Tag Archives: Preserve

Humpty Dumpty Was President of U.S. 2017-2021

Leave a reply

Donald Trump, in one of his multitude of efforts through obfuscation and delay to avoid accountability for his many crimes against the nation and humanity, has stated what may be his most remarkable lie yet. In the litigation over whether he is disqualified from the Colorado ballot in 2024 due to his inciting the January 6 insurrection, Trump’s lawyers have declared that he never gave an oath to “support” the Constitution. https://tinyurl.com/3kdazbku

Here is text of the presidential swearing-in ceremony for Trump in 2017, and every other president:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, states that:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.

Trump’s Colorado filing states:

The framers excluded the office of President from Section Three purposefully. Section Three does not apply, because the presidency is not an office ‘under the United States,’ and President Trump did not take an oath ‘to support the Constitution of the United States.

From many decades of law practice in sometimes fraught circumstances, I am conscious of the pressure on lawyers to produce arguments that can strain credulity. They usually do this because they have nothing else, and the client demands they fight with anything and everything. So, they throw some legal slop at the wall and hope some of it sticks. I learned early, however, that such tactics usually do more harm than good and rarely convince experienced judges and neutral juries that an extreme position, lacking any basis in reason or precedent, should be embraced.

Here we have the former president of the United States, through his attorneys, flatly disavowing his oath of office. His lawyers are arguing, in effect, that “preserve, protect and defend” are not synonyms of “support.” In short, Trump is telling the Supreme Court,

Yes, the world saw me swear on a bible that I would preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution but that didn’t mean I support the Constitution. In fact, I don’t support the Constitution. I am opposed to the Constitution.

Now, imagine, if you can, that at his actual inauguration in 2017, Trump had placed his hand on the bible, Melania looking stricken behind him, and said to the world: “I decline to take the oath as prescribed. I don’t support the Constitution. I am opposed to the Constitution.” Imagine.

Trump’s lawyers are also arguing that the presidency is not an office “under the United States” and thus that the president is not an “officer of the United States,” as stated in the 14th Amendment, even though the president is the chief executive officer of the United States and is the repository of the “executive power” of the federal government as plainly stated in Clause 1 of Article II. By the way, this is the same Article II that Trump famously said conferred upon him the authority to “do whatever I want.” http://tinyurl.com/4jpuc2y9

The Trump position is right out of Alice in Wonderland:

When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.

Alice’s retort, you may recall, was:

The question is … whether you can make words mean different things.

Trump would say, yes, of course, I’m Donald Trump and I can say ‘yes’ and mean ‘no.’ I can bow down before foreign dictators while claiming that I courageously stood up to them. I can say something with complete seriousness and later claim I was joking if people don’t like what I said. I’m like the governor in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas who sings Side Step:

Ooh, I love to dance the little sidestep

Now they see me, now they don’t

I’ve come and gone

And ooh, I love to sweep around a wide step

Cut a little swath

And lead the people on!

Such foolishness may work in movies and childish fantasies but in the real world, Trump must be treated like an adult. He swore an oath before the world. That oath is prescribed by the Constitution. Trump may not be heard now to disavow his oath and its plain meaning. He is estopped, in the language of the law:

Estoppel is an equitable doctrine, a bar that prevents one from asserting a claim or right that contradicts what one has said or done before, or what has been legally established as true.[https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/estoppel]

It is way past time that the courts brought the hammer down on Trump’s dissembling. Special Prosecutor Jack Smith has taken a major step in that direction by seeking immediate Supreme Court review of Trump’s preposterous claim that he is absolutely immune from prosecution because he was once President of the United States.

Trump’s legal strategy has always been predicated on delay, delay, and more delay. Smith, seeing the delay strategy at work again, is calling the question whether Trump can escape responsibility for his criminal conduct. Trump is asserting something akin to the divine right of kings. But there are no kings in this country. The fate of the nation hangs on the Supreme Court’s decision. The Humpty Dumpty defense must be rejected. If not, violence may result. In 1776 and again in 1787, we said, “no more kings.” It cannot be otherwise.

Closing Note:  It appears that the Judge in the DC case has stayed the proceedings until the Trump’s claim of absolute immunity for crimes committed while president is resolved by higher courts. While expedited briefing schedules have been established, it is entirely possible that the Supreme Court will deny the government’s petition for certiorari and dump the case back to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. That court may be independently looking at Trump’s appeal anyway. Chaos reigns. More time will pass, and Trump will avoid the consequences of his preposterous legal position yet again. If so, we will move another giant step toward autocracy and the death of American democracy.

I will have more to say about this as soon as I can get through the multitude of decisions and pleadings being filed almost every day. The irony is that by committing so many crimes in so many jurisdictions, Trump has managed to create a scenario that will allow some courts to accede to his delay tactics. I will never understand why the judiciary has not taken central control of this situation rather than letting Trump’s cadre of lawyers making ludicrous arguments play the courts against each other. But that seems to be where we are.

Trump Confesses

Leave a reply

When you hire a lawyer to represent you, it is presumed that when the lawyer speaks or files pleadings in court on your behalf, he is speaking and/or presenting positions with which you concur. He is, after all and in fact and in law, your representative.

Sometimes, lawyers are forced to make arguments that seem preposterous on their face and are in fact preposterous. They normally do this when they are “out of ammunition” in the form of well-reasoned and at least plausible arguments. They do this when the client is desperate to present a defense when none exists. Those lawyers feel duty-bound to not only the zealous representation that legal ethics required of them, but, one might say, to throw something at the judicial wall and just hope against hope that it sticks.

It is thus with the latest Trump effort to escape responsibility for his treasonous insurrection against the government of the United States. Reports state that Trump’s attorneys have thrown such stuff at the wall in the Colorado case brought by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) seeking to bar him from the 2024 presidential ballot. https://www.rawstory.com/trump-wont-support-constitution/

Recall that the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits anyone who has “engaged in insurrection” against the United States from holding a civil, military, or elected office unless a two-thirds majority of the House and Senate approve. I quote the Rawstory article:

Trump’s lawyers are arguing that the specific language of the Constitution argues that this requirement only applies to people in offices who are bound to “support” the Constitution — and the presidency is not one of those offices.

“The Presidential oath, which the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment surely knew, requires the President to swear to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ the Constitution — not to ‘support’ the Constitution,” said the filing by Trump’s attorneys. “Because the framers chose to define the group of people subject to Section Three by an oath to ‘support’ the Constitution of the United States, and not by an oath to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ the Constitution, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment never intended for it to apply to the President.”

My guess is that Trump’s lawyers don’t expect the trial judge to buy this nonsense. They are instead laying the foundation for an appeal, eventually, to the U.S. Supreme Court where, they hope, the “originalist” thinkers led by Clarence Thomas will “strictly construe” the Constitutional language and hold that “support” is not the same as “preserve, protect and defend” such that the Framers left a gaping hole for people like Trump to walk through while toppling the very structure the Framers worked so hard to establish.

But, you ask, why is this argument nonsense? Here’s why.

We could go on with this for hours, but I think it suffices that Oxford Languages (the world’s leading dictionary publisher, with over 150 years of experience creating and delivering authoritative dictionaries globally in more than 50 languages) has solved the puzzle for us.

“Preserve” is defined as “maintain (something) in its original or existing state.” Synonyms include: conserve, protect, maintain, care for, take care of, look after, save, safeguard, and keep. Antonyms include: damage and neglect.

“Protect” is defined as “keep safe from harm or injury.” Synonyms include: keep safe, keep from harm, save, safeguard, shield, preserve, defend, cushion, shelter, screen, secure, fortify, guard, mount/stand guard on, watch over, look after, take care of, care for, tend, keep, mind, afford protection to, harbor, house, hedge, inoculate, insulate. Antonyms: expose, neglect, attack, harm.

Finally, “defend” means “resist an attack made on (someone or something); protect from harm or danger.” Synonyms: protect, guard, safeguard, keep from harm, preserve, secure, shield, shelter, screen, fortify, garrison, barricade, fight for, uphold, support, be on the side of, take up cudgels for, watch over, be the defender of.”  The antonym: attack.

Being my discerning readers, I know you saw “support” in the third list as a synonym of “defend.”

Even if “support” were not listed there, it is defined as “enable to function or act” and is a synonym of: help, aid, assist, contribute to, back, succor, champion, give help to, be on the side of, side with, favor, abet, aid and abet, encourage, ally oneself with, stand behind, stand up for, defend, promote (among others).

One “rule” I always tried to follow in advocacy when I was practicing law was: don’t be stupid. Trump’s lawyers must be utterly desperate to put forward the argument that the President of the United States is not obligated by his oath of office to “support” the Constitution of the United States. Of all the implausible positions advanced for him and his  many co-indicted co-conspirators, this one take the cake.

The word legerdemain leaps to mind: deception; trickery, chicanery, skulduggery, deceit, deception, artifice, cheating, dissimulation. All seem to apply nicely to Trump’s argument. I particularly like “skulduggery” but that’s just me.