Trump Wins!

The big news today is that the Supreme Court unanimously agreed, in a 9-0 vote, that Colorado could not keep Trump off the state’s primary ballot.

It also prevents other states like Maine and Illinois, which have also moved to keep Trump off the ballot, from doing so.

Today’s unanimous ruling is not a surprise to me. The Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling to bar Trump from the ballot was so egregious I predicted that the U.S. Supreme Court would probably rule unanimously against it.

And it did.

Even the Court’s most reliable liberals, who are certainly no fans of Donald Trump, couldn’t bring themselves to go along with Colorado’s extreme overreach.

There was some internal dissent from the liberals about the role of Congress in enforcing Article III of the 14th Amendment, but that’s a separate issue.

On the main question, they joined the Court’s conservatives. The larger point is the 9-0 ruling sends a strong message that states can’t just arbitrarily ban candidates from running for federal office.

In this case, they can’t simply assert that Trump is guilty of insurrection, which would bar him from office. Trump was never formally accused of insurrection, much less convicted of it, so the Colorado Supreme Court had no legal leg to stand on.

Whatever you personally think of Trump, today’s 9-0 ruling is a major victory for the rule of law, and for the Constitution.

The only ones who aren’t happy are those who suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Again, whatever you think of him personally, it’s clear that Trump is being prosecuted for political crimes, not actual crimes. Trump is certainly no angel. Anyone who conducts business in the cutthroat environment of high-end New York real estate is probably not an angel. Not too many billionaires are angels. But it doesn’t mean he’s a criminal.

That doesn’t matter to Trump’s political enemies. They’ll stop at nothing to keep him off the ballot in 2024.

Liberal constitutional scholar Alan Dershowitz has even written a book about it, called Get Trump. Dershowitz is a liberal Democrat who’s strongly opposed to Trump. He’s voted against Trump twice. And he says he wants the opportunity to vote against him again.

But Dershowitz is an old-style liberal who believes in the Constitution. And as Dershowitz sees it, Trump’s political enemies are destroying the Constitution for political purposes. It’s all about defeating Trump, the Constitution be damned.

Incidentally, Dershowitz also opposes Republican efforts to impeach Joe Biden for alleged corruption. Even if he’s guilty of corruption charges, Dershowitz argues that he would have committed them while he was vice president, not president.

As president, he therefore can’t be impeached for offenses he didn’t commit as president. The point is, Dershowitz bases his legal opinions on his interpretation of the Constitution, not on his personal politics. And he’s horrified that the law is being subverted for political purposes.

To keep Trump off the ballot, his enemies have resorted to “lawfare.” Below, I show you exactly what that means, and why it’s so dangerous to America. Read on.

Lawfare Threatens Rule of Law

By Jim Rickards

“Lawfare” is a term many citizens don’t understand. That’s why it’s so dangerous to the rule of law this society was founded upon. For Americans who care about the future of our constitutional form of government, few topics are more important.

That might seem hyperbolic to many, maybe even to you. But it’s not. Lawfare is a portmanteau — a new word composed of two other words — consisting of “law” and “warfare.” That’s a strange pairing. Law has always been considered an alternative to violence, a way to settle disputes peacefully.

Warfare is the epitome of violence in which two or more powers clash with their existence at stake. Law and warfare are almost opposites, yet they coexist in the world “lawfare.” That alone should tell you there’s something new and even nefarious going on.

Lawfare is defined as the use of law and legal process to destroy political and ideological enemies. Warfare is associated with the physical destruction of people and infrastructure through bombing, artillery and assault. Yet you can do just as much destruction using the law.

As Much Damage as Missiles and Bombs

If you can destroy reputations, bankrupt opponents, seize property and tie enemies up in court indefinitely using legal assaults, you can do just as much damage as if you had fired missiles or dropped bombs. That’s the idea.

Supporters of lawfare say that using legal means to fight opponents is nothing new. Lawsuits have been used against rivals for centuries. Courts have not been shy about imposing damages and using judicial process to collect.

Novel interpretations of the law do emerge over time. They claim that lawfare is just a new name for a very old game of using the law to sort out disputes and seek damages.

It is true that courts and judges have been resolving disputes and imposing judgements (including monetary damages) for as long as there has been a legal code. Yet in that process, both sides — plaintiffs and defendants — have observed certain moral and ethical rules.

They have honored guardrails set up to preserve the integrity of the legal system as an institution. Judges have been rigorous in enforcing those rules and making sure that both sides in a dispute respect the legal system, even as they fight out their respective claims.

There have always been some bad apples among lawyers and judges, but they are the exceptions not the rule. Overall, judges are impartial, lawyers act ethically, juries deliberate with an open mind and all parties deal in good faith. Outcomes can be tough, but the system is respected and preserved.

None of that is true with lawfare.

Show Me the Man, and I’ll Show You the Crime

The practitioners of lawfare believe the ends justify the means. They have an ideological agenda that is at best progressive and at worst neo-Marxist. They view the law as just another tool in the tool kit to advance their agenda and destroy their enemies.

If the law is damaged and the legal system is degraded, that’s OK as far as lawfare practitioners are concerned — as long as they achieve their goals.

What this means in practice is that lawyers and their associates scour statutes, rules and regulations looking for anything that might apply literally to a target even if no substantive case of the type desired has ever been brought.

They look at statutes that are 100 — or even 200 years old — and have not been applied for many decades (a condition lawyers call desuetude or disuse) and bring them back to life in circumstances never contemplated by those who enacted the statutes.

They are also aided by thousands of pages of new rules and regulations that are still open to interpretation because they have never been litigated. As for these, the lawfare warriors devise creative theories to attack their targets without regard to the original purpose or meaning of the rule.

In fact, one of the preoccupations of the deep state is to keep pumping out new rules that no one can keep up with but which lawfare types can bend and shape to their purposes.

Lavrentiy Beria, head of the Soviet secret police (NKVD) under Stalin, once said, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” He meant that if you target an individual, it’s not difficult to fabricate a crime even if the target is innocent.

The accusation, arrest and trial are enough to destroy most people emotionally and financially, regardless of the technical outcome. If you combine this process with corrupt prosecutors and judges, then the destruction of the target is assured.

The abuse of process is against the Fifth, Sixth and 14th Amendments of the Constitution, which offer a presumption of innocence, right to counsel and due process of law. But the lawfare gangs don’t care about the Constitution.

They just want to destroy their targets. In this sense, the political targets are not the only victims. The law itself is a victim. That threatens everybody and the country itself in the fullness of time.

Lawfare in Action

The headlines are full of lawfare. Efforts to remove Donald Trump from the ballot in numerous states pursuant to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars insurrectionists from holding federal office, have failed with today’s Supreme Court ruling.

That section was enacted after the Civil War to bar Confederate military officers and civilian officials from holding office in the United States. Many reprieves were granted by Congress. Even Robert E. Lee was excused from its application posthumously. The last case using this section was brought in 1919/20, a century ago, and the government lost that case.

Section 3 really is a dead letter today. Still, the progressive legal squad have dusted it off and tried using it against Trump. That’s lawfare.

Another example is the civil business records case brought against Trump and his businesses by Letitia James, the attorney general of the state of New York. The allegation is that Trump overstated the value of certain properties on a loan application.

Anyone familiar with commercial real estate knows that valuations are highly uncertain and volatile. The Trump organization told the lender in writing not to rely on Trump valuations and to do their own due diligence. The bank did so and decided to make the loan. The loan was repaid in full with interest on time and as agreed. There was no loss, no victim and no complaint.

Yet New York Judge Engoron found Trump guilty of fraud, imposed a $355 million fine plus $99 million interest, banned Trump from doing business in the state of New York for three years, inserted a clause in the ruling that says Trump must post the entire $454 million bond before he can appeal and authorized Letitia James to begin seizing title to landmark Trump properties to enforce the judgment.

This could destroy Trump’s business and even bankrupt him all over a minor bookkeeping matter that is usually resolved with an administrative hearing and a small fine. That’s lawfare.

Selective Prosecution

Selective enforcement of laws is another aspect of lawfare. In 2012, then Attorney General Eric Holder was found in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over documents related to a gun-smuggling effort by the Justice Department. Nothing happened. There was no enforcement, no penalty and no arrest. Holder simply ignored the finding and Congress moved on.

Peter Navarro wasn’t so lucky. Navarro is a 74-year-old economist who taught at Harvard and worked in the Trump administration. In 2022, he was also found in contempt of Congress like Eric Holder for failure to provide evidence.

Navarro was arrested in broad daylight at Reagan National Airport, put in handcuffs and leg irons by FBI goons and frog-marched to jail. He was put on trial, convicted in 2023 and sentenced to four months in prison.

Why was the Democrat Holder let off without repercussions while the Republican Navarro was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to jail for the same offense? That’s lawfare.

I could give many other examples of the statutes being used and the targets being persecuted in lawfare campaigns. Lawfare is not limited to individuals. It can also be applied to pandemic mandates, to censoring critics of the Biden regime and in support of the Green New Scam. It is being used constantly to crush dissent and silence dissenters.

There are many individual victims of lawfare. The biggest victim is the rule of law itself. And that means you and me. Regardless of your politics, all Americans should unite against lawfare. It should be a nonpartisan effort.

If we don’t fight back against the lawfare practitioners, there will soon be no law left for any of us to rely on.