Never let it be said that Democrat politicians aren't consistent; when they can't win by the rules, they try to change the rules. In the latest example of this, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) has penned a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, asking that the Justice Department rescind a bunch of opinions on the presidential authority over the military.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is urging the Department of Justice (DOJ) to rescind a number of internal opinions dealing with a president’s military powers while asking for clarification on domestic use of America’s forces.
The letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland comes less than two weeks before President-elect Trump is set to take office and asks the Justice Department to make clear the bounds of the president’s authority on a number of fronts.
The letter, obtained by The Hill, refers to a cache of opinions crafted by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), which houses the department’s own legal advisers and sets guidelines on various legal matters.
That sounds a bit arcane, and it likely is; the president, as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, should take the word of the Constitution first and foremost. But, yes, everything is (tiresomely at times) subject to legal interpretation. What's interesting here is that Durbin is asking the DOJ to rescind opinions that he evidently agreed with while Joe Biden was president.
Did you hear that scraping sound? That's the sound of goalposts being moved.
Durbin asked the office to release its opinions on the extent to which presidents can use the military domestically, a request that comes as Trump has said he will use the armed forces to help carry out the largest deportation operation the country has seen.
“I request that the Department of Justice publicly release opinions and manuals pertaining to the domestic use of the U.S. military. For decades, OLC has issued guidance on the circumstances in which the President may deploy the military within the United States, as well as what servicemembers may do when so deployed,” he wrote, noting that some of those documents have not been made public.
Since the President-elect is talking about using the military for logistics, not directly engaging with illegal border crossers, it would seem that Durbin's concerns would be pre-empted. But I don't think that's what's happening here. Durbin is asking the DOJ to throw chocks under the wheels of the incoming Trump administration by pushing the revision of legal opinions to which he had no objection two months ago.
That's not transparency. That's changing the rules in mid-game because his side was losing.
See Related: Smear Merchant Dick Durbin Is Back Smearing Clarence Thomas Through His Wife
There have been a number of attempts to hamstring the incoming Trump administration, many of those attempts coming from the Biden administration itself. One wonders if, on January 20th, the incoming Trump team will find all the "Ts" removed from computer keyboards; I seem to remember another outgoing Democrat administration pulling that childish trick.
Trump has waffled on his feelings about NATO, musing about withdrawing from the military alliance during his first term in office even though as recently as Tuesday he floated that member nations should spend 5 percent of their economic output on military spending rather than the current 2 percent.
At the same press conference, Trump also wouldn’t rule out using military force in Greenland, a NATO member, and Panama.
Except that's not what Trump was asked. The interview, as transcribed by The Hill in the article linked, gives the relevant question and answer:
New York Times reporter David Sanger questioned the president-elect on if he can “assure the world” that “you are not going to use military or economic coercion.”
“No,” Trump replied.
Military or economic coercion. That's an important distinction.
But back to Dick Durbin's request. It's unlikely anything will come from it; for one thing, the Garland DOJ is fast running out of time and they know it; the career bureaucrats in DOJ are worried about, as someone once pithily put it, their phony-baloney jobs. Garland will be exiting the building in less than two weeks. It's unlikely they will be taking up the revision of arcane legal opinions regarding the use of the military at this late date. And, as of this date, the Justice Department has acknowledged receipt of Durbin's letter, but there is no evidence they have taken any action.
Dick Durbin, of course, knows this. He is grandstanding.
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