Trump's power in the rule of law has been the subject of two documentaries. The first is a special from PBS Frontline covering the first half of the documentary, "Trump's Power and the Rule of Law" and the second is a new special from the Center for American History about the first term of President Trump.
00:01:07.000So you can go to worm.org and watch it.
00:01:09.000It's Trump's power and the rule of law.
00:01:12.000This is a documentary made by Frontline.
00:01:15.000The PBS operation does all the different, you know, state of the art documentaries.
00:01:20.000They normally do a great job professionally.
00:01:22.000These are masterpieces as far as cutting, editing, camera work, interviews, etc.
00:01:27.000Obviously, it's PBS, so it always has a slant, particularly it has a particularly anti-Trump and anti-MAGA slant.
00:01:34.000That being said, this about this essential beating heart of this administration, which is about the article two powers of the president.
00:01:45.000Remember, we talked about unified executive theory that he's both CEO, commander in chief, and chief magistrate, and he is going to basically push those out in this term, and he's doing that.
00:01:57.000And that's where we have 175 or 200 court cases for the left realize, you know, action delayed is action denied, and they've been very smart about doing this.
00:02:06.000So this is what this whole battle is about, and now you see the historic way they've kind of put it in context.
00:02:11.000It's quite powerful, and they reached out, and they have the voices that they should.
00:02:16.000They have, like, Mike Davis is all over this, Megyn Kelly, myself, others, and of course, a number of people from the center left and from the left.
00:02:23.000And so I think you get a pretty good perspective.
00:02:25.000It helps you, as war room watchers, you know the fights you've gone through, so now you're seeing how the other side presents it.
00:02:31.000I think it's a very powerful tool for you, a very powerful lesson in what we call narrative warfare.
00:02:38.000And so we're going to continue with the second part all the way through of Trump's power in the rule of law.
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00:03:00.000This special from PBS is about the age of Trump and, quite frankly, the intellectual framework of his second term, which is so powerful.
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00:03:29.000Okay, we're going to take off now with the second part of Trump's power in the rule of law from PBS Frontline.
00:03:38.000Outside Washington, Trump was also exercising power over the DOJ, targeting its most prominent office in New York City.
00:03:48.000There are 93 U.S. students across the country.
00:03:54.000But the Southern District of New York is the most prominent in the country, often called the Sovereign District.
00:04:01.000Because for so long, the Southern District has acted with a kind of independence from Maine Justice in D.C. that other offices have only dreamed of matching.
00:04:11.000The case, the prosecution of New York City's Democratic mayor, Eric Adams.
00:04:18.000The charges against Eric Adams were brought by the Southern District of New York.
00:04:23.000I think it's the first time that there's been a federal indictment against a sitting mayor of New York City.
00:04:30.000And charged with corruption charges, with bribery, all high profile.
00:04:38.000And Eric Adams went down to Mar-a-Lago to appeal to Trump.
00:04:43.000And his lawyers made a case to the new team at the Justice Department that this case was interfering with Eric Adams' ability to help Trump in his mass deportation agenda.
00:04:59.000The deal that they came up with was one of the most transparent quid pro quos that you could possibly imagine.
00:05:07.000We made a deal to drop this prosecution, and in exchange, he's going to help us.
00:05:13.000Emil Bove, the Acting Deputy Attorney General, sent a memorandum that the case should be dismissed so that Mayor Adams could help the President achieve his immigration agenda in New York City.
00:05:25.000The pending prosecution has unduly restricted Mayor Adams' ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime.
00:05:34.000And that's as nakedly political rationale as you could imagine.
00:05:38.000What it says is that because Mayor Adams has said he's supporting the President's immigration agenda, he doesn't get prosecuted.
00:05:46.000But presumably, if he had been an opponent of the President's immigration agenda, he would have been prosecuted.
00:05:53.000Beauvais' memo went straight to the desk of Acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon.
00:05:59.000Danielle Sassoon, who had been appointed by Trump, a conservative attorney, member of the Federalist Society, clerked for Supreme Court Justice Scalia.
00:06:10.000She tried to convince DOJ, appealing directly and sort of going around Beauvais to Bondi and saying, this is not how criminal laws should be used.
00:06:20.000The reasons advanced by Mr. Beauvais for dismissing the indictment are not ones I can in good faith defend.
00:06:27.000That's when the issue catapulted into national prominence.
00:06:31.000It's when conservative lawyers and the Department of Justice objected to this because they knew, they knew what this was.
00:06:38.000They knew this was a quid pro quo and that was deeply unethical.
00:06:42.000Because the law does not support a dismissal, I cannot agree to seek a dismissal driven by improper considerations.
00:06:49.000Very truly yours, Danielle R. Sassoon.
00:06:53.000Danielle Sassoon was not the kind of person who you would have thought was going to stand up to Donald Trump, at least not politically.
00:07:01.000But she believed in the rule of law and she saw this as a corruption and she said, I want no part of it.
00:07:08.000Bondi refused to even meet with Sassoon.
00:07:12.000In her letter, Danielle had said, if you're not going to meet with me, if you're not going to reconsider this, then I will resign.
00:07:19.000She then got a letter from Beauvais, which said, OK, I accept your resignation.
00:07:25.000The Justice Department will not tolerate the insubordination and apparent misconduct reflected in the approach that you and your office have taken in this matter.
00:07:34.000I would say to Danielle Sassoon and the others that they work for the deputy attorney general, who works for the attorney general, who works for the president, who's elected by all Americans.
00:07:47.000And if you don't like that, then get out of the Justice Department.
00:11:37.000The great challenge confronting a conservative president
00:11:40.000is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch.
00:11:45.000He told us quite explicitly he wants to search out for pockets of independence from presidential control and stamp them out.
00:11:54.000He's made no secret of the fact that he wants to wrest for the presidency more power over spending decisions away from Congress.
00:12:03.000Trump and people around him understand what we have to do to get back to a constitutional republic.
00:12:08.000We're going after the infrastructure and the plumbing and the wiring of the whole system.
00:12:15.000We are not going to quit. We're not going to surrender. We're not going to take our foot off the gas pedal.
00:12:20.000Now with Russell Vogt, the head of the powerful Office of Management and Budget,
00:12:26.000Trump would take on departments Congress had authorized and funded,
00:12:30.000starting with the agency that handled foreign aid, USAID.
00:12:36.000President Donald Trump is calling for USAID to be shut down,
00:12:39.000calling the organization that delivers aid to people around the world corrupt.
00:12:43.000Many people see as frivolous if not outright wasteful spending.
00:12:47.000Shutdown of USAID could mean less medicine for the sick and less food for starving families, including babies.
00:12:54.000This is a power grab. You're watching the presidency turned into something much more imperial than we've seen for a very long time and maybe ever.
00:13:06.000The Trump administration's efforts to reshape the federal government and its workforce.
00:13:10.000USAID's workforce will be whittled down from about 14,000 employees to fewer than 300, a 98% cut.
00:13:19.000Large chunks of USAID employees were placed on administrative leave and cut off from agency, email systems, and other databases.
00:13:28.000We had hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in play around the world in ongoing programs.
00:15:03.000And the agency exists and then has to discharge the responsibilities that Congress has given it.
00:15:09.000So, when the president tries just to shut down an agency that has statutory responsibilities,
00:15:16.000that will in many cases be inconsistent with the law.
00:15:21.000What's the point of having the authority to enact laws, which is Congress's big power,
00:15:27.000if the president can then disregard whatever they enact?
00:15:33.000Go back to the unitary theory of the executive.
00:15:36.000The president of the United States, as chief executive, has the ability to make personnel decisions and to fire anybody.
00:15:43.000You don't have permanent employment in the federal government.
00:15:46.000USAID was a perfect political target from their point of view.
00:15:51.000A lot of Americans don't feel all that aggrieved by that.
00:15:54.000And so, yeah, it was a test case and wanted to see how far he could go.
00:16:01.000As he cleared the ranks at USAID, there was one more target, the agency's independent watchdog.
00:16:08.000I, too, received the two-sentence email thanking me for my service but dismissing me as inspector general.
00:16:15.000Dear Paul, on behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as inspector general is terminated effective immediately.
00:16:42.000He was like, yeah, I'm not going to do that.
00:16:44.000From agencies all over Washington, 17 other inspectors general were purged.
00:16:51.000The inspector general community has been a concept created by Congress to help Congress and the administration conduct meaningful, effective oversight of federal taxpayer spending and executive branch agencies.
00:17:11.000When you dismiss 17 inspector generals, you've turned the system on its head.
00:17:17.000The role of inspector general was created by Congress in response to the Watergate scandal.
00:17:23.000And often Congress will ask IG offices to conduct investigations that Congress doesn't have the staff or the power or the ability to do because they're not housed inside these agencies.
00:17:34.000So firing the IGs isn't just about creating a less transparent government, but also really cuts off a channel to Congress.
00:17:43.000These inspector generals are a great example of these Watergate reforms that try to chip away at the unitary executive.
00:17:51.000If the president can't fire them, then they don't have to listen to the president.
00:17:56.000They don't have to take orders or direction from the president.
00:17:59.000And that I think is really an affront to the idea of a unitary executive.
00:18:03.000What he's doing is systematically removing any instrument of independent accountability in the government.
00:18:13.000If Congress was healthy at all, it should rise up and say, our creations, we're going to protect our creations.
00:18:22.000There really is no dissent, certainly within the Republican Party, which is what controls Washington.
00:18:30.000Lawmakers are almost uniformly aligned behind the president right now.
00:18:34.000And they also see that there's almost no upside to being publicly critical of the president.
00:18:40.000This is not a usurpation of authority in any way. It's not a power grab.
00:18:45.000I think they're doing what we've all expected and hoped and asked that they would do.
00:18:49.000Congress under the Constitution has plenty of authority to fight for itself.
00:18:54.000The founders wanted the president and Congress to fight.
00:18:59.000What they did not anticipate was political parties.
00:19:02.000The reason why Congress isn't fighting now, if people want Congress to fight more,
00:19:07.000is that Congress is controlled by the same party as the president.
00:19:10.000Congress, the majority of the House and Senate, probably agree with what the president's doing.
00:19:15.000President Donald Trump is delivering on his promise to shake up the status quo in Washington.
00:19:20.000I think all of us believe that we want to be good partners in making sure that the agenda that he campaigned on,
00:19:26.000in which the American people voted for, is accomplished and delivered on.
00:19:31.000The fact that the Congress of the United States is silent is unforgivable.
00:19:39.000The system created under the Constitution was one of separated powers,
00:19:44.000under which each branch serves as a check and balance on the other branches.
00:19:56.000Right now in America, one could not say that we have the separation of powers
00:20:03.000that was envisioned by our founders and written into the Constitution of the United States.
00:20:11.000Without a functioning Congress, without an independent Justice Department,
00:20:24.000without inspectors general watching things,
00:20:27.000literally the only real check on a president's power at this point would be the courts.
00:20:34.000It would be up to the lawyers to confront Trump.
00:20:38.000When I saw the dismantling of USAID, I said,
00:20:43.000I'm going to sue, I'm going to go to court, I'm going to file a case,
00:20:48.000I'm going to argue this is against the Constitution.
00:20:51.000It's against what Congress has commanded.
00:20:54.000No element of Donald Trump's attacks are going to go unmet.
00:21:01.000We're going to litigate it and win, and we did.
00:21:04.000President Trump was dealt not one, but three legal defeats in the span of just 90 minutes yesterday.
00:21:10.000The legal challenges to the president's efforts to reshape the government mounting.
00:21:15.000In the first months of the Trump administration, at this point there's almost 200 lawsuits that are on file.
00:21:22.000And whether it's Democratic or Republican judges who are deciding them,
00:21:27.000Donald Trump is losing the majority of the time.
00:21:31.000The battle's significantly slowing down the president's efforts to downsize the government.
00:22:48.000The power of what President Trump did.
00:22:51.000I was stunned of how brilliantly thoughtful it was.
00:22:56.000What the firms need to understand is that if I were their clients, I would probably find new attorneys.
00:23:04.000Because if you've made it on one of these lists, you're probably not going to get a very good reception at the Trump administration for the next four years.
00:23:11.000The law firm of Jenner and Block, this is a law firm that, as you know, employed Andrew Weissman after he came off of the Mueller investigation.
00:23:20.000He is one of a number of reasons that we believe this executive order is warranted.
00:23:29.000That is saying that I'm going to target you if you take positions and bring cases in front of judges.
00:23:38.000In order to have a functioning judiciary, you need to have lawyers who don't feel threatened by bringing good faith litigation.
00:23:46.000This is an executive order that takes certain measures against Sussman Godfrey, given their previous activities.
00:23:52.000These attacks on the nation's law firms are intended to put the individual firms out of business.
00:24:01.000But then larger, to send a message to the nation's 1.2 million lawyers that they better never take a case representing a client against Donald Trump and his administration.
00:24:32.000But the vast majority of the country's largest law firms stayed silent.
00:24:37.000Some firms fighting back, while others are bending the knee to Trump.
00:24:41.000By and large, the legal industry has kind of folded.
00:24:44.000These orders are certainly unlawful, and a judge has already said so.
00:24:49.000But it's very difficult for courts to really remedy the situation.
00:24:54.000Because at the end of the day, even when a court says that an order like this is unlawful, everybody still knows that the law firm is persona non grata, in fact toxic, inside the administration.
00:25:11.000Several of the firms have come to the White House seeking a way to avoid punishment.
00:25:16.000Paul Weiss now reaching a deal with the president to get the president to drop the executive order against the firm.
00:25:23.000After that was sent, they collapsed in their opposition.
00:25:27.000And here's what I tell people, they're not that powerful.
00:25:31.000This whole system has been so powerful and so overwhelming, they cratered the most powerful law firms in the country.
00:25:37.000The word that largely defines the response is capitulation.
00:25:41.000Five more law firms have now struck deals with the Trump administration.
00:25:46.000It sent a message to the administration that this works, meaning do it again.
00:25:54.000The law firms claimed the deals didn't threaten their independence, and denied there were payoffs to Trump.
00:26:01.000Have you noticed that lots of law firms have been signing up with Trump?
00:26:06.000They give you $100 million, and then they announce that, but we have done nothing wrong.
00:26:11.000And I agree, they've done nothing wrong.
00:26:12.000Well, what the hell? They give me a lot of money, considering they've done nothing wrong.
00:26:17.000Altogether, they agreed to give nearly $1 billion in legal services to causes that the firms and Trump support.
00:26:26.000All in an effort to sort of appease him and keep him from criticizing them or targeting them.
00:26:31.000I want these lawyers to understand that this is not the George W. Bush Republican Party.
00:26:37.000We're not going to turn the other cheek.
00:26:40.000The American people elected President Trump with a broad mandate.
00:26:46.000This July, there is a global summit of BRICS nations in Rio de Janeiro, the block of emerging superpowers, including China, Russia, India, and Persia, are meeting with the goal of displacing the United States dollar as the global currency.
00:27:19.000As BRICS nations push forward with their plans, global demand for U.S. dollars will decrease, bringing down the value of the dollar in your savings.
00:27:27.000While this transition won't not happen overnight, but trust me, it's going to start in Rio.
00:27:33.000The Rio Reset in July marks a pivotal moment when BRICS objectives move decisively from a theoretical possibility towards an inevitable reality.
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00:39:07.380Judge Boesberg said, slow down, temporary restraining order, let's figure out, let's freeze the status quo into place, let's figure out whether this is legal or not.
00:39:19.060You need to turn those planes around, bring these people back to the United States.
00:39:23.280And the Trump administration did not turn the planes around.
00:39:32.180They handed more than 100 people off to a prison in El Salvador.
00:39:36.880So that raises the question, not only was this legal to do in the first place, but did they violate a court order?
00:39:45.380Virtually all presidents throughout history have acknowledged that you have to obey court orders, that if you disagree with a court order, it's not optional to refuse to comply with it.
00:40:00.940It's very close to just the kind of clash that everybody's fearing between the executive branch and the judicial branch.
00:40:12.520It seems possible that for the first time in the United States' history, a president might just say, he's not going to listen to the courts.
00:40:23.160I'm happy those planes landed in El Salvador because the president had a constitutional duty to ignore that lawless and dangerous order and land those planes in El Salvador.
00:40:35.300This Boesberg, the clown, thinks he's the commander-in-chief.
00:40:39.160He thinks he can order the president to turn around military planes carrying terrorists.
00:40:46.020What the hell is Jeb Boesberg thinking that he thinks he can expose and sabotage an ongoing military operation?
00:40:54.500Judge Boesberg does not have the jurisdiction to do what he did.
00:40:58.220He did not have the power to do what he did, and what he did was lawless.
00:41:01.400The judge in this case is essentially trying to say that the president doesn't have the executive authority to deport foreign terrorists from our American soil.
00:41:12.600Judge Boesberg fired back, ruling there was probable cause the administration was guilty of criminal contempt.
00:41:37.700A federal judge appointed by President Trump blocked the administration from summarily removing migrants in South Texas.
00:41:44.320Finding the administration was violating people's due process rights.
00:41:48.060A federal judge says the Trump administration violated a court order for again sending migrants to a country they're not from without due process.
00:41:56.540The Trump administration is now formally complying with the Supreme Court order to bring back Abrego Garcia.
00:42:03.000This is a victory for due process. It's a victory for the Constitution.
00:42:08.280The American public may not even know it as due process.
00:42:12.120But they know that whenever the government comes against them, whether it be in a criminal proceeding, a civil proceeding, where the government intends to take away your property or your liberty, that you're entitled to be heard.
00:42:29.140The Trump administration does not want to give those people the opportunity simply to make their case to the federal government that they're not members of the gang at all.
00:42:47.400That's about as rudimentary and fundamental to America as anything that I can conceive of.
00:42:55.560Despite the challenges, Trump and his team haven't let up.
00:43:01.580And the question should be, why is a judge trying to protect terrorists who have invaded our country over American citizens?
00:43:09.560The broadest theme that arises from it is a White House that is unafraid to provoke legal challenges and enjoys the fight as an end to itself.
00:43:25.180Is not embarrassed by the prospect that it might be accused of doing something illegal, but revels in it.
00:43:31.180We're not stopping. I don't care what the judges think. I don't care what the left thinks. We're coming.
00:43:35.740I deplore the rhetoric that suggests that anyone in the government doesn't have to follow the Constitution or the laws or obey court orders.
00:43:46.440I think it would be a dangerous path for our country if any president starts saying they're going to act outside the Constitution.
00:43:54.420And so I hope it's just careless rhetoric.
00:43:56.560We have bad judges. We have very bad judges. And these are judges that shouldn't be allowed.
00:44:02.420I think they, I think at a certain point you have to start looking at what do you do when you have a rogue judge.
00:44:08.260The Trump administration is escalating its fight with federal judges.
00:44:12.160Trump suggested that the judges, including one he appointed, were backroom hustlers.
00:44:17.420He went after the Federalist Society, a longtime ally that had helped him select judicial appointments.
00:44:23.900Why is he attacking the Federalist Society when it was an ally in the first term?
00:45:11.620This is unequivocally, indisputably, an attack by the president on the independence of the federal judiciary, pure and simple.
00:45:26.920Amidst the attacks, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued an extraordinary rebuke to the president.
00:45:33.180Even Chief Justice John Roberts, who doesn't enter the political fray very often, felt compelled within hours to put out his own statement saying,
00:45:51.660you don't agree with his ruling, you go to the appeals court, you don't like the appeals court, you come to me, the Supreme Court, and we'll deal with it.
00:45:58.440What he did there was lay down a marker.
00:46:01.540Because what he said is, this isn't about Judge Bosberg.
00:46:04.260It's not about a rogue judge the way the president would like it to be.
00:46:24.280And when judges take off their judicial robes and climb into the political arena and throw political punches, they can expect political counterpunches.
00:46:36.400And so it's probably not a good idea for judges to make political statements like he does.
00:46:43.740Now, Chief Justice Roberts, who had written that pivotal presidential immunity decision a year before, is the face of a court at a crossroads.
00:46:54.280It's a little bit hard to reconcile Justice Roberts, who has claimed to stand for the balance of powers in our system, with the same man who wrote this decision granting Donald Trump's sweeping unfettered power.
00:47:10.760And now it seems to me that with many of these actions that Trump is undertaking, he's seeking to test the Supreme Court.
00:47:43.840Chief Justice Roberts is on the hot seat because the judiciary doesn't have the powers of the purse and it doesn't have an army.
00:47:54.380So the only thing it has is its own legitimacy.
00:47:58.540And so they don't want to be in a position where they make a decision and Trump defies it.
00:48:05.180The president has acted as prosecutor and judge, but he's going to have to understand at the end of the day that for the federal judiciary to yield to him,
00:48:19.640would literally be to surrender its constitutional role to Donald Trump, that's simply never going to happen.
00:48:46.600But the president and his advisers are betting that the Supreme Court will see it otherwise.
00:48:55.520They want to get a lot of these challenges into the courts because they believe that the Supreme Court, with a conservative 6-3 makeup,
00:49:04.500is a more friendly place to wager some of these fights over executive power.
00:49:08.320And I think that a lot of the people around the president have a higher degree of confidence now
00:49:14.400that the Supreme Court will rule in their favor and ultimately codify the expanse of presidential power.
00:50:00.960The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration's efforts to deport migrants to third countries.
00:50:06.180The White House is claiming victory after the Supreme Court allowed the White House to move forward with the mass layoffs of federal workers.
00:50:14.560The battle here may on the face be between Trump versus the courts or Trump versus the rule of law.
00:50:20.920But this is the battle for what is going to be normal in America.