DORIAN GRAY AT JUSTICE

When loyalty to a president eclipses loyalty to the Constitution. The Rule of Law cannot survive if its chief guardian becomes its chief betrayer.

The Attorney General stands closer than almost any public official to the living machinery of the Constitution. When that office is perceived as an instrument of personal or political loyalty rather than impartial justice, the damage extends far beyond one administration and strikes at the public’s faith in the Rule of Law itself.

Todd Blanche will have to look in the mirror one day and when he does the wrenching history of his infidelity to the Constitution and to our republic will look back at him, reminiscent of Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, and remind him of who he really was - and by extension - the man he could have been.

Of the many presidentially appointed positions, cabinet officers and the heads of agencies critically important to the national security of the United States and the well being of the American people, there are a handful who stand apart for their unparalleled power. Among them, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of (now) War, Health and Human Services, and a number of others whose influence on the quality of our lives are felt every day. But at the top, there is the singular power of the Attorney General. This person’s grip on one of the most fundamental bricks in the foundational structure of our union—the Rule of Law—is virtually uncontested within our system, and it reigns supreme from coast to coast as well as in many respects beyond. He is a figure who only the judiciary, in particular the highest courts in the land, have the capacity to challenge.

You may think the Secretary of State should be up there too, as that figure ranks, protocol-wise, ahead of the Secretary of War and only under the Vice President. But the view of those two secretaries is outward, into the world. They seek to balance the strength of our national defense and relations with the world, and they look after the state of readiness of the tools we have in the national arsenal that are designed to protect us from external threats.

You can also turn your attention to the Department of Homeland Security for a moment: it is supposed to be our guardian angel, eyes inward but importantly, fed with threats that come here from intelligence. But DHS is still subject to American law and it is architecturally subordinate to those in our government who enforce the law and to whom its conduct is accountable.

The Attorney General is the person to whom DHS, and in many respects every other senior official of the government, must answer; he sits atop the Constitution. The President, Vice President, Speaker of the House and Leader of the Senate Majority all conveniently shift aside when it comes to enforcing the law, it is the AG and the sprawling department of thousands of lawyers and committed civil servants that labor under his direct command who sit collectively at the right hand of the US Constitution. In a very real sense the Constitution is the AG’s guide book, a book of law and a Jiminy Cricket, perched on his shoulder as a whispered voice of probity, honor and virtue, who keep the AG and his DOJ on target, faithful and earnestly dedicated to our principles. The outrages of the President, be they loosed here or abroad, or the national embarrassments at his hand, or the loss of American stature and influence, not to mention respect, should not be permitted to block out the frightening fact that the laws of our country, their fair and just enforcement, are in the hands of a man who is demonstrably a sold-and-paid-for soul, a robotic praetorian chieftain who dispenses investigations, charges, and collects indictments at will and at the direction of a demented chief executive.

No doubt Todd Blanche will one day attempt to field the defense “I was just following orders…”. Inevitably it will happen when the time comes for him to answer for his actions as Trump’s hangman and for undertaking the final stages of transitioning the DOJ from its role as the administrator of justice to that of a junta of henchmen who follow the orders of an ever dissipating mind.

Does the AG not know that the chair he occupies is a temporary thing? Granted, it will take years to put DOJ and other institutions which have been trashed by Mr. Trump with the connivance of the Republican caucuses in the House and Senate, to put back together again. But does he really believe that he will enjoy the protection of Trump and others when the inevitable end to this shameful chapter is at last upon us? He may think he’ll be able to land a seven figure job as general counsel in the board room of some former Trump donor or deep-pocketed K Street law firm after they all make a discreet exit into political obscurity when Trump is at last driven out. That kind of escape cannot be ruled out. But does Blanche tell himself at night, as he tries to fall asleep, that he will walk out of DOJ with his head high or that his wife and children will be able to find welcoming friends among the discriminating or compatriots and be able to luxuriate in the common bond of pride knowing that their father and husband played a key role in attempting to dismember and reconstruct the republic?