. The number of violent crime prosecutions rises with Republican presidents and declines with Democratic presidents. President Trump justified his concern with three arguments.
First, he connected violence to illegal immigration. The President said:
We had levels of violence and crime and a lot of it had to do with the illegal immigrants that came in. Remember when I used to complain about it, because I knew how tough they were, how mean they were. And they said no, no people that come into our country are all wonderful people. No, they're not wonderful. These are stone cold killers. These are killers like -- they make our killers look nice by comparison. They make our killers look nice. These are rough tough people with the tattoos all over their face. Historically speaking, I don't want to discriminate against anybody but historically speaking they're not going to be the head of any major bank that we know of. These are rough people. These are rough, rough killer people and they allowed them in by the millions.
The President then turned to violent crime in cities.
In major cities like New York, Chicago and Washington, mothers can't walk their children to the park without fear of being shot or killed or raped or anything. Women can't ride the subway without worrying that a hoodlum will shove them onto the train tracks. In New York, it's happened twice in the last couple of weeks. They're standing there, a perfect Wall Street gentleman in one case, and another person who was a worker, good worker, an electrician -- gets pushed into a train going 45 miles an hour just prior to the train. Not stopping, going to go through that. I know the stations very well. I used to take the subway. It used to feel safe. When I was young, I'd go to -- my parents would drop me off at the subway, I'd take the subway to my school. Can you believe it? Today they wouldn't be doing that. And we want to back -- we want to get a country back maybe where you can do that again, Pam. But it's so sad to see what's taking place.
Finally, the President referenced crime statistics.
Under the Biden regime, average monthly homicides increased by 14 percent, property crime rose tremendously, violent crime went up at least 37 percent that they know of. Rape soared by 42 percent, car thefts rose by 48 percent, and robberies surged to 63 percent to 100 percent, they don't even know what the number is.
Fentanyl
President Trump also identified fentanyl as a priority. This was also one of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s top priorities based on her testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. As the President said, “At my direction and working with Pam and everybody else, we've launched an all-out war on fentanyl traffickers, and it's a war that we're going to win. We're going to win this war.” President Trump identified two specific aspects of the war.
The first apparently came from the Mexican President and will feature a media campaign to convince people not to use drugs. According to the President,
I spoke with the president of Mexico, very nice woman, very fine woman. And I said, let me ask you, you're sending a lot of drugs into our country. We're not liking it at all, can't do that. But I said, is Mexico, does it have much of a drug? She said no, we're not a consuming nation. I thought it was an interesting term. And I said why? Which I've heard also, by the way, they're not a consuming nation. They distribute, but they don't consume. But I said, why are you not a consumer? Well, we're very close with family. I said, so we're very close with family too. I mean, our families are being devastated and we're just as close. Why else? She said, well, we spend a lot of money on advertising saying how bad drugs are and they're very rough ads. They show the skin falling off and the teeth falling out and going blind and losing hair and everything that these things do that you look like you just came out of a horrible concentration camp. And she said it was their rough ads. And it's not often that I feel I've learned something from a phone call, because I've had a lot of phone calls over my life, but I realized right then and there what a great idea that is.
While touting the progress they have apparently made already, the President said the Administration could do more. He believes using the death penalty would further reduce the problem but says he does not think the nation is ready to do that.
And the way you get it down, if you want to get it down to close to 100 percent is with the death penalty, but I think maybe America is not ready for that. China has the death penalty. Singapore has the death penalty. Various places have the death penalty. Wherever you have the death penalty, you don't have drugs, but I just don't know if this country is ready for it. So I tell people and it's always an option, but I don't know. I just don't know if you're ready for it and that's OK. It's nothing you can do. But what we're going to do is we're doing this campaign and I think we can get it down 50, 5-0 percent with this campaign, because when people see all the horrible things that these drugs do to you and we're especially focused on fentanyl.
While the President has not committed to the death penalty, the Justice Department has focused its efforts on various drug-related conspiracies. Over the last six weeks it has announced multiple indictments of cartel leaders and gang members.
Weaponization
While violent crime and drugs featured in the President’s address, most of his time was spent on the perceived weaponization of the Justice Department under President Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland. A close reading of the President’s speech reveals that he sees the Justice Department having been weaponized in two distinct areas. The first is that the Justice Department targeted him as a political opponent. Despite this being factually untrue, the persistent belief drives the President’s plans for the Justice Department. This has been clear through January 6 pardons, personnel firings, resignations, and transfers, and case dismissals. The second is that the President disagrees with the prior leadership’s discretionary choices. The President, in his typical hyperbolic rhetoric, said he would protect those persecuted.
…we must be honest about the lies and abuses that have occurred within these walls. Unfortunately, in recent years, a corrupt group of hacks and radicals within the ranks of the American government obliterated the trust and goodwill built up over generations. They weaponized the vast powers of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies to try and thwart the will of the American people….But these are people that are bad people, really bad people. They tried to turn America into a corrupt communist and third world country. But in the end the thugs failed, and the truth won, freedom won, justice won, democracy won and above all the American people won. There could be no more heinous betrayal of American values than to use the law to terrorize the innocent and reward the wicked, and that's what they were doing at a level that's never been seen before.
To support his belief, he did reference actions taken by the previous Administration. According to President Trump, “They dropped charges against Antifa and Hamas supporters while labeling traditional Catholics as domestic terrorists, the Catholics.” With this sentence, the President creates a values distinction. The previous administration favors groups perceived as dangerous and he favors the Christian group. The problem is that it is, at best, misleading. First, the previous Administration did not dismiss cases against Antifa or Hamas. The Justice Department, historically, takes its screening process seriously and will rarely dismiss cases once prosecuted. Rather than dismiss any cases against Hamas members, the Justice Department, last September, charged multiple Hamas leaders. Similarly, there were no Antifa dismissals. Instead, the Justice Department, during the first Trump Administration, did not bring cases against Antifa members for any protest activities. Furthermore, San Diego state prosecutors convicted Antifa members for violence in response to the January 6 events at the US Capitol. As for the attacks on Catholics, it seems to stem from two references. The first is that the FBI Field Office in Richmond created a list of potential terrorist threats in the area and identified “radical traditionalist” Catholics along with groups such as Al Qaeda. According to reports, the FBI was investigating those with ties to violent right-wing groups and was not spying on Catholics generally. The second is President Trump’s repeated reference to the prosecution of abortion protesters in Tennessee who were convicted of unlawfully blocking the entrance to an abortion clinic.
The question many ask is what happens next? In the last 48 hours, President Trump invoked a 1798 law, the Alien Enemies Act, that had not been used since World War II. He did this to rapidly deport people allegedly connected to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, whom the State Department recently designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. The gang has been linked to multiple violent incidents in the United States. This, coupled with the Justice Department speech, shows that deportations will continue. While these are not criminal cases, it appears that many of the internal personnel transfers have occurred so that more legal resources could be devoted to the endeavor.
Conversely, other than criminal investigations into the Biden Administration’s Trump and January 6 investigations, little will occur in the use of criminal prosecution as retribution. President Biden’s pre-emptive pardons removed much of the threat. This is not to say the Administration will not do other things. Currently, the Trump Administration has taken efforts to attack one law firm that employed a Democratic election law attorney and another law firm that employs an attorney who worked with the New York District Attorney’s Office’s case against President Trump.
Ultimately, what we are seeing is an effort to quickly change an aircraft’s carrier’s direction. Ordinarily, it takes significant time and effort to turn a ship that size. It can, however, be turned quickly but it creates chaos. Although that is where we are now, it is still too early to see if the Justice Department’s Criminal Division will be weaponized as a tool to attack Trump’s political enemies.
I hope you enjoyed this issue and that it made you stop and think. I would love to hear any comments, questions, concerns, or criticisms that you have. Leave a comment or send a message! Also, if you enjoyed this or if it challenged your thinking, please subscribe and share with others!