Foaming at the mouth, the media tries to run cover for J6 charade By David Zukerman
It should come as no surprise that The Wall Street Journal, in an October 14 editorial, gave credence to the rogue, irresponsible, illegitimate, and unconstitutional “Jan. 6” House Select Committee comprised of nine Trump-despisers, two of which are rabidly anti-Trump Republicans, soon to leave Congress after monumental defeats at the August ballot box. The title read, “What the Jan. 6 Hearings Accomplished”. The Journal, by that title, showed its Trump-loathing hand for what it was: it was no inquiry, it was an inquisition.
The Journal’s anti-Trump editorial also gave credence to the unconstitutional subpoena for the former (and future?) President Donald J. Trump.
Noting the 9-0 vote in favor of the Trump subpoena, the Journal said: “If he wants to avoid the hot seat, Mr. Trump only needs to find a way to resist the subpoena….”
Immediately following that, the next paragraph began:
Rep. Liz Cheney justified an extraordinary subpoena to a former President by saying that ‘more than 30 witnesses in our investigation have invoked their Fifth Amendment right to self-incrimination.’
Let’s stop there for a personal, relevant note. Chalk it up to my age and lifelong interest in politics, but as soon as I learned of the Trump subpoena, I recalled a political event that occurred in November 1953, when I was 13-and-a-half years old. I remembered that former President Truman (a Democrat) had been served with a subpoena by House Republicans (then in the majority) and rejected the subpoena as violating the Constitution’s separation of powers principle. Having that memory, I then went to the internet for confirmation. The fruit of that search appears here.
Paul A. Gigot, editor of the Journal’s editorial page where this article appeared, could not have had a memory of Mr. Truman’s rejection of the House subpoena as he was not born until 1955, a year-and-a-half after the Truman subpoena. But a separation of powers problem should have occurred to Mr. Gigot — or did his apparent loathing for Mr. Trump blind him to major constitutional details? How else can one explain the editorial’s claim that “Rep. Liz Cheney justified an extraordinary subpoena to a former President….”?
Briefly stated, there can be no justification of a subpoena “to a former President” — unless the server has no respect for the separation of powers principle — much less this observation in Federalist Paper no. 47 attributed to James Madison:
The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny [emphasis added].
Madison continued:
Were the federal Constitution, therefore, really chargeable with this accumulation of power, or with a mixture of powers, having a dangerous tendency to such an accumulation, no further arguments would be necessary to inspire a universal reprobation of the system.
Per the instruction of Madison, therefore, the appropriate response to the Trump subpoena — and, if necessary, citing the Truman precedent, should be “universal reprobation.” Indeed the appropriate response to the constitutionally-wayward and offensive operation of the House Select Committee of nine Trump-hating Congressmen should also be “universal reprobation.”
A day before the release of The Journal story, The Times led with the Trump subpoena news, and the reporters waited until the end of the piece before acknowledging that the Supreme Court has yet to rule on whether Congress can compel testimony from a former president. Significantly however, these reporter/anti-Trump propagandists failed to inform readers of the Truman precedent — where the Congressmen accepted Truman’s refusal. Nor did they cite any authority pointing out that the principle of separation of powers was enshrined in the Constitution to prevent a descent into tyranny. The anti-Trump story of the the Times did quote Rep. Bennie Thompson (chair of Nancy Pelosi’s theater production), and in obvious defense of the subpoena, Mr. Thompson said the former president “must be accountable” and “required to answer for his action.” This statement put to action would effectively erase the separation of powers principle, and replace the Constitution with legislative tyranny.
The Times account also reported that Mr. Trump “has been telling aides that he favors testifying before the panel as long as he gets to do so live….” Not only can “no good” come from a Trump appearance before his enemies, as my late father Sol Zukerman would opine, it is likely that he does not know about the historical precedent set during Truman’s presidency.
The Times story, in its opening column, provided an interesting observation from GOP turncoat Liz Cheney, “None of this is normal, acceptable, or lawful in our republic….” Now where is the Republican member of Congress to apply Cheney’s words to the Trump subpoena and the conduct of Pelosi’s panel of political puppets? Only in a dictatorship is a “Jan. 6” inquisition
“normal, acceptable, or lawful.”
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