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Donald Trump has ordered his subordinates to break the law in order to help his reelection campaign and promised to pardon them if they ever face prosecution. And yes, we’re all losing our capacity for outrage after 32 months of dozen-a-day dumpster fires. But this particular conflagration is a big one, so let’s not allow exhaustion to turn it into a one-day story. Because this is very, very bad.
At countless pitchfork MAGA rallies, candidate Trump stood at the podium and promised to build a wall on the southern border. He promised that Mexico would pay for it, too, but no one talks about that now. Maybe it’s going on China’s tab along with the tariffs, who knows?
The Washington Post reports that the President “directed aides to fast-track billions of dollars’ worth of construction contracts, aggressively seize private land and disregard environmental rules.” Eminent domain litigation can drag on for years, but Trump ordered his subordinates to just “take the land.” Which sounds illegal — because it is — but the President waved away those pesky concerns about future prosecution saying, “Don’t worry, I’ll pardon you,” to subordinates hung up on sissy stuff like knowingly violating multiple federal statutes.
He’s not even pretending this has anything to do with effective immigration enforcement. Trump has been told repeatedly that the $3.6 billion in defense spending he’s about steal after shouting “National Emergency” would be more effectively spent by ramping up immigration and deportation spending. But then Trump shut down his critics by noting the “loud cheers the wall brought at rallies,” and so our nation’s laws must yield to the MAGA applause-o-meter.
Timing is of the essence, of course, with voters heading to the polls in just 14 months. CBP officials told the US Army Corps last week that the new sections of Trump’s border wall must “completed before the next presidential election.” And if they have to violate the Administrative Procedures Act to do it, Trump will be more than willing to retroactively bless it by abusing his constitutional pardon power.
Trump also has many #Thoughts on the construction process. The entire wall is to be painted black, in accordance with the Mad King’s latest whim, despite the fact that this will increase the cost by $70 to $133 million. And the anti-climbing plates had to go after the President declared them unsightly, replaced by sharpened spikes the better to impale our enemies upon, one assumes. Oh, and Trump is leaning hard on the Army Corps to award contracts to North Dakota-based Fisher Industries, a company supported by his ally Sen. Kevin Cramer. Because when you’re this deep into corruption and lawlessness, what’s a little more blatant cronyism among friends.
So the construction equipment is rolling into environmentally sensitive areas because the President waived environmental impact studies due to the very serious emergency, and the Post reports that “CBP has suggested no longer writing risk-assessment memos ‘related to the fact that we don’t have real estate rights and how this will impact construction.’” How does one assess the risk of a blatantly unlawful government seizure of hundreds of parcels of privately owned real estate? Probably best to skip it entirely.
The White House is pushing back against the Post story, criticizing reporters for being such humorless losers who can’t even take a joke. Because who wouldn’t laugh if the Commander in Chief issued an unlawful order and then promised to make the consequence disappear like magic? LOL, that there is comedy gold!
Or maybe the Washington Post made the whole thing up, desperate for copy because they can’t get any of the consummate professionals staffing the White House to leak embarrassing details about the Maniac in Chief.
Except, whoops, CNN just confirmed the Post’s reporting that Trump dangled pardons to induce CBP employees to break the law. And Donald Trump would never, ever stoop to watching FAKE NEWS CNN, but five minutes after the broadcast, he was out there denying it again.
Who ya gonna believe, Donald Trump or your lyin’ eyes?
Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.