Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Lawfare: The Corruption of our Legal System
The abuse of our legal system for insidious purposes seems to be growing every day. The political rewards for the Left are abundant, and the costs for the Right are horrendous. And yet the outcomes from these acts continue, with no end in sight. This is where we find ourselves:
The newest buzzword in our politics is lawfare, or using the legal system as a weapon against a political opponent. It sits before us now as a spectacle of political gluttony. How many lawsuits, court motions and judgments against Donald Trump can the Democratic Party chow down? More disturbing is the high price the American system may pay for this excess.
The calamity that Leftist members of the legal system are creating seems to escape their awareness. They don’t realize that not only are they damaging the status of the legal system, but their own personal reputations are being destroyed in the process. They don’t realize that half the population is beginning to understand the destruction they are causing, because the abuse is so extreme. Politics are being subsumed into the legal process and everyone is a potential victim.
The origins of the word “lawfare” emerged as part of military strategy, developed by Charles Dunlap, J.D. He explained it this way:
Thus, the law can be employed as something of a weapon – an instrumentalization of the law that purists abhor but which to me reflects reality. Whether such use is for good or for ill depends much upon who is wielding it and why. There are legitimate forms of lawfare that can serve to mitigate the destructiveness of war, but there are also abusive interpretations which seek to turn adherence to the law into a vulnerability to be exploited by malevolent actors.
I wasn’t aware of the source of the word, but ironically, Dunlap’s definition describes precisely how lawfare in the legal profession is being used. And I think it’s fair to conclude that it is being “exploited by malevolent actors.”
I especially appreciated another author’s observations about how, until recently, the law has served this country extraordinarily well:
The American rule of law sustained our capacity for self-governance. The legal system midwifed the most sophisticated property rights regime in the world, improved our collective reasoning faculties, balanced the imperative of change with the demands of tradition, and settled disputes of trivial insignificance as well as controversies of monumental importance. The system functioned so well that most Americans never even thought about it. And it commanded such astonishing respect that virtually everyone obeyed its commands in even the most partisan contests.
I realized then the extent and devastation that lawfare has inflicted on our country. Those who use lawfare not only attack our citizens, but they pursue conservative lawyers or those who choose to defend conservative causes:
If the legal system exists to deter violence by providing an alternative forum for dispute resolution, access denial lawfare upends that purpose. Until recently, America had never witnessed a systematic effort to deny millions of people access to the legal system. Now, it’s commonplace. The 65 Project is one such effort deployed by Big Law regime apparatchiks. These opportunists have filed grievances around the country, seeking to disbar conservative attorneys who advanced causes disapproved by the regime.
The specific effect on the targeted attorneys has been devastating: John Eastman, a constitutional originalist, has spent enormous sums defending his California license against this cynical attack. But the general chill is even worse. Even if the regime fails to take the bar licenses of Eastman and 64 other conservative attorneys, every attorney in the country will think twice about taking a case the regime opposes. There will then be nobody willing to advance or defend conservative causes, or even their rights to freedom of speech, assembly, and religion. [italics mine]
And now we’ve seen the weaponization of federal and state criminal law through the cases brought by federal prosecutor Jack Smith, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, Attorney General Letitia James, and District Attorney Alvin Bragg, all against Donald Trump.
There are other abuses as well; you can count on the Left to be able to commit endless types of attacks.
You might ask, as I have, how is all this corruption and abuse possible? Victor Davis Hanson explains what all these machinations have in common: (1) the defendant is a conservative; excuses are made for those on the Left to avoid justice; (2) the judges make excuses for not charging those on the Left, such as the jury will not convict them; (3) they make excuses for manipulating the law; (4) Leftist judges excuse all those on the Left.
Kevin O’Leary weighed in with these thoughts:
There is certainly an argument that Trump could make an emergency appeal for relief to a higher court, citing violations of the 8th Amendment (excessive fines) and the 14th Amendment (due process). But in the United States of America, it should never have gotten this far. And at this point, the rot in our legal system has become so advanced and reaches so high that there may no longer be any adults to call into the room.
What will it take to end this unconscionable practice? When will people realize that they could be the next person on the chopping block?
Published in Law
What upsets me the most is how th GOP is OK with it. They are doing nothing to stop it.
Susan, I am really impressed that you have contributed this superb article on the LawFare issue. It just seems so different from your usual. It ends with the prime question regarding what will Americans resort to in order to end it? I hope I live to experience that!
At the very least they could call it what it is. I honestly don’t know, Bryan, if there is any way they can stop it. But if there’s a way, they should be acting!
Watch the Supremes in Murthy v. Missouri!
Could you give a quick summary of what you hope will happen, Bob?
Romney has been quiet lately, I’m thankful. Murkowski is saying she can’t vote for Trump which demonstrates a total lack of support for where Republican Party voters want to go. Murkowski is not doing what Republican voters want.
I think there is big international money driving much of this and states with Republican AG’s that have RICO statutes need to start using the lawfare tactics against those moneyed interests. Many laws are being broken.
I don’t know or predict but it should be enlightening with regard to just how bad this situation is from a Constitutional perspective.
EDIT: What I hope will happen is that the federal government will be prevented from any dealing with social media platforms that interferes with constitutional protections of individual rights. @susanquinn
Fight it with it. Nothing stops GOP DAs fe9m doing this.
I find the Wall Street Journal’s perception of “new” to be … quaint. Still, late to the party is better than never showing up, I guess.
What we are facing in the world now is fundamentally about right and wrong. I know there have been many disparaging points made regarding individualism and its role in modern society alongside Christianity. What has been described in this post, all the Left’s Lawfare actions, now requires critical thinking by individual Americans in order to get things right.
It is difficult to understand how and why a controversial figure like Donald J. Trump has risen to the top in this battle for world domination. I have waited patiently during these eight years for someone to enumerate the things that should stop Trump from leading this fight on behalf of the American people. All I have seen in terms of supposed Trump-related factual information and/or acts is lies and fabrications. The effort against Trump does have limits in terms of the opposition composition but the intensity is amazing and causes wonder about the sources and the subject of this post makes much of what we see arrayed against Trump and the American people, most of it supporting forces beyond those interests. And all of it is destructive of the American Republic. Long live America!
In my post made late last night and readable here, there is a link to a large discussion on the Murthy vs Missouri case.
The justices started listening to arguments last week.
According to the two women in this discussion, their viewpoint was that SCOTUS members seem to be slanted to taking the Murthy side of knocking out any free speech that opposes the government’s official narrative, as the justices listen to the oral arguments of Murthy vs Missouri. Their attentions seems focused on what that side of the proceeding reveals, while they are indifferent to the free speech side of things.
This is hardly surprising. When a person faces facts, it is easy to realize that all of the nine members were chosen for their ability to favor official narratives, to favor corporations and to especially allow for more control of the State by the MIC/Surveillance forces which when combined with the tech center are bringing about a Chinese style of micro managing our every thought and statement.
https://ricochet.com/1554757/prohealth-activists-figure-out-way-to-indict-those-who-brought-abt-cov-protocol-cov-vax-deaths-plus-big-scotus-reveal/
I watched a Caroline Glick video today, and she spoke to a fellow who has been watching our government’s actions regarding control and censorship and the way it has evolved. You may have something here, CarolJoy.
But how does this jibe with the recent 9-0 decision against states kicking Trump off their ballots?
I will check out Caroline Glick. If you have the time and the link is handy, that wouyld be appreciated.
Both Sotomayor and Kagan were hailed by Obama for being appointed due to their gender and of course he applauded Sotomayor’s ethnicity.
In reality they were all aboard Monsanto and its GM crap, which would be an indication that they are fine with Pharma releasing untested products and then foisting them on the public. (Example: the hep b vaccine was released after only 4 days of testing and has gone on to be considered in the top three of most likely to have serious adverse effects. And that was prior to the COV vax program.)
Often people state that Justice Roberts is compromised for some event in his past.
In any event, Scalia, may he rest in peace, could be the last of the SCOTUS members who was in love with and a defender of our Constitution.
What will it take to end this unconscionable practice? When will people realize that they could be the next person on the chopping block?
When they are on the chopping block. I don’t hold much hope for anything else to get them to realize the damage they’re causing to our system.
I might not have been clear. The people who will be on the chopping block will be those who are unaware these practices are going on, not those perpetrating them.
If anyone watches the Caroline Glick video, you may wonder about my reasons for including it. The point is that Lawfare is a method for silencing and getting rid of the adversary. Censorship (featured in the video) has the same purpose. It’s pretty alarming how the process has developed.
Or, perhaps more relatably, censorhip just tries to silence people; lawfare can actually put them in prison, or worse.
It really started openly with the Patriot Act and has moved openly since then with the most prominent early actions being against journalists going free lance in combat mainly with intel components and federal law enforcement. The rearrangement of enforcement authority was a big part of it.
I have often wondered what Trump saw that made him act, obviously there was much more there than what he saw initially. But the bast**ds panicked and revealed so much more and now they are in an untenable position. They no longer have choices, they must act.
That almost all legal questions that reach the Supreme Court seem to face a 3-3-3 panel is worrisome. Three justices who seem committed to restoring constitutional rectitude even if it requires overturning precedents; three justices who cling tenaciously to a progressive vision of a “living constitution”; and three justices who seem to want to avoid controversy and try to anticipate which decision best redounds to public “respect” for the Court — even if the longer term consequences of the decision is less liberty and greater statism. I hope the Court will restore faith in the legal system, but what should have been absolutely assured is no longer.
Does the 9-0 ballot decision give you any encouragement?
Not really. The 3 progressive justices agreed with the notion that the states have no role in the federal ballot but wanted to make clear that they did not sign on (necessarily) to new Congressional action was needed to keep Trump off the ballot. Justice Barrett also thought that the 5 justices who effectively signed the opinion (since the did not write anything separately like the others did) did not need to go further than stating there was no state jurisdiction (although she basically reserved her ability to agree with them in the event some federal court disqualified Trump, e.g. the DC or Florida cases). So the uniformity was on extremely narrow grounds and doesn’t prefigure the immunity decision to come or the 1215(c)(2) decision to come. In a perfect world it would be 9-0 for Trump and the J6 defendants. But so should the government/social media company censorship case. And yet Justice Brown was wondering how the First Amendment could keep the government “controlling” information in an “emergency”. So I am cautiously optimistic but justice intimidation is a real thing.
This isn’t new. There have been isolated cases before. I really took notice when it was used against Sarah Palin. They sued her and she depleted her life savings defending herself. She didn’t resign so they went after her aides. They couldn’t afford to defend themselves so Palin resigned as Alaska’s governor. There was very little pushback from our side. She wasn’t on elite like they thought they were so they were glad to see her gone.
This success only emboldened them. They are arrogant and open about their goals. The left has marched far enough through the institutions now to where they feel untouchable, protected from above and below.
Senator Ted Stevens, also of Alaska, was convicted of criminal ethics violations and subsequently lost reelection. Then, someone in the prosecutor’s office peached. The prosecutor sat on exculpatory evidence. The judge that threw out the conviction would have liked to have hanged the prosecutor, but they wouldn’t let him. That was back in 2012. Even NPR heard about it, WSJ. You must have been busy hanging on every word Barack Obama uttered on the campaign bus.
Contempt for the rule of law is baked into leftism.
Are you still disturbed about WSJ writing using the word “newest”? You do realize that newest is relative…
You mean like Monty Python’s “worst miscarriage of justice in England since Tuesday?”
It’s not as new as filing paperwork with a FISA court based on arrant nonsense to get an utterly bogus electronic surveillance warrant. It also isn’t as new as the FBI dreaming up a plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer and roping some locals into not getting out of the way fast enough.
I shouldn’t take it out on WSJ. I should just go back to ignoring them.
As the good Professor Reynolds of Instapundit has often said: “The process is the punishment.”
Successful lawfare doesn’t need to end in a conviction. It just needs to grind the subject down until they cry uncle. Not many can stand tall under the crushing weight of lawfare. Mike Flynn is a great example. He ended up pleading guilty to bogus charges because the lawfare warriors threatened to go after his family if he didn’t. Only Donald Trump has been able, so far, to soldier on while taking the slings and arrows of the lawfare brigade. May he be victorious, for all our sakes.