“In the year 2525 if Mike is still alive, if Big Lie can survive, they will find….”
Two whacko stories breaking today, and they’re related, so follow me now. You don’t want to get lost. The New York Times broke a story about a far-right conspiracy theory lawyer who phoned Donald Trump on Christmas day and had some wild ideas about how to subvert the election.
The lawyer, William J. Olson, was promoting several extreme ideas to the president. Mr. Olson later conceded that part of his plan could be regarded as tantamount to declaring “martial law” and that another aspect could invite comparisons with Watergate. The plan included tampering with the Justice Department and firing the acting attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, according to the Dec. 28 memo by Mr. Olson, titled “Preserving Constitutional Order.”
“Our little band of lawyers is working on a memorandum that explains exactly what you can do,” Mr. Olson wrote in his memo, obtained by The New York Times, which he marked “privileged and confidential” and sent to the president. “The media will call this martial law,” he wrote, adding that “that is ‘fake news.’”
Here’s the memo.
Here’s the bottom line: During the end of 2020, a flailing Trump, desperate to hang onto power, entertained a conclave of rogue actors and lunatics such as have never crossed the threshold of the White House before or since, or, we pray, ever again.
Now here’s the latest from Mike Lindell. Put Thursday, July 21 on your calendar. We’ll have a good laugh seeing what his excuse du jour is when whatever he’s scheming flops.
Mike Lindell says he has finally gotten a judge in AZ to look at his “evidence:” “On July 21, I’ve got a plane load of lawyers, cyber guys, experts, flying in to Arizona!” pic.twitter.com/FkPdstRyjo
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) July 16, 2022
Maybe Lindell will have everybody meet in Tombstone and have a shoot out on Main Street between JFK, Jr. and Michael Jackson. We’ll have to see. I’m expecting Cyber Symposium Redux, which means a nothing burger and Lindell losing his temper afterwards.
Lindell is great for comic relief, and so in many ways is this memo.
My favorite line in the memo is that “each public officer taking an oath to support the constitution swears he will support it as he understands it and not as it is understood by others” is straight out of Alice in Wonderland. The words mean what I want them to mean. The constitution means whatever you decide it does. And maybe you’ll decide it means something on the days it’s raining and something else on days that are clear.
Alice in Wonderland is a good note to end on, because if this nation ever went down the rabbit hole it was in 2016. And we are still fighting our way out.
Both for my service in the Marines and later on as a civilian employee (Disaster Temporary Employee for FEMA) I’ve taken the Oath of Office. (The Oath military Officers take is identical to the one ALL civilian employees take. In the military if you’re an enlisted puke there is some additional language about obeying the orders of the Officers appointed over you)
In ALL cases the first part of the Oath states: “I do solemnly swear/affirm that I will support and DEFEND (emphasis added by me) the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. That I will be true faith and allegiance to the same.”
Yes, the President and the President only takes a different Oath but the bottom line is that the central premise asshole ambulance chasing lawyer bases his argument on is BULLSHIT! Defending the Constitution by swearing an Oath is NOT unique to whomever is sworn in as President.
ALL of us swear to DEFEND as well as support the Constitution.
I’d rather have enjoyed him getting in front of a federal judge with that motion of his and trying to make his case because I’d be willing to bet that the judge could not only (as I can) recite the entire oath from memory but also cite the U.S. Code statute that spells it out in black and white. And have his/her clerk walk that particular book with that statute over to this asshat with it highlighted and tell them to read it aloud in court or be held in contempt. And ask this shitbird “Are you going to stand there in open court and tell me and every federal employee present we haven’t sworn to not only support but also DEFEND the Constitution?
People like this really, REALLY piss me off. I’d also be willing to bet a lot of the goobers out there worshipping Trump and buying Lindell’s stuff who have served in the military or even a civilian job would, upon hearing that only the President swears to defend the Constitution has some neurons start firing saying WTF? That’s not how I remember it!
The audacity of it is mindboggling. It IS out of Alice in Wonderland. I wish I could get hold of my old Constitutional Law professor. He’s a Brit and the last time I heard he was working as an instructor at Cambridge. He had a killer, pure acid wit, when he choose to employ it, and I would kill to hear his take on this psychotic interpretation of the constitution. Maybe I’ll try to write him again. I sent him an email in 2017 and haven’t heard from him.
The presidential oath of office is spelled out in the Constitution, FFS. And I think the one for Congress is, also.
As a lawyer, don’t you want to rip your hair out and run screaming reading this? That any lawyer would write this is amazing. Believe me, I knew every ambulance chaser in L.A. and nobody I knew would go near this.
According to the Senate’s own website, each Senator takes the following oath when they’re sworn into office:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”
And from the House’s website’s “History” page:
“The form of the oath has changed several times since that first act of Congress. During the Civil War, Congress mandated that the oath bar from office anyone who had been disloyal to the Union. Eventually, those elements of the “iron-clad” oath were dropped during revisions in 1868, 1871, and 1884. The oath used today has not changed since 1966 and is prescribed in Title 5, Section 3331 of the United States Code. It reads: “I, AB, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.” In contrast to the presidential oath, where it’s used only by tradition, the phrase “so help me God” has been part of the official oath of office for non-presidential offices since 1862.”
Yes, it’s true that the Constitution merely says “to support this Constitution” but the country also follows a lot of laws–firmly set in the United States Code–for which the Constitution offers mere guidelines, if it says anything at all. The Constitution, for instance, only mentions the specific crime of “treason” but the US Code mentions, and defines, other specific crimes (sexual abuse, kidnapping, arson, etc). And the Supreme Court (when it’s doing its actual job and not legislating from the bench) relies on material in the US Code to make its rulings. You’d think a “lawyer” would know this.
It’s not about facts or truth. It’s all about what you can get the rubes to believe, get angry about, and act upon. This villain is not pursuing justice – he is crafting a weapon of mass destruction.
I believe that’s referred to as “realpolitik” (for further examples, refer to McConnel, M.)