Harry Litman - A Day That Will Live In Infamy
Trump’s blizzard of executive orders in his first hours as president includes a dozen or more dangerous edicts that bring us closer to an authoritarian state. Driven by lies, propaganda, and pro-billionaire policies, they will come under heavy fire in the courts, as a few already have. His brazen moves to revoke enemies’ security clearances, manufacture an emergency to justify draconian immigration measures, ignore Congress’s command with respect to TikTok, and overturn the clear constitutional command of birthright citizenship, among others, are a tsunami of outrages by a madman. In the coming days, I and many colleagues will do all we can to painstakingly explain their anti-constitutional, anti-rule-of-law, and anti-American character.
But all of these moves are swamped by the sweeping pardons that Trump extended to nearly all the 1,600 insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in a murderous rampage whipped up by Trump to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. As a former DOJ official, line prosecutor, and partisan of the rule of law, I am loath to lump in this putrescence with the other assaults on constitutional rule. They call out for an initial separate condemnation.
The pardons are vile, vicious, and despicable. They are the most flagrant show of disrespect and tyranny toward the country by any president in our history. If they are not strongly repudiated by history, it will mean that the country has been lost.
In my paroxysm of blue-sky posts in the wake of the news, I wrote, “I cannot think of a remotely similar betrayal of country by a sitting president,” and served it up as a question to our national historian laureate, Heather Cox Richardson. She was good enough to reply quickly: “I got nothing. This is huge.”
https://harrylitman.substack.com/p/a-day-that-will-live-in-infamy