Maverick's World

The Trump Coup is Complete

Trump already seems to have his own private state department in the form of his children, and his own intelligence service in the form of Erik Prince's guys, and the GOP guys in Congress and Senate are his slaves but something happened a few days ago that IMHO completes the Trump Coup.

A few days ago, the hiring procedures for Immigration Court judges were changed to remove the requirements for competitive hiring. At this time, the Immigration Court judges will serve only at the pleasure of Donald Trump and if they fail to satisfy him, they will be fired and replaced by Trump's handpicked appointees.

When I read this - I was shocked.

The Immigration Court is NOT part of the judiciary. It comes under the executive branch and only adjudicates matters of administrative law. The remit of this court was historically limited to matters affecting people that turn up in immigration proceedings - i.e. asylum cases, deportation etc...  The geographical extent of their power was limited to ports of entry and specific zones where CBP or ICE had jurisdiction.

There was a reason why the Immigration Court was kept so tightly constrained - the thing is - in matters of administrative law - the appellants rights were effectively suspended pending the completion of the administrative processing. Legal experts everywhere recognized that "Administrative Law" represented a defect in the US legal system - but so long as the defect was kept confined, there was little cause to change it.

With the shift in the hiring procedures for Immigration court judges - three apparently disconnected items have shifted into a terrifying alignment.

1) The Trump Admin had recently expanded ICE/CBP jurisdiction to cover 200 miles from any border. As ICE/CBP are not limited by any of the usual probable cause ideas that limit the operations of police forces, the Fourth Amendment rights of all citizens (70% of the total US population) are effectively suspended.

2) The Real ID act allowed states a period of time in which to reach compliance of their respective State ID (Driver's licences etc...) with the Federal guidelines. Most states took their own sweet time, and as a result several high population density states have norms that lag the Federal ID standards. Citizens in these states could apply for passports and have IDs that are compliant with the Real ID act, but if they don't choose to do that, a Federal officer (such as ICE/CBP) could rule their ID insufficient to prove their citizenship. This applies equally well to naturalized or natural born citizens - all the Federal officer would need is to ask for your ID and if they didn't like you they could deem it insufficient proof of your citizenship and take you into custody as a suspected illegal immigrant.

3) Once detained by the ICE/CBP officer you would be subject to the administrative processing typically adjudicated by the Immigration Court (now filled with Trump appointees) and this would completely suspend your rights pending the resolution of the process. In the event you resisted, additional charges would be applied. During the processing period - your children could be separated from you and your property seized. If you are a citizen, then if the process were to complete your citizenship would be established, but if the process doesn't complete - the likelihood of you losing your house, savings, children etc... (just like those poor folks on the Southern border right now) would increase.

Given the effort that has clearly gone into producing this complex alignment, it is unlikely anyone would do this just to harass ordinary people.

It seems to me that the only reason one would raise a parallel government like this would be do use as a weapon against the real government and judicial process.

Trump has created this parallel government with the specific aim of undermining the OSC investigation.

The OSC investigation is reaching a fork in the road. OSC Mueller has to interview Trump and Trump is dodging the request. This puts OSC Mueller in a spot, given how long this has gone on OSC Mueller has to issue a sub peona or a material witness warrant. Once that is issued, Trump will lose. If he answers the subpeona, he will be forced to tell the truth about the matter before a Grand Jury, or he will perjure himself or he will have to ignore the subpeona or request to quash it. Either ways he will validate the charge of obstruction.

This is a situation Trump cannot afford to have happen. It will put the onus on the GOP to impeach Trump before the November election. The issuing of this subpeona will be the end of Trump.

There is desperation in the Trump camp and the GOP to find out what OSC Mueller's true intentions are. Absent knowledge of these intentions, there is no likelihood that either group can chart its own political future.

That is why Peter Strzok was threatened with contempt yesterday. It was a rhetorical device used to apply pressure to the FBI.

We can expect the same from Trump's parallel government.

posted by maverick @ 11:01 AM