Laurence Tribe points out this evening that the decision of the Justice Department not to make executive privilege available to Mo Brooks and other potential defendants in civil negligence suits regarding the 1/6/21 attempted coup – including Donald Trump – in defending the lawsuit filed against Brooks by Eric Swalwell leaves Donald Trump quite vulnerable.
This is because the Ku Klux Klan Act imposes an affirmative duty upon any government official to prevent attempts to interfere with the functioning of government.
There is a beautiful irony contained here:
Trump has managed to be a “slippery eel”, as Tribe puts it, throughout his many brushes with the law, by following the likely tutelage of Roy Cohn never to admit to actually directing illegal actions, and, even better, to where possible make it clear what he wanted done without ever speaking words indicating direction – thereby avoiding legal jeopardy, in the manner of a mob boss.
How poetic it will be when the man who rose to power by summoning to life this nations worst racist ghosts, is brought down by a Reconstruction era statute meant to protect newly freed black slaves from the Klan.
To those who say the Fascist didn’t authorize the 1/6 Big Lie coup remind them that bin Laden didn’t fly the planes.