The American Revolution was a rejection of arbitrary power. The Declaration said: “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” It followed with a bill of particulars arguing that the king had trampled on long-standing laws and practices. For instance, it charged that he had “obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.” At the end of the litany, it drew a conclusion: “A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”
For the Founders, a central principle of government was the rule of law. John Adams famously wrote that a republic had to be “a government of laws and not of men.”[1] Ideally, such a system would keep executive officials and judges from making decisions that merely reflected their own will. Instead, they would act according to the law. Those who wrote the statutes would not have a free hand, either. Like the members of the other branches, they would work within the four corners of the Constitution. An elaborate system of checks and balances would encourage officeholders to police those boundaries. As Hamilton wrote, so would “the sanctity of an oath.”[2] The president takes a unique oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. Article VI says that all other officials at the state and federal levels “shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution.”
The rule of law also means that all are equal before the law. The history of civil rights in the United States has been a long struggle to follow this principle by eliminating legal distinctions among classes of people. The government should not impose burdens or punishments on specific individuals because officials dislike them, nor should it grant benefits to a favored few. In taking the judicial oath, federal judges swear to “administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich.”[3] As every sentient American adult knows, our political and legal systems do not always work this way. Injustices are all too common. But at least we recognize injustices as breaches of our norms, not as the norms themselves.
The mention of norms leads to a more profound point: the rule of law requires respect for law. Punishing criminals is necessary but not sufficient, because there would not be enough police officers and prison cells to keep order if they were the only things that kept Americans from breaking the law. As for those in power, checks and balances are auxiliary precautions. The system runs aground if officials disregard their oaths of office when nobody is looking. The Founders understood the importance of attitudes, which is why Madison wrote of the “veneration” of our institutions. Decades later, Lincoln vividly reiterated the idea in his 1838 Lyceum Address:
As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor;—let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children’s liberty. Let reverence for the laws . . . become the political religion of the nation.[4]
In our own time, Rudolph Giuliani told the United Nations in 2001: “Our belief in democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human life—that’s how you become an American.”[5] The oath of naturalization drives home his point. Each new citizen swears to “support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic” and to “bear true faith and allegiance to the same.”
Veneration of our institutions and respect for the law do not happen automatically. They require deliberate maintenance, hence the importance of civic education. A heavy burden falls on political leaders, who have to articulate our ideals and set an example for everyone else. The rule of law suffers when they break the law, mock the law, or take artful dodges around the law. As Madison wrote, “No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable.”[6]
Trump does not regard the law as worthy of respect or veneration. Early in his administration, he met with Native American tribal leaders at the White House and told them to “just do it” and take whatever they wanted from lands under their control. “Chief, chief,” he said to one of the leaders, “what are they going to do? Once you get it out of the ground are they going to make you put it back in there? I mean, once it’s out of the ground it can’t go back in there.” As he put it, the rule of necessity trumped the rule of law. “I feel like we’ve got no choice; other countries are just doing it. China is not asking questions about all of this stuff. They’re just doing it. And guys, we’ve just got to do it.”[7]
As a candidate and president, Trump occasionally claimed to revere the Constitution and laws. “I feel very strongly about our Constitution,” he said in January 2016. “I’m proud of it, I love it and I want to go through the Constitution.”[8] More often, though, he demonstrated an appalling ignorance and disregard. Campaign adviser Sam Nunberg once tried to teach him about the Constitution. “I got as far as the Fourth Amendment, before his finger is pulling down on his lip and his eyes are rolling back in his head.”[9] In December 2015, he said that he would sign an executive order that “anybody killing a police officer, the death penalty.”[10] Under Article I, only Congress sets the penalties for federal offenses, and under the Tenth Amendment, only the state governments do the same for state offenses. During a primary debate, Trump said that Ted Cruz had been criticizing his sister, a federal judge, “for signing a certain bill.” Trump went on, “You know who else signed that bill? Justice Samuel Alito, a very conservative member of the Supreme Court, with my sister, signed that bill.” Judges do not sign bills.[11] During a meeting with House Republicans, Representative Tim Walberg (R-MI) asked him about his understanding of Article I, which spells out congressional powers. “I am a constitutionalist. I am going to abide by the Constitution whether it’s number 1, number 2, number 12, number 9.” [12] The Constitution has only seven articles.
Early in his administration, some officials took the law seriously and were frustrated that Trump did not. Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recalled: “So often, the president would say here’s what I want to do and here’s how I want to do it and I would have to say to him, Mr. President I understand what you want to do but you can’t do it that way. It violates the law.”[13] Trump does not recognize any such limits. “It’s a thing called Article II,” he told reporters in July 2019. “Nobody ever mentions Article II. It gives me all of these rights at a level that nobody has ever seen before.”[14] At a speech shortly afterward, he was even more direct: “Then I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President.”[15] What Article II really says is that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” In 2016, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) wrote: “The take-care clause is a bulwark against tyranny. It supports the separation of powers stipulated in the Constitution: The legislative branch makes law and the executive branch administers it.”[16]
Some blame Trump’s disregard for his constitutional duties on his laziness and weak intellect, but it is more a matter of defiance and contempt. When he ignores or misstates the law, Trump is showing that he does not really care about it, notwithstanding his lip service to the Constitution. He does not bother to learn the rules that apply to everyone else, because he does not think that those rules apply to him. At least half a dozen times over the years, he has tweeted his “golden rule” for negotiating: “He who has the gold makes the rules.”[17] For anyone else, this attitude would be a defect of character. For the chief executive of the United States, it is a dereliction of duty.
In The Federalist, Hamilton stressed the limits of presidential power by comparing it with the royal power that Americans had recently thrown off. “The President of the United States would be an officer elected by the people for FOUR years; the king of Great Britain is a perpetual and HEREDITARY prince. The one would be amenable to personal punishment and disgrace; the person of the other is sacred and inviolable.”[18] He said that the former “is the absolute master of his own conduct in the exercise of his office” whereas in a republic, “every magistrate ought to be personally responsible for his behavior in office.”[19] Congress, he wrote, can hold a president personally responsible through the impeachment process. “The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.”[20]
If Trump read books, he would dislike The Federalist. For him, impeachment is not a vital tool for ensuring responsibility. Rather, “it’s a dirty word—the word ‘impeach.’ It’s a dirty, filthy, disgusting word.”[21] One word that he does approve is absolute. Trying to explain why he blurted out highly classified information during a chat with Russian officials, he tweeted: “As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety.”[22] Despite the president’s broad authority to declassify information, such reckless disclosures could put lives at risk and thus fall under the heading of the “misconduct of public men.” Trump also claimed a power to shield himself from responsibility for crimes: “And yes, I do have an absolute right to pardon myself.”[23] Though some legal scholars think that the Constitution might allow for self-pardon, a Justice Department document says otherwise: “Under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, the President cannot pardon himself.”[24]
In an attempt to bypass congressional resistance to a border wall, Trump said: “I have the absolute right to declare a national emergency.”[25] A president can sign a document declaring a particular situation to be an “emergency,” but the resulting powers are subject to the limits of constitutional and statutory law. When he urged his party’s lawmakers to uphold his declaration of a border emergency, he asked them to ignore those limits and put purported necessity ahead of the rule of law: “Senate Republicans are not voting on constitutionality or precedent, they are voting on desperately needed Border Security & the Wall. Our Country is being invaded with Drugs, Human Traffickers, & Criminals of all shapes and sizes. That’s what this vote is all about. STAY UNITED!”[26] That tweet was a minor milestone: members of Congress swear an oath to support the Constitution, and the president was telling them to neglect that oath.
During the campaign, Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”[27] By disfavoring a particular faith, such a ban would have violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. At the time, Republicans kept their distance. Former Vice President Dick Cheney said to Hugh Hewitt: “Well, I think this whole notion that somehow we can just say no more Muslims, just ban a whole religion, goes against everything we stand for and believe in. I mean, religious freedom has been a very important part of our history and where we came from.”[28] South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who would become UN ambassador, called the proposal “absolutely un-American” and “unconstitutional,” adding: “It defies everything that this country was based on and it’s just wrong.”[29] When he became president, he backed off the explicit Muslim ban, but his administration issued a limited travel ban that applied to a relatively small number of people from several countries. After three iterations, it survived in the Supreme Court, five to four.
Candidate Trump also talked about summary mass deportation, paying no attention to the legal processes of removing people from the country. On a radio program in 2015, future Trump economic adviser Lawrence Kudlow attacked the idea. “It reminds us of the worst parts of World War II. What the hell is that? That’s not America. That’s not your America. That’s not my America. I’m the—whatever. I am third generation from immigrants. That’s not America. No. I mean it’s just crazy.” Speaking with Stephen Moore on the same program, Kudlow continued. “That is un-American. It’s smacks by the way of the worst things that we read about in World War II.”[30]
The World War II analogy was hyperbolic, but not by much. A few months later, Trump pointedly declined to condemn the internment of Japanese Americans during the war. “I certainly hate the concept of it,” he told Time. “But I would have had to be there at the time to give you a proper answer. . . . It’s a tough thing. It’s tough. But you know war is tough. And winning is tough. We don’t win anymore.”[31] In an unexpected development, the Supreme Court decision upholding Trump’s limited travel ban also repudiated the 1944 decision upholding the internment. The majority opinion by Chief Justice Roberts declared that it “was gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and—to be clear—‘has no place in law under the Constitution.’”[32]
The Supreme Court has long been clear about one aspect of undocumented immigration: “It is true that aliens who have once passed through our gates, even illegally, may be expelled only after proceedings conforming to traditional standards of fairness encompassed in due process of law.”[33] Justice Scalia drove the point home: “It is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in deportation proceedings.”[34] Trump has repeatedly disrespected this body of law. On June 24, 2018, he tweeted: “We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came.”[35] Nearly a year later, he said that “we have to do something about asylum. And to be honest with you, have to get rid of judges.”[36] And two days after that, he added: “We have a stupid system of courts. It’s the craziest thing in the world. We could be the only country that has it. If you put a foot on the property, you put a foot into the United States: ‘Congratulations. Go get Perry Mason to represent you.’ You end up with a court case.”[37]
In April 2019, he visited Calexico, California, where he said: “We’re full, our system’s full, our country’s full—can’t come in! Our country is full, what can you do? We can’t handle any more, our country is full. Can’t come in, I’m sorry. It’s very simple.” Behind the scenes, Trump reportedly told border agents to bar migrants and advised them on what to tell any skeptical judges: “Sorry, judge, I can’t do it. We don’t have the room.” After Trump left, their supervisors told them to follow the law and warned they would face legal trouble if they did what Trump had told them. “At the end of the day,” a senior administration official told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “the President refuses to understand that the Department of Homeland Security is constrained by the laws.”[38] In meetings about border wall construction, some aides warned that some of his orders might be illegal. “Don’t worry, I’ll pardon you,” he reportedly responded.[39]
Ironically, Trump himself has broken immigration law. In 1980, he needed to tear down the Bonwit Teller building on Fifth Avenue to make way for Trump Tower. He hired a crew of 200 undocumented Polish workers who worked long hours in dangerous conditions and low pay.[40] His modeling agency used foreign models who came to the country on tourist visas that did not allow them to work here.[41] More recently, he employed undocumented workers at the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, New York and the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
One definition of government is a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Legal scholars and jurists have long worried about the potential abuse of that monopoly, and have put a great deal of thought into regulating the use of force by law enforcement and the military. Trump has never concerned himself about such things.
In his 1989 newspaper ad on the Central Park attack, he said: “Let our politicians give back our police department’s power to keep us safe,” he wrote. “Unshackle them from the constant chant of ‘police brutality,’ which every petty criminal hurls immediately at an officer who has just risked his or her life to save another’s.”[42] Trump did not specify what the “unshackling” would look like: presumably, it would involve batons and firearms. In his Larry King Show interview, he complained about the administration of justice. “The problem we have is we don’t have any protection for the policeman. The problem with our society is the victim has absolutely no rights and the criminal has unbelievable rights—unbelievable rights.”[43] True, the Bill of Rights does provide protections for criminal defendants, but that is a feature, not a bug. The whole point is to put shackles on the government’s power to take away our life and liberty. One obvious reason is that this power can harm the innocent as well as the guilty, as in the case of the Central Park Five.
Over the years, Trump did not gain any more respect for this aspect of our constitutional system. During the 2016 campaign, Chuck Todd asked him about a white police officer who had shot an unarmed black man. Trump showed little interest in the problem of unjustified police shootings. “We have to give strength and power back to the police. And you’re always going to have mistakes made. And you’re always going to have bad apples. But you can’t let that stop the fact that police have to regain some control of this tremendous crime wave and killing wave that’s happening in this country.”[44] His rationale was dishonest because there was no “tremendous crime wave” to begin with. Rates of violent crime had been dropping for a quarter century. And even if crime had remained at the high levels of the 1980s, the end would still not have justified the means. The Bill of Rights does not switch off when crime goes up.
The president of the United States is responsible for more than 100,000 federal law enforcement officers who can make arrests and carry firearms. The chief executive’s comments also carry weight with their counterparts at the state and local level. And so it is disturbing that Trump continued to shrug off police brutality even after he took office. He told police on Long Island: “[W]hen you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon—you just see them thrown in, rough, I said, please don’t be too nice. Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over? Like, don’t hit their head, and they’ve just killed somebody—don’t hit their head. I said, you can take the hand away, okay?”[45] In a remarkable email, the acting head of the Drug Enforcement Administration said: “The President, in remarks delivered yesterday in New York, condoned police misconduct regarding the treatment of individuals placed under arrest by law enforcement.”[46]
Such rebukes hardly bother him. At a 2019 rally in Florida, he lamented that Customs and Border Patrol officers do not fire on migrants. “And don’t forget, we don’t let them and we can’t let them use weapons. We can’t. Other countries do. We can’t. I would never do that. But how do you stop these people?” At that point, an audience member interjected, “Shoot them!” The crowd laughed, and Trump smiled. “That’s only in the Panhandle you can get away with that statement.”[47] He actually was not kidding. At a private meeting with officials of the Department of Homeland Security, he proposed slowing migrants down by shooting them in the legs. The departmental officials told him that that would be illegal.[48]
Trump is equally cavalier about abuses of force by the military. He does not care that international law and the US Code forbid the deliberate targeting of civilians. “The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families,” he said in 2015. “They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself. When they say they don’t care about their lives, you have to take out their families.”[49] At a Fox News debate, Bret Baier asked him what he would do if the military refused orders to torture terrorist suspects or target their families.
Trump: They won’t refuse. They’re not going to refuse me. Believe me.
Baier: But they’re illegal.
Trump: Let me just tell you, you look at the Middle East. . . . Can you imagine—can you imagine these people, these animals over in the Middle East, that chop off heads, sitting around talking and seeing that we’re having a hard problem with waterboarding? We should go for waterboarding and we should go tougher than waterboarding. That’s my opinion.
Baier: But targeting terrorists’ families?
Trump: And—and—and—I’m a leader. I’m a leader. I’ve always been a leader. I’ve never had any problem leading people. If I say do it, they’re going to do it. That’s what leadership is all about.[50]
Under criticism, the Trump campaign issued a statement that seemed to backtrack: “I do, however, understand that the United States is bound by laws and treaties and I will not order our military or other officials to violate those laws and will seek their advice on such matters.”[51] The formality of the language suggested that an aide wrote that statement and his comments a few days later made it clear that it did not reflect his views. He told CNN’s Anderson Cooper: “Everybody believes in the Geneva Convention until they start losing and then they say oh, let’s take out the bomb. OK. When they start losing. We have to play with a tougher set of rules.”[52] As president, he watched recorded video of a drone strike which the Central Intelligence Agency delayed firing until the target had left a house that contained his family. Trump asked a CIA official, “Why did you wait?”[53] In 2019, he pardoned an Army lieutenant who had murdered an unarmed Iraqi prisoner, and he expressed sympathy for other alleged war criminals. “This attitude is incredibly dangerous,” writes historian and combat veteran Wade Beorn. “It doesn’t just undermine the enforcement of military justice; it also sends a message to our armed forces about just what kind of conduct the United States takes seriously.”[54]
What about violence by civilians? White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders said in 2017: “The president in no way, form or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence. If anything, quite the contrary.”[55] That claim was wildly, nay, ridiculously wrong. When protesters acted up during his campaign rallies, he responded with soliloquies about beatings.
In Las Vegas: “You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks. . . . Here’s a guy, throwing punches [not true], nasty as hell, screaming at everything else when we’re talking, and he’s walking out, and we’re not allowed—you know, the guards are very gentle with him, he’s walking out, like, big high fives, smiling, laughing—I’d like to punch him in the face, I’ll tell you.”[56]
In St. Louis: “You know, part of the problem and part of the reason it takes so long is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore, right?”[57]
In Fayetteville, North Carolina: “In the good old days this [protesting] doesn’t happen because they used to treat them very, very rough. And when they protested once, you know, they would not do it again so easily.”[58]
Trump supporters dismissed concerns about such language, saying that he was merely talking tough for the amusement of his audience. This line of argument assumes that we should hold a presidential candidate to a lower standard than a traveler in a TSA line. In any case, his tough talk turned ominous in Wilmington, North Carolina, when he said: “Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick—if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”[59] Many heard those remarks as suggesting that supporters of gun rights could literally take up arms against a Clinton presidency. The campaign claimed he was only saying that Second Amendment enthusiasts should vote against Clinton—which made little sense, since he was talking about what they could do after she won the election.[60] Moreover, an adviser to the campaign had drawn Secret Service attention for saying that Hillary Clinton “should be put in the firing line and shot for treason.” Days before his “Second Amendment” comment, Trump praised the adviser, saying that he had “been so great.”[61]
As president, Trump hinted at the prospect of a violent conflict between his supporters and opponents. At a 2018 rally in Springfield, Missouri, he said: “No, I would never suggest this, but I will tell you, I—they’re so lucky that we’re peaceful. Law enforcement, military, construction workers, Bikers for Trump—how about Bikers for Trump? . . . These are great people. But they’re peaceful people, and Antifa and all—they’d better hope they stay that way. I hope they stay that way. I hope that stay that way.”[62] In 2019, he told Breitbart: “You know, the left plays a tougher game, it’s very funny. I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher. Okay? I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump—I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough—until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”[63] In September 2019, he retweeted a message from Pastor Robert Jeffress: “If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.”[64]
While denouncing the “fake news media” at rallies, he would point at the press pen so that rallygoers would know where to direct their booing and jeering. At a 2018 Montana rally, he praised Representative Greg Gianforte, who had pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault against a journalist.
But Greg is smart. And by the way, never wrestle him. You understand that? Never. [laughter] Any guy that can do a body slam, he’s my kind of. . . . [applause] He was my guy. I shouldn’t say this, because . . . there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. So I was in Rome with a lot of the leaders from other countries talking about all sorts of things, and I heard about it. And we endorsed Greg very early, but I had heard that he body-slammed a reporter. [applause] And he was way up. And he was way up. And I said, oh, this was like the day of the election, or just before, and I said, oh, this is terrible, he’s going to lose the election. Then I said, well, wait a minute, I know Montana pretty well. I think it might help him. And it did! [applause] No, he’s a great guy. Tough cookie.[65]
Trump also took to social media to bash the mainstream media. He tweeted an old video clip of him at a wrestling match, but with a CNN logo superimposed on his opponent’s head. In the clip, Trump slams the CNN figure to the ground and hits him with simulated punches. Trump added the hashtags #FraudNewsCNN and #FNN, for “fraud news network.”[66] Trump also retweeted a meme of a train smashing into a human embodiment of CNN, with the caption “FAKE NEWS CAN’T STOP THE TRUMP TRAIN.”[67] This retweet drew fierce criticism since it came after the Charlottesville incident where a white supremacist killed Heather Heyer with his car. Trump soon deleted it.
In the fall of 2018, a disturbed Florida man sent pipe bombs to CNN and Democratic critics of the administration. Luckily, none detonated before his capture. After his guilty plea, the would-be bomber sent a letter to the judge saying “the first thing you here [sic] entering Trump rally is we are not going to take it anymore, the forgotten ones, etc. . . . It was fun, it became like a new found drug.”[68]
Khizr Khan, who lost his son in Iraq, spoke at the 2016 Democratic National Convention criticizing Trump for not understanding the Constitution. Trump angrily stated that Khan had “no right to stand in front of millions of people and claim I have never read the Constitution, (which is false) and say many other inaccurate things.”[69] Trump proved Khan’s point. The First Amendment secures his right to say nearly anything he wants, even if it is inaccurate—and in this case, it was true. Indeed, if bogus statements were unlawful, Trump would have had to don an orange jumpsuit years ago.
In a tweet, he elaborated on his understanding of the First Amendment: “It is not ‘freedom of the press’ when newspapers and others are allowed to say and write whatever they want even if it is completely false!”[70] At a press availability, he said: “And it’s, frankly, disgusting the way the press is able to write whatever they want to write. And people should look into it.”[71] Over and over, he has said that he would somehow “open up” the libel laws so that he and other public figures could more easily sue news organizations. If they don’t retract these purportedly false statements, he said, “they should, you know, have a form of a trial.”[72] In September 2018, he tweeted: “Isn’t it a shame that someone can write an article or book, totally make up stories and form a picture of a person that is literally the exact opposite of the fact, and get away with it without retribution or cost. Don’t know why Washington politicians don’t change libel laws?”[73] At a South Dakota rally shortly afterward, he returned to the subject, asking the state’s US senators to chill critical speech by federalizing libel: “Hey Mike and John, could you do me a favor? Create some libel laws that when people say stuff bad about you, you could sue them.”[74]
It was always unlikely that Congress could take up libel statutes, which have always been the province of state legislatures. But federal regulation of the airwaves is different, as he has mentioned in tweets:
“Network news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked. Not fair to public!”[75]
“With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!”[76]
“NBC FAKE NEWS, which is under intense scrutiny over their killing the Harvey Weinstein story, is now fumbling around making excuses for their probably highly unethical conduct. I have long criticized NBC and their journalistic standards—worse than even CNN. Look at their license?”[77]
Trump has some support. Ipsos found 29 percent of Americans and 48 percent of Republicans agreeing that “the news media is the enemy of the American people.” Even more ominously, 26 percent of Americans overall—and 43 percent of Republicans—said that “the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior.”[78]
In the summer of 2017, Trump reportedly ordered Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, to get the Justice Department to intervene against AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner, owner of CNN. Rupert Murdoch opposed the merger because it would strengthen a competitor of Fox News, and Trump disliked anything that could benefit a network that he hated. Trump summoned Cohn and chief of staff John Kelly, saying: “I’ve been telling Cohn to get this lawsuit filed and nothing’s happened! I’ve mentioned it fifty times. And nothing’s happened. I want to make sure it’s filed. I want that deal blocked!”[79] These stories recall the worst days of Richard Nixon, who told White House aide Charles Colson that threatening antitrust litigation would be an effective way to keep television networks in line. “If the threat of screwing them is going to help us more with their programming than doing it, then keep the threat,” Nixon said in a recorded conversation.[80]
Trump failed to stop the merger, but he kept up the fight by taking the unprecedented step of urging a consumer boycott. “I believe that if people stoped [sic] using or subscribing to @ATT, they would be forced to make big changes at @CNN, which is dying in the ratings anyway. It is so unfair with such bad, Fake News! Why wouldn’t they act. When the World watches @CNN, it gets a false picture of USA. Sad!”[81]
The AT&T fight is hardly the only time that Trump has sought to turn the law into a political switchblade. Case in point: his never-ending war on Hillary Clinton. During the campaign, he would smile as rally audiences chanted “Lock her up!” In their second debate, he said: “But if I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation, because there has never been so many lies, so much deception. There has never been anything like it, and we’re going to have a special prosecutor.” Clinton responded that “it is awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.” Trump interjected: “Because you’d be in jail.”[82] After the election, he reassured people that he did not want to investigate the Clintons. He lied. He meant what he said the first time. The Mueller report confirms Trump’s vendetta: “According to Sessions, the President asked him to reverse his recusal so that Sessions could direct the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute Hillary Clinton. . . . Sessions listened but did not respond, and he did not reverse his recusal or order an investigation of Clinton.”[83] Trump complained in public, tweeting: “Attorney General Jeff Sessions has taken a VERY weak position on Hillary Clinton crimes (where are E-mails & DNC server) & Intel leakers!”[84] A few months later, he repeated the complaint: “Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn’t looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary & the Dems.”[85]
Trump often says that his purported foes are guilty of “treason,” even though they have done nothing that meets the constitutional definition of the term. At a 2019 press conference, a journalist reminded him that treason is a capital crime and asked: “You’ve accused your adversaries of treason. Who specifically are you accusing of treason?” A normal president would have recoiled from the implication that he wanted to put his critics to death. Instead, Trump said matter-of-factly: “Well, I think a number of people. And I think what you look is that they have unsuccessfully tried to take down the wrong person.” He went on to name names, including former FBI Director James Comey and former Acting Director Andrew McCabe.[86] NBC’s Chuck Todd asked Press Secretary Sarah Sanders for a clarification, saying, “he’s accused James Comey of treason. Does he expect Jim Comey to be arrested?” Sanders did not deny it: “Again, we’re going to let the attorney general make that determination as he gets to the conclusion of this investigation.”[87]
Just as Trump yearns to weaponize the law against his perceived enemies, he also tries to twist it in favor of his friends and business interests. He has a long history here. In 1992, an Indiana jury convicted heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson of raping an 18-year-old woman, and Trump tried to influence the sentencing. He urged authorities not to send Tyson to prison and instead let him keep fighting, with some of the proceeds going to rape victims. Why did the persecutor of the Central Park Five suddenly develop such a soft spot for rapists? He had a business relationship with Tyson, whose Atlantic City prizefights had been profitable for Trump properties. Under the proposed arrangement, Trump could keep making money from Tyson, which was especially important at a time when he was having financial difficulties. He failed. “An offer to buy someone out of prison or out of a sentence is not appropriate,” said a spokesperson for the prosecution, adding that Trump’s idea “is something that the prosecutor’s office does not take seriously.”[88] A reporter asked Trump about his double standard: “If your sister was raped by a millionaire, would you encourage her to accept a big bundle of cash to forget everything?” Trump replied: “I think every individual situation is different.”[89]
When he became president, he continued to show selective skepticism about criminal prosecutions. In 2018, he commented on the indictments of GOP House members Duncan Hunter of California and Chris Collins of New York, who happened to be the first two House members to endorse his candidacy in 2016. “Two long running, Obama era, investigations of two very popular Republican Congressmen were brought to a well publicized charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the Jeff Sessions Justice Department. Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough time. Good job Jeff.”[90] Although he did not get Justice to drop these cases, his comment was dumbfounding. He was openly criticizing the prosecution not because of the law or the evidence, but because of the potential harm to political allies. (He need not have fretted, because both indicted members won reelection.)
The president enjoys broad power to issue pardons for federal offenses. As Chief Justice William Howard Taft wrote, “Our Constitution confers this discretion on the highest officer in the nation in confidence that he will not abuse it.”[91] Trump has abused it. In the spring of 2017, he asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions whether the federal government could drop a criminal case against Joe Arpaio, a political ally and former Arizona sheriff who had defied a judge’s order to stop detaining people just because he thought they might be undocumented immigrants. Sessions advised Trump that dropping the case would be inappropriate.[92] After a judge convicted Arpaio, Trump skipped the customary review process and pardoned him. “No one is above the law and the individuals entrusted with the privilege of being sworn law officers should always seek to be beyond reproach in their commitment to fairly enforcing the laws they swore to uphold,” said Senator John McCain of Arizona. “The President has the authority to make this pardon, but doing so at this time undermines his claim for the respect of rule of law as Mr. Arpaio has shown no remorse for his actions.”[93]
Trump also pardoned Dinesh D’Souza, author of books attacking Obama and Hillary Clinton, and British publisher Conrad Black, who had written a glowing work titled Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other. The favoritism toward pro-Trump writers appalled legal scholars. Another pardon, involving former California Assembly GOP leader Pat Nolan, was less controversial because Nolan had devoted his post-prison life to criminal justice reform. But Nolan may have also curried Trump’s favor by citing the Mueller investigation as an example of how prosecutors “decide who they’re going to prosecute and then hunt for a crime.”[94]
In their sentencing memorandum in the case of Trump fixer Michael Cohen, federal prosecutors said of hush-money payments to a porn star and a Playboy model: “Cohen acted with the intent to influence the 2016 presidential election. Cohen coordinated his actions with one or more members of the campaign [and] as Cohen himself has now admitted, with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1.”[95] Donald Trump was “Individual-1.” Someone who orders an underling to commit a crime is also guilty of that crime, so federal prosecutors believed that Trump had committed a felony. They did not act against Trump, probably because Justice Department guidelines prevent the indictment of a sitting president. Some also believed that the House cannot impeach him for actions that he took before becoming president. But his offenses continued after he assumed office. As president, he reimbursed Cohen for the hush money and encouraged Cohen to give misleading testimony about the arrangement. Members of Congress might reasonably conclude that this behavior violated his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
In his 2019 testimony, Cohen admitted that he had previously lied about Trump Tower Moscow. Again, he was acting at the president’s behest. “Mr. Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress. That’s not how he operates. In conversations we had during the campaign, at the same time I was actively negotiating in Russia for him, he would look me in the eye and tell me there’s no business in Russia and then go out and lie to the American people by saying the same thing. In his way, he was telling me to lie.”[96] CNN law enforcement analyst James Gagliano said in a tweet: “I was once assigned to FBI Organized Crime Squad in Queens, NY. Can’t begin to number amount of Mob cooperators who described their abilities to interpret Mob Boss’s orders in exact same manner.”[97]
Trump was bitter about Cohen’s decision to become a cooperator. Inadvertently, though, he reinforced the Mafia comparison. In December 2018, Trump tweeted: “Remember, Michael Cohen only became a ‘Rat’ after the FBI did something which was absolutely unthinkable & unheard of until the Witch Hunt was illegally started. They BROKE INTO AN ATTORNEY’S OFFICE! Why didn’t they break into the DNC to get the Server, or Crooked’s office?”[98] As anyone who has seen Goodfellas would know, Trump was adopting gangland language. Former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, a conservative who supported Trump, cautioned in a tweet: “Sir, in mobster lingo, a ‘rat’ is a witness who tells prosecutors real incriminating info. Perhaps a different word? Searches of lawyer’s offices common enough that DOJ has a procedure for them. Here it yielded evidence of crimes you said he should be jailed for. You should stop.”[99]
In an interview with Fox News, Trump acknowledged his decades-long familiarity with gangsters. “This whole thing about flipping, they call it, I know all about flipping,” he said of Cohen’s plea negotiations. “For 30, 40 years I’ve been watching flippers. Everything’s wonderful and then they get 10 years in jail and they—they flip on whoever the next highest one is, or as high as you can go.” He added: “I’ve had many friends involved in this stuff. It’s called flipping and it almost ought to be illegal.”[100] The justice system depends on plea negotiations, which account for 90 percent of outcomes in federal criminal cases.[101] Getting criminals to testify against one another is a vital part of the fight against organized crime. As prosecutor Rudy Giuliani explained during a 1986 case: “The people who know best about what was going on inside a cesspool of corruption like this one are the people who were wallowing in it.”[102] A ban on “flipping” would hobble such prosecutions and benefit the mob.
Trump implicitly threatened Cohen’s family. In late 2018, he tweeted about Cohen’s request for leniency, alleging that he had made up stories and he had already made a deal to get “his wife and father-in-law (who has the money?) off Scott Free [sic].”[103] In a January 2019 interview with Jeanine Pirro of Fox News, he repeated his claim about a deal, adding: “He should give information maybe on his father-in-law, because that’s the one that people want to look at.” When Pirro asked him for the man’s name, he said: “I don’t know, but you’ll find out, and you’ll look into it because nobody knows what’s going on over there.”[104] (Cohen’s father-in-law, Fima Shusterman, was a Ukrainian immigrant with a 1993 conviction related to money laundering.[105]) At the very least, Trump was encouraging a television network to investigate a private citizen. At worst, he was hinting that federal prosecutors should do so. Either way, he was trying to scare Cohen. “I have seen mobsters in Mafia cases do this and gang leaders,” a former prosecutor told ABA Journal. “But they wouldn’t tell the news; we’d pick it up in a wiretap. Nobody would come out and say these things—the gangsters know better.”[106] If Trump were indictable, obtaining a conviction for witness intimidation might be uncertain because of the difficulty of proving intent. There is much less question that Trump was again failing in his constitutional duty. A president who took his oath seriously would have refrained from such activity and encouraged Cohen to tell the whole truth.
Trump flouted his duty on other occasions. On January 26, 2017, he learned that his national security adviser Michael Flynn had lied to the FBI about contacts with the Russian ambassador. The next day, he invited FBI Director James Comey to a private dinner at the White House. “I need loyalty. I expect loyalty,” he told Comey. Reflecting on his earlier work as a prosecutor of gangsters, Comey later wrote: “To my mind, the demand was like Sammy the Bull’s Cosa Nostra induction ceremony—with Trump, in the role of the family boss asking me if I have what it takes to be a ‘made man.’”[107] At another meeting a few weeks later, Trump told Comey: “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”[108]
Comey did not let it go, and Trump eventually fired him. The day of the firing, the White House insisted that Trump was following a departmental recommendation to terminate Comey for mishandling the 2016 Clinton email investigation. That claim was false. Trump had already made up his mind to fire Comey no matter what Justice said.[109] He then blew his own cover story. On May 10, 2017, he told Russian officials in the Oval Office: “I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”[110] And he told NBC’s Lester Holt: “And in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself—I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.”[111]
After the Comey firing, the Justice Department named Robert Mueller to take over the probe of Russian election interference. When the media reported that Mueller was also investigating whether Trump had obstructed justice, Trump responded by . . . obstructing justice. He ordered White House counsel Donald McGahn to tell the Acting Attorney General to sack Mueller. McGahn did not carry out the order. Later, after the news media reported that McGahn had threatened to resign rather than take part in a Mueller firing, Trump pressed McGahn to deny that he had ever made such a demand. McGahn declined, and the account in the Mueller report is worth quoting at length:
The President also asked McGahn in the meeting why he had told Special Counsel’s Office investigators that the President had told him to have the Special Counsel removed. McGahn responded that he had to and that his conversations with the President were not protected by attorney-client privilege. The President then asked, “What-about these notes? Why do you take notes? Lawyers don‘t take notes. I never had a lawyer who took notes.” McGahn responded that he keeps notes because he is a “real lawyer” and explained that notes create a record and are not a bad thing. The President said, “I’ve had a lot of great lawyers, like Roy Cohn. He did not take notes.”[112]
Throughout the investigation and afterward, Trump continued to undercut top law enforcement officials. “I have done a great service for our country when I fired James Comey because he was a bad cop, and he was a dirty cop, and he lied. He really lied.”[113] He also criticized Mueller many times. He even took a swipe at Christopher Wray, the man he named to succeed Comey at the FBI. In an interview, he told George Stephanopoulos that it was not necessary for campaign operatives to tell the FBI about offers of information by foreigners. When Stephanopoulos replied that the “FBI director said that is what should happen,” Trump said: “the FBI director is wrong, because frankly it doesn’t happen like that in life.”[114]
Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, and other surrogates amplified Trump’s efforts to discredit law enforcement officials. In 1998, however, Gingrich had a different point of view. He said on the House floor that “the American people have the right to expect that the rule of law will prevail, that no one is above the law.”[115] He also told a political meeting: “There is something profoundly demeaning and destructive to have the White House systematically undermine an officer of the Department of Justice. And when I watch these paid hacks on television, to be quite honest, I am sickened by how unpatriotically they undermine the Constitution of the United States on behalf of their client.”[116]
Trump broke the law. He directed the hush money scheme that landed Michael Cohen in prison. In several different ways, he acted to obstruct the investigations of his conduct. Some of his defenders say that he could not have committed obstruction, because there was no “underlying offense.” In a series of tweets, Representative Justin Amash (R-MI) knocked down this argument, pointing out that the Mueller investigation revealed many crimes. In any event, he further explained why obstruction of justice need not hinge on the prosecution of an underlying crime. “Prosecutors might not charge a crime precisely *because* obstruction of justice denied them timely access to evidence that could lead to a prosecution. If an underlying crime were required, then prosecutors could charge obstruction of justice only if it were unsuccessful in completely obstructing the investigation. This would make no sense.”[117]
Trump supporters have also argued that Trump could not have obstructed justice at all because the president is the federal government’s chief law enforcement officer. This assertion is a new version of the old Nixon line, “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.” The Mueller report offered a rebuttal: “Under applicable Supreme Court precedent, the Constitution does not categorically and permanently immunize a President for obstructing justice through the use of his Article II powers.” Because of departmental policy, it did not recommend indictment, but added, “if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” It hinted at impeachment as a remedy: “The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.”[118]
Trump rejected this view. When George Stephanopoulos asked him if a president could obstruct justice, he said: “A president can run the country. And that’s what happened, George. I run the country, and I run it well.”[119] I run the country—seldom has a president voiced a viewpoint more at odds with the Constitution. Though the presidency has great power for good or ill, its occupant is still just the temporary steward of one of the branches of one of the 89,000-plus governments of the United States. As Madison explained at great length, the Founders designed a system whereby all three branches of the federal government would check one another, and the states would provide an additional check on federal authority. The powers of government would be strictly limited so that free individuals could control their own lives. In other words, the whole point was that no single person could “run the country.”
In the early months of the Trump administration, advisers and members of Congress tried to school him in the separation of powers and the limits of presidential authority. Nevertheless, he persisted. Trump seems to regard the government as his private property and its officials as his servants. He refers to the military’s highest-ranking officers as “my generals” and House Republican leaders as “my Kevin” and “my Steve.”[120] Those who fail to do his bidding are disloyal to the country, he thinks, because they are disloyal to him. In November 2019, Judge Paul Friedman explained why this attitude is especially ominous in the case of the judiciary:
[W]ith respect to litigation challenging his emergency declaration respecting the border wall, the President predicted adverse rulings in the district courts and in the Ninth Circuit. He called the Ninth Circuit “a complete and total disaster, . . . out of control.” But, he said, “hopefully we’ll get a fair shake” in the Supreme Court; in fact, on one occasion, he said, “we’ll win in the Supreme Court,” perhaps to suggest that he expects the five Justices appointed by Republican presidents invariably will vote to uphold decisions made by his Administration. “If it’s my judges,” he said during the campaign, “you know how they’re going to decide.” This is not normal. And I mean that both in the colloquial sense and in the sense that this kind of personal attack on courts and individual judges violates all recognized democratic norms.[121]
John Adams, Novanglus, February 6, 1775, http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/john-adams/novanglus-text-february-6-1775.php.
Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 27, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed27.asp.
28 US Code § 453, Oaths of Justices and Judges, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/453.
Abraham Lincoln, “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions: Address before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois,” January 27, 1838, http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/lyceum.htm.
Rudolph Giuliani, Opening Remarks to the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Terrorism,” October 3, 2001, https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/rudygiuliani911unitednations.htm.
James Madison, Federalist 62, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed62.asp.
Jonathan Swan, “Trump's Government of One,” Axios, November 5, 2017, https://www.axios.com/trumps-government-of-one-1513306691-b7aed116-84c7-46fa-8375-570948a76374.html.
“Trump: ‘The Republican Party Is a Total Mess, Just Like Our Country,’” Fox News Insider, January 26, 2016, https://insider.foxnews.com/2016/01/26/donald-trump-and-bret-baier-face-special-report-2-days-fox-news-google-gop-debate.
Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (New York: Henry Holt, 2018), 16.
Jeremy Diamond, “Trump: Death Penalty for Cop Killers,” CNN, December 11, 2015, https://www.cnn.com/2015/12/10/politics/donald-trump-police-officers-death-penalty/index.html.
Perhaps he was suggesting that Alito joined a controversial opinion on late-term abortion that his sister had written when they served together on a federal court—but that was also wrong. See Ramesh Ponnuru, “Maryanne Trump Barry vs. Samuel Alito on Abortion,” National Review, February 26, 2016, https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/maryanne-trump-barry-vs-samuel-alito-abortion.
Josh Rogin, “Trump to House Republicans: ‘Say Great Things . . . We Love Trump.’” Washington Post, July 7, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/trump-to-house-republicans-say-great-things--we-love-trump/2016/07/07/c487cf2a-447e-11e6-8856-f26de2537a9d_story.html.
Sergio Chapa, “Rex Tillerson Makes Rare Public Appearance in Houston,” Houston Chronicle, December 8, 2018, https://www.chron.com/business/article/Rex-Tillerson-13448868.php.
Remarks by President Trump Before Marine One Departure, July 12, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-marine-one-departure-52/.
Remarks by President Trump at Turning Point USA’s Teen Student Action Summit 2019. Issued on: July 23, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-turning-point-usas-teen-student-action-summit-2019/.
Kevin McCarthy, “Congress Stands Athwart Obama’s Imperial Presidency,” National Review, March 17, 2016, https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/03/obama-congress-constitution-supreme-court-immigration-lawsuit/.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, March 21, 2013, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/314771578850275329.
Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 69, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed69.asp.
Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 70, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed70.asp.
Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 65, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed65.asp.
Remarks by President Trump before Marine One Departure, May 30, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-marine-one-departure-45.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter posts, May 16, 2017, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/864436162567471104 andhttps://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/864438529472049152.
Remarks by President Trump before Marine One Departure, June 8, 2018, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-marine-one-departure-8.
Mary C. Lawton, “Presidential or Legislative Pardon of the President,” US Department of Justice, August 5, 1974, https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/1974/08/31/op-olc-supp-v001-p0370_0.pdf.
Remarks by President Trump before Marine One Departure, January 10, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-marine-one-departure-30.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, March 6, 2019, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1103353074469535750.
Jenna Johnson, “Trump Calls for ‘Total and Complete Shutdown of Muslims Entering the United States,’” Washington Post, December 7, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/12/07/donald-trump-calls-for-total-and-complete-shutdown-of-muslims-entering-the-united-states/?utm_term=.c248bac1b08f
Duane Patterson, “Vice President Dick Cheney on San Bernardino, Obama’s Foreign Policy, and Setting History Straight,” Hugh Hewitt Show, December 5, 2015, https://www.hughhewitt.com/vice-president-dick-cheney-san-bernardino-obamas-foreign-policy-setting-history-straight/#more-29615.
Elizabeth Landers, “Governor Nikki Haley Blasts Donald Trump after His South Carolina Visit,” CNN, December 9, 2015, https://www.cnn.com/2015/12/09/politics/nikki-haley-donald-trump-south-carolina/index.html.
Andrew Kaczynski, “Stephen Moore Once Slammed Trump’s ‘Dangerous’ Immigration Position, Larry Kudlow Compared It to Worst Parts of World War II,” CNN, April 16, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/15/politics/kfile-stephen-moore-larry-kudlow-trump.
Michael Scherer, “Exclusive: Donald Trump Says He Might Have Supported Japanese Internment,” Time, December 8, 2015, http://time.com/4140050/donald-trump-muslims-japanese-internment.
Trump v. Hawaii, 585 US _ (2018), at 38, https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-965_h315.pdf.
Shaughnessy v. Mezei, 345 US 206 (1953), at 212, https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/345/206.
Reno v. Flores, 507 US 292 (1993), at 306, https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/507/292.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, June 24, 2018, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1010900865602019329.
“Trump, Airing Grievances with Immigration System, Says U.S. Needs to ‘Get Rid of Judges,’” CBS News, April 2, 2019, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/president-trump-nato-meeting-secretary-general-jens-stoltenberg-today-live-stream-updates-2019-04-02.
Remarks by President Trump at the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council Meeting, April 4, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-white-house-opportunity-revitalization-council-meeting.
Jake Tapper, “Trump Pushed to Close El Paso Border, Told Admin Officials to Resume Family Separations and Agents Not to Admit Migrants,” CNN, April 8, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/08/politics/trump-family-separation-el-paso-kirstjen-nielsen/index.html.
Nick Miroff and Josh Dawsey, “‘Take the Land’: President Trump Wants a Border Wall. He Wants It Black. And He Wants It by Election Day,” Washington Post, August 27, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/take-the-land-president-trump-wants-a-border-wall-he-wants-it-black-and-he-wants-it-by-election-day/2019/08/27/37b80018-c821-11e9-a4f3-c081a126de70_story.html.
Charles V. Bagli, “Trump Paid over $1 Million in Labor Settlement, Documents Reveal,” New York Times, November 27, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/27/nyregion/trump-tower-illegal-immigrant-workers-union-settlement.html.
James West, “Former Models for Donald Trump’s Agency Say They Violated Immigration Rules and Worked Illegally,” Mother Jones, August 30, 2016, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/donald-trump-model-management-illegal-immigration.
New York Daily News, May 1, 1989, at http://apps.frontline.org/clinton-trump-keys-to-their-characters/pdf/trump-newspaper.pdf.
Kaczynski and Sarlin, “Trump in 1989 Central Park Five Interview.”
NBC News, Meet the Press transcript, August 2, 2015, https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-transcript-august-2-2015-n402571.
Donald J. Trump, Remarks to Federal, State, and Local Law Enforcement Officers in Brentwood, New York, July 28, 2017, online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-federal-state-and-local-law-enforcement-officers-brentwood-new-york.
Email from Chuck Rosenberg, July 29, 2017, https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000015d-9ecc-d43a-a3dd-bfef0fa60001.
Antonia Noori Farzan, “‘Shoot Them!’: Trump Laughs Off a Supporter’s Demand for Violence against Migrants,” Washington Post, May 9, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/05/09/shoot-them-trump-laughs-off-supporters-demand-violence-against-migrants.
Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear, Border Wars: Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2019), 337.
Tom LoBianco, “Donald Trump on Terrorists: ‘Take out Their Families,’” CNN, December 3, 2015, https://www.cnn.com/2015/12/02/politics/donald-trump-terrorists-families/index.html.
“The Fox News GOP Debate Transcript, Annotated,” Washington Post, March 3, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/03/the-fox-news-gop-debate-transcript-annotated.
Damian Paletta and Nick Timiraos, “Trump Reverses His Stance on Torture,” Wall Street Journal, March 4, 2016, https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-reverses-his-stance-on-torture-1457116559.
Interview with Donald Trump, Anderson Cooper 360, CNN, March 9, 2016, http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1603/09/acd.01.html.
Greg Jaffe, “For Trump and His Generals, ‘Victory’ Has Different Meanings,” Washington Post, April 5, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/for-trump-and-his-generals-victory-has-different-meanings/2018/04/05/8d74eab0-381d-11e8-9c0a-85d477d9a226_story.html.
Waitman Wade Beorn, “I Led a Platoon in Iraq. Trump Is Wrong to Pardon War Criminals,” Washington Post, May 9, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/i-led-a-platoon-in-iraq-trump-is-wrong-to-pardon-war-criminals/2019/05/09/15b10430-71d5-11e9-9eb4-0828f5389013_story.html.
Sarah Sanders, Press Briefing by Principal Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Sanders and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, June 29, 2017, online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/press-briefing-principal-deputy-press-secretary-sarah-sanders-and-treasury-secretary.
Ben Schreckinger, “Trump on Protester: ‘I’d Like to Punch Him in the Face,’” Politico, February 23, 2016, https://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/donald-trump-punch-protester-219655.
Anna Giaritelli, “Trump: Protesters Should Face Consequences,” Washington Examiner, March 11, 2016, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-protesters-should-face-consequences.
Zak Cheney-Rice, “Video of Donald Trump Supporter Sucker-Punching a Guy Got Five Sheriff’s Deputies Suspended,” Mic, March 18, 2016, https://www.yahoo.com/news/video-donald-trump-supporter-sucker-175600036.html.
Louis Jacobson, “In Context: Donald Trump’s ‘Second Amendment People’ Comment,” PolitiFact, August 9, 2016, https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/aug/09/context-donald-trumps-second-amendment-people-comm.
Nick Corasaniti and Maggie Haberman, “Donald Trump Suggests ‘Second Amendment People’ Could Act against Hillary Clinton,” New York Times, August 9, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/10/us/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton.html.
Philip Bump, “Donald Trump Says ‘Second Amendment People’ May Be the Only Check on Clinton Judicial Appointments,” Washington Post, August 9, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/09/donald-trump-says-second-amendment-people-may-be-the-only-check-on-clinton-judicial-appointments.
Donald J. Trump, Remarks at a “Make America Great Again” Rally, Springfield, Missouri, September 21, 2018, online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-make-america-great-again-rally-springfield-missouri.
Alexander Marlow, Matthew Boyle, Amanda House, and Charlie Spiering, “Exclusive— President Donald Trump: Paul Ryan Blocked Subpoenas of Democrats,” Breitbart, March 13, 2019, https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/03/13/exclusive-president-donald-trump-paul-ryan-blocked-subpoenas-of-democrats.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, September 29, 2019, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1178477539653771264?s=20.
Donald J. Trump, Remarks at a “Make America Great Again” Rally in Missoula, Montana, online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-make-america-great-again-rally-missoula-montana.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, July 2, 2017, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/881503147168071680; David Nakamura, “Trump Appears to Promote Violence against CNN with Tweet,” Washington Post, July 2, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/07/02/trump-appears-to-promote-violence-against-cnn-with-tweet.
Alayna Treene, “Trump Shares Meme of Train Running over CNN,” Axios, August 15, 2017, https://www.axios.com/trump-shares-meme-of-train-running-over-cnn-1513304846-d47ed092-3c93-4cc4-a283-33f53ad1dbb6.html.
Faith Karimi, “Pipe Bomb Suspect Cesar Sayoc Describes Trump Rallies as ‘New Found Drug,’” CNN, April 24, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/24/us/cesar-sayoc-letter-trump-rallies/index.html.
Evelyn Rupert, “Trump: Muslim Soldier Was a Hero, but His Father ‘Has No Right’ to Criticize Me,” The Hill, July 30, 2016, https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/289894-trump-praises-muslim-soldier-but-says-father-has-no-right.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, August 14, 2016, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/764870785634799617.
Donald J. Trump, Remarks Prior to a Meeting with Prime Minister Justin P. J. Trudeau of Canada and an Exchange with Reporter, October 11, 2017, online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-prior-meeting-with-prime-minister-justin-pj-trudeau-canada-and-exchange-with https://www.presidency.
A Transcript of Donald Trump’s Meeting with the Washington Post Editorial Board, Washington Post, March 21, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/03/21/a-transcript-of-donald-trumps-meeting-with-the-washington-post-editorial-board.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, September 5, 2018, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1037302649199177728.
Patrick Anderson, “Trump Blasts Sutton and Media, Raves about Noem during South Dakota Visit,” The Argus Leader, September 7, 2018, https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/2018/09/07/donald-trump-news-gop-candidate-kristi-noem-fundraiser-2018-event-sioux-falls-visit/1195256002.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, October 11, 2017, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/918267396493922304.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, October 11, 2017, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/918112884630093825.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, September 4, 2018, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1036991866124861440.
Ipsos, “Americans’ Views on the Media,” August 7, 2018, https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/americans-views-media-2018-08-07.
Jane Mayer, “The Making of the Fox News White House,” The New Yorker, March 11, 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/11/the-making-of-the-fox-news-white-house.
Walter Pincus and George Lardner Jr., “Nixon Hoped Antitrust Threat Would Sway Network Coverage,” Washington Post, December 1, 1997, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/nixon/120197tapes.htm.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, June 3, 2019, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1135499002626154496.
Commission on Presidential Debates, October 9, 2016, Debate Transcript, https://www.debates.org/voter-education/debate-transcripts/october-9-2016-debate-transcript.
US Department of Justice, Special Counsel’s Office, Report on the Investigation, vol. 2, p. 107.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, July 25, 2017, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/889790429398528000.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, November 3, 2017, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/926403023861141504.
Remarks by President Trump on Supporting America’s Farmers and Ranchers, May 29, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-supporting-americas-farmers-ranchers.
NBC News, Meet the Press transcript, May 26, 2019, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/meet-press-may-26-2019-n1010416.
Kiley Armstrong, “Trump Cash Offer for Tyson Release Fails,” Associated Press, February 14, 1992, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=266&dat=19920214&id=bt0rAAAAIBAJ&sjid=VGQFAAAAIBAJ&pg=6071,3882825&hl=en.
Armstrong, “Trump Cash Offer.”
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, September 3, 2018, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1036681588573130752.
Ex Parte Grossman, 267 US 87 (1925), at 121, https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/267/87.
Philip Rucker and Ellen Nakashima, “Trump Asked Sessions about Closing Case against Arpaio, an Ally Since ‘Birtherism,’” Washington Post, August 26, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-asked-sessions-about-closing-case-against-arpaio-an-ally-since-birtherism/2017/08/26/15e5d7b2-8a7f-11e7-a94f-3139abce39f5_story.html.
Daniel Chaitin, “John McCain: Trump’s Pardon of Joe Arpaio ‘Undermines His Claim for the Respect of Rule of Law,’” Washington Examiner, August 25, 2017, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/john-mccain-trumps-pardon-of-joe-arpaio-undermines-his-claim-for-the-respect-of-rule-of-law.
Debra J. Saunders, “Trump Flirts with Pardons and Prison Reform,” RealClearPolitics, June 3, 2018, https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/06/03/trump_flirts_with_pardons_and_prison_reform_137180.html.
US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, sentencing memorandum in United States of America v. Michael Cohen, December 7, 2018, https://www.lawfareblog.com/document-us-attorneys-office-southern-district-new-york-and-special-counsels-office-file-michael.
House Oversight, Hearing with Michael Cohen, 10.
James A. Gagliano, Twitter post, February 27, 2019, https://twitter.com/JamesAGagliano/status/1100825119411372032.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, December 16, 2017, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1074313153679450113.
Andy McCarthy, Twitter post, December 16, 2018, https://twitter.com/AndrewCMcCarthy/status/1074360328039878657.
Brooke Singman, “Trump Rips Cohen for ‘Flipping,’ Praises Manafort in Exclusive FNC Interview,” Fox News, August 23, 2018, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-rips-cohen-for-flipping-praises-manafort-in-exclusive-fnc-interview.
John Gramlich, “Only 2% of Federal Criminal Defendants Go to Trial, and Most Who Do Are Found Guilty,” Pew Research Center, June 11, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/11/only-2-of-federal-criminal-defendants-go-to-trial-and-most-who-do-are-found-guilty.
Richard J. Meislin, “Jury Deliberates in Friedman Case,” New York Times, November 23, 1986, https://www.nytimes.com/1986/11/23/nyregion/jury-deliberates-in-friedman-case.html.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, December 3, 2018, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1069614615510859776.
Fox News transcript, January 12, 2018, https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/house-minority-leader-rep-kevin-mccarthy-reacts-to-president-trumps-latest-comments-on-fixing-the-border-crisis.
Seth Hettena, “The Dangers of Doing Favors for Donald Trump,” New York Times, December 10, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/opinion/donald-trump-michael-cohen-favors.html.
Stephanie Francis Ward, “Legal Experts Weigh in on Trump’s Cohen Comments and Whether They Amount to Witness Intimidation,” ABA Journal, January 15, 2019, http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/following-fox-news-interview-some-wonder-if-president-engaged-in-obstruction.
James Comey, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership (New York: Flatiron Books, 2018), 237–38.
US Department of Justice, Special Counsel’s Office, Report on the Investigation, vol. 2, p. 3.
US Department of Justice, Special Counsel’s Office, Report on the Investigation, vol. 2, p. 4.
Matt Apuzzo, Maggie Haberman, and Matthew Rosenberg, “Trump Told Russians That Firing ‘Nut Job’ Comey Eased Pressure from Investigation,” New York Times, May 19, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/us/politics/trump-russia-comey.html.
“President Trump’s Full Interview with Lester Holt: Firing of James Comey,” RealClearPolitics, May 11, 2017, https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/05/11/president_trumps_full_interview_with_lester_holt.html.
US Department of Justice, Special Counsel’s Office, Report on the Investigation, vol. 2, p. 117.
Remarks by President Trump before Marine One Departure, January 15, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-marine-one-departure-31.
Transcript: ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos’ Exclusive Interview with President Trump, June 16, 2019, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/transcript-abc-news-george-stephanopoulos-exclusive-interview-president/story?id=63749144.
Congressional Record (daily), April 28, 1998, H 2336, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-1998-04-28/html/CREC-1998-04-28-pt1-PgH2335-3.htm.
Z. Byron Wolf, “Newt Gingrich, on Book Tour, Declares Special Counsel the ‘Tip of the Deep State Spear,’” CNN, June 15, 2017, https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/15/politics/newt-gingrich-bob-mueller-special-counsel-book/index.html.
Brett Samuels, “Amash Doubles Down on Trump and Impeachment,” The Hill, May 20, 2019, https://thehill.com/homenews/house/444613-amash-defends-saying-trump-committed-impeachable-offenses.
US Department of Justice, Special Counsel’s Office, Report on The Investigation, vol. 2, p. 8.
Transcript: ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos’ Exclusive Interview with President Trump.
Ashley Parker, “From ‘My Generals’ To ‘My Kevin,’ Trump’s Preferred Possessive Can Be a Sign of Affection or Control,” Washington Post, September 16, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/from-my-generals-to-my-kevin-trumps-preferred-possessive-can-be-a-sign-of-affection-or-control/2019/09/16/52480d22-d895-11e9-a688-303693fb4b0b_story.html.
Judge Paul L. Friedman, “Threats to Judicial Independence and the Rule of Law,” the eleventh annual Judge Thomas A. Flannery Lecture, November 6, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/07/politics/judge-paul-friedman-criticize-trump-speech-read/index.html.