Lèse-majesté

 In throwing out the federal indictment against Fed Chair Jerome Powell yesterday, Judge Boasberg wrote that "the government has offered no evidence whatsoever that Powell committed any crime other than displeasing the president."

But of course, under this Justice Department, "displeasing the president" is the one and only crime worth charging. It is the only substance of the government's accusations against Lisa Cook, James Comey, Letitia James, and many others. 

Trump has, as it were, revived the ancient law of lèse-majesté. The sole ultimate crime is to insult the emperor. 

Montesquieu describes it as follows, in his Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline: 

"There was a law of majesty against those who committed some crime against the Roman people. Tiberius seized upon this law and applied it, not to the cases for which it had been made, but to anything that could serve his hatred or suspicion. [...]

"[T]he charge of lese-majesty—the crime of those to whom no crime can be imputed, as Pliny says—was extended to cover whatever one wished." (Lowenthal trans.)

Comey, Cook, Powell, James—they plainly all fall into this same category of people to whom no crime can be imputed. And yet, the Justice Department on Trump's orders must find a way to make them guilty. 

And so, they stretch the interpretation of existing statutes to ludicrous and comical degrees. 

One of the most extreme examples was when the Pam Bondi Justice Department tried to prosecute six sitting U.S. senators for plainly First Amendment–protected activity, by accusing them of hampering the morale of the troops. 

What these senators had done—specifically—was to tell troops they should not obey illegal orders. 

A grand jury made up of our own citizens saw these charges for what they were—suppression of political speech—and rejected them. 

It's possible to look at this sequence of events—both in the Powell case and those of the six senators—and conclude that, in spite of all Trump's efforts—our legal system is working. 

After all, a judge threw out the charges against Powell. Our fellow citizens refused to be taken in by the absurd legal theory under which the senators were to be prosecuted for their speech. 

But it's really more accurate to say only parts of the justice system are working. Some of the higher courts and judges have proven more willing to bend themselves to accommodate Trump's executive authoritarianism. 

Looking at you: Emil Bove, Rao, etc.

"[S]ince a tyrant never lacks instruments for his tyranny, Tiberius always found judges ready to condemn as many people as he might suspect," writes Montesquieu.

Plus, the Justice Department itself is supposed to provide a check on the president's own worst impulses. It has a whole body of ethics and set of internal guidelines designed to prevent it from harassing the innocent for political purposes. 

All of those safeguards, Pam Bondi and her ilk have dropped to the wayside. 

"No tyranny is more cruel," Montesquieu observes, "than the one practiced in the shadow of laws and under color of justice—when, so to speak, one proceeds to drown the unfortunate on the very plank by which they had saved themselves." 

After all, the Justice Department itself, per the name, is supposed to be the guardians of justice and the rule of law in our society. 

When the wolves are in the sheepfold, all is lost. 

Now we are in a position when some of our own federal prosecutors and judges will have to say, with Edgar Lee Masters's "Circuit Judge":

Even Hod Putt, the murderer/ Hanged by my sentence / Was innocent in soul compared with me.