What's with Trump?

From erratic to childish, there's occasional good news but not enough. There's also occasional sober thinking, but not enough of that either.

The big legal news over the last few days has been the Justice Department’s moving to withdraw corruption charges against a black Democrat, Mayor Eric Adams of NYC; the local US Attorney’s reluctance, and then refusal, to do so; her consequent firing by Acting Deputy AG Emil Bove; the transfer of the case to Main Justice; and the similar refusal by its career-service leaders to move for dismissal and their consequent resignations; and the fully predictable ensuing indignation by the MSM about Trump’s “massacre” as if it were in league with Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre toward the climax of the Watergate scandal.

It would be easy enough for those of us who want Trump’s presidency to succeed to dismiss all this as the usual liberal bellyaching — and wonderfully ironic bellyaching, given the Left’s decades of complaining that Republicans have built “mass incarceration” on the backs of, yes, black men. Black men they went out of their way to find ways to prosecute. Black men like, say, Eric Adams.

There is some complaining-by-rote going on here, because it’s inescapable from the Font of Perpetual Whining, but this time Trump and his Justice Department have earned what they’re getting. Among the critics are the Wall Street Journal, Andy McCarthy and Ed Whelan — all solidly conservative and sound thinkers.

I agree with just about everything the Journal, Andy and Ed have written so I won’t attempt to recapitulate or elaborate on it. DOJ’s action was permissible under the law but poorly thought through and very badly executed. Like Trump’s pardon of Rod Blagojevich, which Paul dismantled here, the Adams dismissal has the aroma of something Trump’s DOJ (and, one might wonder, Trump himself) ordered simply because (1) they felt like it, and (2) they could. That is not presidential; indeed it’s not even particularly adult. The country and any serious appreciation for law have the right — and the need — to expect better. And no, it is not an excuse, much less a principled reason, that “Johnny (Johnny being the Democrats) did it first!” That’s insufficient for third grade, and mind-bendingly insufficient for those responsible for the serious and fair-minded administration of law.

There are ways to address the past misuse of law and legal power. Continued misuse is not one of them. Down that juvenile path lies ruin, the abandonment of anything recognizable as the rule of law. And it won’t be a long path either.

For full disclosure, I should probably note that I, like former Acting US Attorney Danielle Sassoon (a former Scalia clerk), resigned from the US Attorney’s Office on principle, as I explained here. It was a long time ago, under the Clinton Administration, and the issue (the constitutional grounding of Miranda) was different. Still, it might be thought that, on account of this, I view the present controversy more sympathetically to the prosecutors who have resigned than otherwise I might.

So far as I can tell, after thinking about it, that’s not so. I think I can see the present controversy objectively, as, in my view, the WSJ et. al do.

Since the basics of the criticism of Trump’s DOJ have been covered elsewhere, I’ll add only thoughts I haven’t yet seen in other discussions. The first goes to the tenor of the exchange of notes between Ms. Sassoon and Acting DAG Bove. Hers is here; his is here. Hers is thoughtful and business-like. His is belligerent, high-handed, overtly threatening, and rude. If you have a strong interest in this controversy, you should read them.

The tenor of an exchange like that doesn’t tell you everything, not by a long shot. But it tells you something. All my experience inside the Justice Department and then the US Attorney’s Office was that the side that speaks in civil, even language is the side with the better case.

Q: When, as a lawyer, are you more prone to become defensive and aggressive? A: When you know the opposition is right.

The second item the mainstream press seems to have missed it that Ms. Sassoon and Mr. Bove very likely know each other because they worked overlapping times in the same office, namely the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. There is an aroma of bad blood in Mr. Bove’s letter. Competition between colleagues is not unknown in the legal profession, certainly not in a high-stakes and prestigious office like SDNY. I don’t know that that even partially accounts for the tenor of Mr. Bove’s responses. But my instincts tell me it does.

Don’t get me wrong. Trump and his top level political appointees at Main Justice have the authority to decide when to charge and when not to. Their subordinates do not. But it’s still a matter of judgment, and in less than a month on the job, Trump has already put his judgment, such as it may be in matters like this, in a doubtful light with his pardoning, without any individual review that’s ever been disclosed, hundreds of January 6 rioters, including those who used violence against the police. He had earlier, and for excellent reason, promised not to do this. As noted, last week he inexplicably pardoned the notoriously corrupt “Gov. Blogo.” Hence, even before pulling the Eric Adams indictment without so much as looking at the merits of the case, as Mr. Bove astonishingly admitted in his correspondence, Trump had given us reason to doubt whether anything beyond personal preference — anything like, for example, minimally serious respect for sobriety and maturity in the administration of law — would count with him.

Trump was still preferable on election day to his predecessor, who was not even a functioning adult (despite Kamala’s ceaseless lying about it). But for the sake of his Presidency, not to mention the country and the country’s reliance on the rule of law, Mr. Trump needs to right the ship real quick.