It’s a bit of a roller-coaster ride on today’s BradCast. We begin with some good election and Trump Administration accountability news. But while Trump’s latest clownishly absurd attempted corruption may not ultimately work out for him, it serves as a reminder of the rough road ahead for justice and the Justice Department itself in these United States. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]
FIRST UP… Some good news…
- On Tuesday, Omaha, Nebraska‘s Republican Mayor Jean Stothert was defeated in her run for a fourth term by Democratic challenger John Ewing Jr. He will become the first Black mayor of the otherwise “red” state’s largest city. Stothert’s attempt to leverage anti-trans hate against her opponent appears to have failed to win over voters.
- That news comes on the heels of last week’s School Board elections in Texas (which we are finally catching up with today!), where book-banning, trans-hating right-wingers were voted off of School Board majorities in at least four of the largest districts in the state.
- In one of two good news updates to stories we recently covered on the show, a federal judge on Tuesday ordered some 200 federal workers fired by the Trump Administration from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) back to work. The workers ran the Coal Worker’s Heath Surveillance Program which offers health screenings to miners who may have developed incurable Black Lung disease, and helps them find safer jobs and covers health costs if they have. The judge in the case, filed by two West Virginia miners afflicted with the disease, found the Trump Administration (remember when he used to pretend to love coal miners?) had no authority to unilaterally shut down the screening program mandated by the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969. NIOSH workers were reportedly back on the job today after the U.S. District Judge issued her order yesterday.
- And, in another happy follow-up story, facing a lawsuit from farmers and First Amendment advocates, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) agreed to restore years of critical climate change date — relied on by farmers and many others — to its website, after disappearing it shortly after Trump took office.
THEN… I don’t know if we should consider it “good news” or not, but it certainly looks like Trump’s plan to accept a tricked-out $400 million “flying palace” jumbo jet as a “gift” from the Royal Family of Qatar, for use as Air Force One while in office and for his own personal use thereafter, ain’t gonna work out for him.
Despite his loyalist Attorney General Pam Bondi — formerly, a $115,000/month lobbyist for Qatar — pronouncing that the “gift” would be neither a bribe nor a violation of the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause, banning gifts “of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State” to public officials, it appears she’s only half right about that.
We’re joined today by our old friend RANDALL D. ELIASON, former chief of the Fraud and Public Corruption section at the DoJ’s U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. He is now a professor of white-collar criminal law at George Washington University and writes at his own SidebarsBlog, where he wrote about much of this today.
He explains that, thanks to recent rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court, public officials may, in fact, now accept “gifts” of any size or amount from anybody, without violating current bribery statutes, so long as the official does not offer anything in return. Yes, it’s as ridiculous as it sounds. Eliason describes it as “absurd…but that’s the Supreme Court’s concept of corruption” now.
“The Supreme Court, over the last couple of decades, has narrowed public corruption laws so much that there’s a strict requirement now of a link to a particular official act that you can identify and say this gift was because Trump agreed to do this in exchange,” he tells me. “They could give him $400 million cash in his own bank account, and that’s not a bribe anymore, unless they can link it to something he agreed to do in exchange.”
“The fact is, the way the Supreme Court has interpreted bribery, it should be a bribe, but it’s not, unless there was some agreement we don’t know about by Trump to do something in particular in exchange. If it’s just to cozy up to him, curry favor with him in general, because they are hoping for future things to happen, that’s not a bribe.”
“There’s no question this is corrupt,” he makes clear, “as most of us understand the term,” but not a bribe. “Congress could have stepped in to amend those laws, but they haven’t done that, for some surprising reason.”
Trump’s violation of the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause, on the other hand, with acceptance of a “flying palace”, would be a different matter, Eliason agrees. Though the question becomes: who exactly has the legal standing to challenge that violation in a court of law?
“I think the bigger picture is that we can’t rely on lawsuits to solve this problem,” he argues. “It’s going to take too long and get bogged down again. If there’s going to be a response, it needs to be a political one. It needs to be enough people standing up and objecting and putting pressure on him that he cancels the deal. And ultimately the voters have to respond.”
Much more on all of that today along with Eliason’s reflections on what has happened to his beloved DoJ and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. where used to work, soon to be led, most likely, by Fox News’ whacked out “Judge” Jeanine Pirro — and whether all of it can be put back together again when this madness ends…presuming it does.
“What’s happening at Justice is terrible, and it’s heartbreaking,” he laments. “It violates everything that DOJ has stood for, for decades. They are pushing people out for doing nothing more than doing their jobs. Or those people are leaving, because they can’t honorably stay there and do what they are being asked to do.”
What would he have done had he still been at the DOJ under Trump? And will the institution be salvageable after this? Tune for his thoughts and insight on all that and much more…
“There’s no question this is corrupt,” he makes clear, “as most of us understand the term,” but not a bribe. “Congress could have stepped in to amend those laws, but they haven’t done that, for some surprising reason.”
(Here Come De Conservative Judges, Monday, March 16, 2009).
That plush, $400-million aircraft is even more posh than reported.
The secret state-of-the-art spying/eavesdropping gear that is embedded in the jet is probably worth well over $50-million all by itself! (ok, just a guess)
Gosh. I wonder if it has a secret destruct device(!!?).
Gotta’ watch those pesky Qataris.