Dahlia Lithwick: The Law Is for Suckers

[babylonsister]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/02/trump-impeachment-acquittal-law-is-for-suckers.html


The Law Is for Suckers
Donald Trump’s impeachment acquittal proves that they let you do it.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Feb 05, 2020
6:21 PM


“The law is for suckers.” That has been the credo of Donald Trump throughout his personal and business life. James Zirin, in his superb book, Plaintiff in Chief, chronicles the 3,500 lawsuits to which Trump has been a party, a pattern of scorched-earth attacks that include deliberate “delay, counterattack, obstruction, deflection, confusion, threats of ruin, and blanket assertion of attorney/client privilege to avoid accountability.” These were tricks he learned from the notorious Roy Cohn, and they were largely successful in helping him evade legal accountability throughout his business career.

They were, it turns out, the same tricks Trump brought to the campaign trail and later to the White House. It was all, writes Zirin, a dangerous new approach for a president:

Trump is very different. His instinctive litigiousness; his abuse of the legal process to obtain leverage, not justice; his mean-spirited statements and conduct; his overblown damage claims; his many lies, exaggerations and prevarications; his willingness to sue, trash, or discard even those who did him a good turn along the way are abnormal by any standard.

Donald Trump staked his career on the bet that if you’re rich, famous, brazen, and unrepentant, the law will let you do it. He staked his presidency on the same.

snip//

Nobody should be surprised that in the wake of 3,500 lawsuits, Trump will conclude that he is indeed above the law, that the legal regime exists only for suckers, and also that he can repurpose the machinery of law to investigate, harass, and punish the whistleblowers and the witnesses and those who sought to constrain him. At which point the law won’t just be the thing that applies only to losers and suckers, but also the thing that can be used to put down those who sought justice in the first place. And nobody should be surprised that having invited foreign election interference and having been acquitted for doing so, this president will use the formidable power of his Justice Department to manipulate the 2020 election, and to call into question the results of that election in the courts.

We can debate the wisdom of Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi and the ticktock of the impeachment investigation and trial—whether it should have been broader, or gone longer, or relied upon court rulings that never came. But we can hopefully agree that what they attempted to do was use both legal processes and legal arguments to show that when a president abuses the power of his office and denies accountability, it should matter. They were trying to prove that the law isn’t just there to punish asylum-seekers trapped in Mexico or black men in prisons, but that it should apply to everyone, even the wealthy, and even the people who believe it doesn’t apply to them because it never has in the past. Donald Trump staked a decadeslong business career on the bet that if you’re rich, famous, brazen, and unrepentant, the law will let you do it. He staked his presidency on the same. Republicans who deplore the death of “unity” today should remember that this was once a nation unified around at least the hope that the law was for everyone, and that going forward, it will be divided around the certainty that some people don’t answer to the courts or the Constitution. Their president will answer to nobody. All of us now answer to him.

[SunSeeker]

1. Trump is destroying our institutions, including the courts. nt

[cilla4progress]

2. Lithwick

speaks truth.

I work in the law. I am physically ill over this.

[2naSalit]

6. +1

Same here. I'm not active in government anymore but I am with you and this sentiment.

A good friend called last night to see how I was responding to the events of the day, I had to confess that I was physically affected and couldn't eat all day.

[aeromanKC]

3. N.Y. AG is working on it.

Trump's past will catch up to him. And hopefully it will come down hard on him!!

[maxsolomon]

4. they sure are taking their time.

or the courts are letting Asshole take their time.

Asshole's got the entire DOJ working as his legal team now; NY AG will probably catch up to Trump on the day he leaves office in 2025.

or the day after he dies.

[treestar]

5. I'm surprised if within those 3500 lawsuits

Dotard has not been sanctioned or had troubles with Rule 11, prohibiting games where the parties are insincere and just using the process.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

7. Russiapublicans bought the law through Barr, Trump, Putin