“Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship.” ― Bruce Coville

By Glen Reaux

In the ultimate act of obstruction-of-justice, Donald Trump, on April 24^th announced: “We’re fighting all subpoenas!”  This exclamation basically says that in his “big brain” the so-called-president believes that he is above the law.  Additionally, he also has stated that he is claiming executive privilege over all materials related to the Mueller investigation, even the redacted report that was released to the public by Trump Attorney General William Barr.  To further obstruct justice, wanna-be King, “big brain” Donald Trump has told all individuals under his administration not to comply with any subpoenas issued by the House.  Basically saying, these people are the loyal subjects of my kingdom.  With these actions, Donald Trump Announces I Cannot Be Investigate: I’m Above the Law.”  These are my loyal subjects and I am the power over these minions.  This declaration shockingly says to the world, the American people and the U.S. Congress, that he is King Donald Trump and all of you can go to hell.  So just tear-up the constitution.  It means nothing to him.

These are the rantings of a desperate individual that obviously has horrible legal counsel, or is suffering from paranoia, delusions of grandeur due to his “big brain”, psychopathy or possibly all of the above.  In America, there can be no other explanation for such public behavior.  Despite these possible explanations for this behavior, there is nothing that can justify it.  In a normal world, Republican leaders would be meeting behind closed doors at this very moment discussing the use of the 25^th Amendment as a means of ousting the so-called-president to save the party.  But, this is not a normal world.  This is Trump-land and Mitch McConnell and the rest of Trump’s loyal minions are circling the wagons in defense of their King as if he were “Felonious Gru”, the evil super villain from the animated kids movies Despicable Me and Minions.  This is unprecedented in this country or was until now.  Perhaps this is the new normal where tyranny and lawlessness rule the land in a cartoonish fashion.  After all, this is Trump-land.

However, there are striking similarities between Felonious Gru and King Donald.  Gru and Trump are both on a mission to conquer and subjugate the world.  Like Gru, in-spite-of the loyalty and ingenuity of his minions, Trump always screws up the plan.  Like Gru, Trumps always strong-arms his minions.  Like Gru, Trump believes that he is the best in his field.  As evidenced by the recent release of his tax returns, Trumps is not the successful businessman that he professes to be.  Likewise, Gru is as successful at being a supervillain as Trump is at business.  The two have a lot in common.  However, unlike Trump, when confronted with children Gru has a soft spot, shows compassion and eventually gives in to the wishes and needs of the children.  In the end, Gru, the children and minions live happily ever after.   In the case of King Donald, he has taken away the healthcare of children, is working hard to strip them of welfare and social security survivor-benefits and is infamous for defying the law by separating children from their parents and herding children into cages like dogs.  Despite his villainy, Gru, a cartoon character would be a much better president than Trump.  Then again, Trump has declared himself king.  So, who is the real villain here?

Fortunately for the American people, we don’t live in an animated movie and hopefully the courts will do their jobs, uphold the constitution by nullifying King Donald’s declarations and force him to comply with the law.  In the 1821 Supreme Case, Anderson v. Dunn ^{1}, the Court ruled that not only does Congress have the right to issue subpoenas but Congress can order the Sergeant at Arms to arrest an individual and restrain him until he completes his testimony before Congress:

“To an action of trespass against the Sergeant at Arms of the House of Representatives of the United States, for an assault and battery and false imprisonment, it is a legal justification and bar to plead that a Congress was held and sitting during the period of the trespasses complained of, and that the House of Representatives had resolved that the plaintiff had been guilty of a breach of the privileges of the House, and of a high contempt of the dignity and authority of the same, and had ordered that the Speaker should issue his warrant to the Sergeant at Arms commanding him to take the plaintiff into custody, wherever to be found, and to have him before the said House to answer to the said charge, and that the Speaker did accordingly issue such a warrant, reciting the said resolution and order and commanding the Sergeant at Arms to take the plaintiff into custody, &c., and delivered the said warrant to the defendant, by virtue of which warrant the defendant arrested the plaintiff and conveyed him to the bar of the House, where he was heard in his defense touching the matter of the said charge, and the examination being adjourned from day to day, and the House having ordered the plaintiff to be detained in custody, he was accordingly detained by the defendant until he was finally adjudged to be guilty and convicted of the charge aforesaid, and ordered to be forthwith brought to the bar and reprimanded by the Speaker, and then discharged from custody, and, after being thus reprimanded, was actually discharged from the arrest and custody aforesaid.”

This is the opening paragraph of the ruling handed down by the Supreme Court which states the circumstances of the arrest, detainment and forced testimony of the Plaintiff.  In its decision, the Supreme Court held that Congress’ power to hold someone in contempt was essential to ensure that Congress was “… not exposed to every indignity and interruption that rudeness, caprice, or even conspiracy, may mediate against it.”  The Court also found that Congress did not have the power to punish someone for contempt other than detaining them for the duration of the deliberative session.  This ruling has never been over tuned.  In 1857, Congress enacted a law that made “contempt of Congress” a criminal offense against the United States.  In a 1927 decision, the high court stated, the Senate acted lawfully by sending its deputy sergeant-at-arms to Ohio to arrest and detain the brother of the then-attorney general, who had refused to testify about a bribery scheme known as the Teapot Dome scandal.

In a report published by the Congressional Research Service titled “Congress’s Contempt Power and the Enforcement of Congressional Subpoenas” ^{2} the law, history, practices and procedure related to Congress are explained in great detail.

Considering that there is no legal precedent for the so-called-president’s position to defy all Congressional subpoenas, one must ask the following questions

1. If he does not believe that he is above the law then why is he doing this?
2. Why does the president believe that he is above the law?

The answer to the second question is very complex and would require that you evaluate King Donald in a manner different from the way you have looked at all other presidents before him.  The answer to the first question is simple and very obvious.  The president fears that the truth about who he is and what he has done will change the public’s opinion of him.  He fears that compliance with the Congress’s subpoenas will expose his crimes that have been so heavily guarded and protected by his co-conspirator and “Head of the Kingsguard”,  Attorney General William Barr.  Oh, if only Barr had the guts of Jamie Lannister.  Sadly, he’s no Jaime Lannister.

Just in the past couple of days, it has come to the attention of the Democrats in Congress that Robert Mueller may have not conducted a full counterintelligence report which would have been a key component in acquiring the needed evidence to develop a complete picture of how the Trump campaign may have coordinated and conspired with the Russians.  The amount of evidence in the unredacted portion of the report is not sufficient enough by House Intelligence Committee standards to constitute an adequate report on Russian activities associated with the 2016 election.  The counterintelligence portion of the report was within Mueller’s mandate but obviously was not done.  Evidence that would be provided by complying with House Intelligence Committee subpoenas could lead to the conclusion that a separate FBI counterintelligence investigation was conducted and that the evidence discovered in the investigation was not provided to Mueller and his team.  If this is so, then according to Former Republican Attorney General, John Ashcroft, several sections including section 203, section 905 and possibly other sections of the Patriot Act designed to facilitate and require intelligence sharing would have been violated.^{3}

It stands to reason that since 16 separate U. S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, there must be mountains of evidence out there that would have been available to Special Counsel Mueller and his team.  Since there is such a large absence of intelligence information in the Mueller Report, one must ask:

1. was Mueller given access to that information or was he prohibited from having access?
2. Outside of the other 15 intelligence agencies, why hasn’t any FBI intelligence information of the Trump campaign’s activities with Russia ever been made available to Congress?

Since Congress hasn’t seen it and all 16 intelligence agencies know that it exists, the only way to determine if Mueller had access to the intelligence information is for Congress to get the full unredacted report.  But, King Donald’s Attorney General, William Barr, however illegal, has determined that this will not happen.

These probable actions on the part of Trump appointees, the Attorney General and the FBI Director would be proof that a conspiracy to overthrow our government goes deeper than imagined.  As mandated by the Patriot Act, the FBI Director must share all intelligence information about threats to our national security.  His compliance with that law is not based upon a request for information.  Knowing the importance and mandate of the Mueller Investigation, by not volunteering intelligence and counterintelligence information to Robert Mueller, The FBI director would be complicit in a crime. FBI Director Christopher Wray, who was sworn in on August 2, 2017, just 4 months after the beginning of the Mueller Investigation has been in power throughout the bulk of the investigation.  If Wray has not shared intelligence reports with Mueller or Congress, our democracy has been strapped to an electric chair and if we don’t act soon, Trump will flip the switch.

In a normal world, you might say that this is some insane conspiracy theory.  But, this world is not normal.  Remember that “truth is stranger than fiction” and Trump-land is truly strange.  The truth of the matter is, if you compare the possibility of a conspiracy to overthrow our government by Trump and his minions to the statements by Trump that a deep state conspiracy existed to prevent him from winning the election, you will find that just like his other 8,159 fact-checked lies, his assertions are false.

In Trump-land, a more recent action taken by the Justice Department on behalf of Trump may have also implanted in the “big brain” of King Donald that he is above the law.  On May 7, 2019, the Justice Department issued a threatening letter attempting to extort the House Judiciary committee.  In that letter, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd lied about the Attorney General’s lack of cooperation with the committee and threatened that Barr may ask Trump to declare executive privilege over the redacted material in the Mueller Report if the House votes on finding Attorney General Barr in contempt of congress.  In essence, the Attorney General’s office is attempting to extort Congress.  This crime of extortion is twofold.  It is also the crime of obstruction-of-justice.  This is further proof that the Executive Branch and its Justice Department believe that they are above the law and are in desperate need of Congressional oversight.

The motivating force behind Trump’s refusal to comply with subpoenas and his recent acts of obstruction-of-justice is survival.  King Donald is paranoid about the fact that the unredacted version of the Mueller Report will connect the dots between Russian interference in the 2016 election and his acts of obstruction-of-justice.  In doing so, free-thinking, nonaligned, Independent voters who determine elections would turn against him.  This would give the Democrats the public support that they desire to impeach him.  And, due to public outrage, causing his minions in the Senate to abandon him while running for cover thus forcing the Senate to convict him.  Such was the case when Nixon resigned in the face of impeachment.

An impeachment conviction in the Senate essentially would destroy King Donald and lay waste to the supposed vast empire that he wishes to leave to his children.  The end result of an impeachment conviction would result in King Donald being prosecuted and convicted on no less than a dozen federal and state crimes.  As established by the Justice Department’s standards and records of conviction, the department only prosecutes a crime when it believes that it can not only indict, but it will win the case as exhibited by the department’s record in all cases dealing with the Mueller Investigation.  It has not lost a case.

The current illegal actions of King Donald in defiance of Congressional subpoenas, if motivated by survival may be more welcomed than the alternative.  In answer to the first question: If he does not believe that he is above the law then why is he doing this?  The answer is unbelievably frightening.  King Donald may be mentally ill.  If this is the case, we are truly in danger. But, according to some of the nation’s top mental health professionals, this very possibly, may be the case.

In a September 28, 2017 article in Psychology Today titled “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” excerpts are posted from a petition signed by more than 60,000 mental health professionals.  John Gartner, Ph.D., is the founder of Duty to Warn, an organization intent on warning our country that we are in dire trouble due to our president’s mental instability.  The group of mental health professionals in contradiction to an established practice of not commenting on the mental health of elected officials, spoke to the mental health of Trump.  The petition states:

“We, the undersigned mental health professionals, believe in our professional judgment that Donald Trump manifests a serious mental illness that renders him psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of President of the United States. And we respectfully request he be removed from office, according to article 4 of the 25th amendment to the Constitution, which states that the president will be replaced if he is ‘unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.’”

The Psychology Today article also included information on Dr. Bandy X. Lee of Yale University and author of the book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.”  As stated in the article Miss Lee’s credentials include: “an M.D.; M.Div. (Master of Divinity); assistant clinical professor, Yale Law and Psychiatry Division; co-founder and director of the Violence and Health Study Group for the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies; as well as co-leader of Academic Collaborators for the World Health Organization’s Violence Prevention Alliance. “  Miss Lee’s book was time-sensitive in that she, other contributors, and interested publishers felt an urgency to get the book into the hands of the public and governmental powers-that-be as soon possible.

In the interest of providing context to the possibility that the president could be mentally ill, the following description of a possible mental illness has been provided.  According to the Society for the Study of Psychopathy, the traits of a psychopath includes ^{4):

• Lack of guilt/remorse
• Lack of empathy
• Lack of deep emotional attachments
• Narcissism
• Superficial charm
• Dishonesty
• Manipulativeness
• Reckless risk-taking

Despite King Donald’s stated open defiance of Congressional subpoenas, for whatever reason, whether they are personal or due to mental illness, his failure to comply with the subpoenas is a violation of the law, contempt-of-Congress.  This is an impeachable offense.  His wanton illegal orders to subordinates telling them not to comply with the Congress’s subpoenas are acts of obstruction-of-justice and are also impeachable.  According to author Bruce Coville”   “Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship.”

In recent history, Congress has relied upon the courts and the Justice Department to arrest and prosecute people for contempt-of-congress.  Considering how King Donald rules over the Justice Department and the way that Kingsguard Bill Barr protects him, now would be the time for Congress to return to the days of yesteryear and rely upon their Seargent at Arms to enforce their subpoena power.  Send the Seargent at Arms to the White House, grab Trump by his “big brain”, haul his butt in and sit him down before Congress until he talks.  Due to his remarkable ability to babble and his fluency in gibberish, it may take a while.  If not, with the help of his Justice Department and the complicity of his Republican minions in the Senate, King Donald may actually rise to the throne.

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Linked Sources and Documentation

1. Supreme Case, Anderson v. Dunn, link: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/19/204/
2. Congress’s Contempt Power and the Enforcement of Congressional Subpoenas, pdf
3. Patriot Act Violations: https://www.brookings.edu/testimonies/intelligence-collection-and-information-sharing-within-the-united-states/
4. Psychopath: https://www.healthyplace.com/personality-disorders/psychopath/psychopath-vs-sociopath-what-s-the-difference

Copyright © 2019, Glen Reaux, all rights reserved