it isn’t often that we find ourselves concerned about the possible existence of the “resistance” movement in the judiciary, but it does, at times, happen.
This week was just one such example, as an extraordinarily enthusiastic judge put her own anti-Trump spin on a decision regarding congressional oversight.
Don McGahn must testify to Congress about his time as the White House’s top lawyer, a federal judge ruled Monday — a decision that will put pressure on other reluctant Trump administration witnesses to testify about President Donald Trump’s actions.
In an opinion that could reshape the balance of power between Congress and the executive branch, U.S. District Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said that McGahn, who spent 30 hours talking to former special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, can’t hide behind Trump’s claim that he is “absolutely immune” from speaking to the House Judiciary Committee.
Here’s where the “resistance” schtick comes into play, however:
“DOJ promotes a conception of separation-of-powers principles that gets these constitutional commands exactly backwards,” Jackson wrote in her 120-page opinion. “In reality, it is a core tenet of this Nation’s founding that the powers of a monarch must be split between the branches of the government to prevent tyranny.”
Jackson called absolute immunity “a fiction” that has been propagated by a succession of presidential administrations by simply repeating it as a fact while avoiding testing the principle in court.
Her most scathing statement, however, has been getting some serious play in the liberal press:
Judge Jackson tears into the unitary executive theory that often guides Trump/Barr DOJ opinions:
“Stated simply, the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings.”https://t.co/KTNXxE0AZV pic.twitter.com/O7MWyxIxJ7
— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) November 25, 2019
Yikes.
The liberal media is going to have a field day with this.
