The Nexus between Black-Collar Crime and Presidential Crime
This nation—and one of its former presidents—currently are learning a crucial lesson about civics and American government. In its most limited sense, the lesson is that the president is not above the law. But there’s a much larger lesson that has a connection to Black-Collar Crime. The larger lesson is about how (even in America and even today) some people in power quickly and easily slip into abuses of power and about how the Constitution protects the People from abusive officials.
Trump’s trials and travails are not merely a contest between a once (and maybe future) president and sitting judges. The contest is between the People and our Constitution, on the one side, and people in power who abuse their power, on the other side. The great significance of, and great good in, the trials of Trump is the public lesson and re-affirmation that no employee of any government in America is above the Constitution.
Another former president (Nixon) famously admitted the twisted “logic” that was at the root of the reason he had to resign to avoid being impeached (and the reason he had to be pardoned by a subsequent president for the crimes he committed): “When the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.” While Trump may not have said that out loud, he sure lived it loud and proud.
Trump was not alone. Far too many judges far too often pretend pretty much the same thing. If you don’t believe it because you haven’t seen it with your own eyes, don’t worry, you can. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a movie may be worth a million. One movie well worth watching is The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Netflix). It’s entertaining and insightful. It’s based on an actual (and important) trial. You don’t have to be a victim of black-collar crime to know it when you see it. Watch what the judge did to Bobby Seale. Compare what that judge did with what he knew the Constitution said.
The judge knew the Constitution said that the “Constitution, and the Laws of the United States” are “the supreme Law of the Land” and absolutely all “Judges” everywhere are “bound thereby.” The judge knew that the Fifth Amendment included a command that clearly bound all federal judges: “No person” whatsoever may “be deprived” by any judge “of life” or any “liberty” or any “property, without due process of law.” The judge knew that the Sixth Amendment included a command that clearly bound all federal judges: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right” to “have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.”
Again and again, in The Trial of the Chicago 7, we see the judge violating rights that he knew were secured by the Constitution. The judge created copious evidence that he committed at least one federal offense. He created copious evidence that he used other court officers to commit at least one other federal offense.
It was and is a crime for any judge (state or federal) to act “under color of any law” or judicial “custom” to “willfully” deprive “any person” in the U.S. “of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by” any provision of “the Constitution or laws of the United States.” 18 U.S.C. § 242. No judicial custom or action under color of any law is exempt.
It was and is a crime for any judge (state or federal) to “conspire” with any other person (including any other court officer) “to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person” in the U.S. in “the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because” such person “exercised” any such “right or privilege.” 18 U.S.C. § 241.
Those two federal criminal statutes can be traced back to the same Fourteenth Amendment under which current public officials (and citizens) are seeking to disqualify former president Trump from office. Before the Civil War, so many public officials so egregiously (and sometimes viciously) violated the Constitution and their oaths of office that the Constitution was amended repeatedly and Congress repeatedly enacted statutes specifically to criminalize public officials’ abuses of official power.
In the decades before the Civil War, some officials in some states contended or pretended that they (or their states) had special so-called “rights” merely because under the Articles of Confederation the 13 original states insisted that “[e]ach state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence.” In particular, they contended or pretended that some states had the “right” to treat some people as property. But don’t take my word for that. Take the words written in 1857 by the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) in Dred Scott v. Sandford.
Chief Justice Taney wrote his opinion to express the opinion of the majority of SCOTUS justices to justify what they did. You really should read their own words. It is not possible to truly understand the Fourteenth Amendment and the federal criminal statutes, above, without reading what SCOTUS did in Dred Scott. The members of Congress and the other people responsible for the Fourteenth Amendment reviled the justices whose absurd opinions prevailed in Dred Scott, and they loathed their obscene “logic.”
The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution were written, specifically, to rip the heart out of the twisted logic and lies of SCOTUS justices about American history. Those Amendments re-confirmed that no state and no person in the United States was exempt from the Constitution—no matter what any judge wrote. The Fourteenth Amendment did not (as some judges today contend or pretend, including during the oral argument about Trump’s disqualification) merely restrict the power of states. The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments were aimed directly at judges, and especially at SCOTUS justices.
“No State” and “any State” (in Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment) dispensed with the pretense that some states somehow had more power than other states to violate the rights of citizens and other persons secured by the Constitution. Under the Constitution (including the Bill of Rights), all states are equal regardless of how any state was created or how it joined the United States. “No State” and “any State,” “citizens” and “person(s)” in Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment re-emphasized that, under the Constitution, all states are equal, all citizens are equal, and all other persons are equal.
In the 1860’s, Congress and the People used Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to re-emphasize that no public servant whatsoever had any power to “make” or “enforce any” purported “law” that “abridge[s any] privileges or immunities of [U.S.] citizens” and every public servant must protect the “life, liberty” and “property” of every “person” by affording him all “due process of law” and “equal protection of the laws.” To emphasize the same point, Congress criminalized particular misconduct by public officials, including judges (and presidents).
In United States v. Price, 383 U.S. 787 (1966), for example, SCOTUS discussed 18 U.S.C. §§ 241, 242 and traced their history to about the late 1860’s. SCOTUS subsequently (repeatedly) emphasized that those criminal statutes applied to judges as much to any other mere mortal. “Even judges” clearly “can be punished criminally” under Sections 241 or 242 “for willful deprivations of constitutional rights.” Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409, 429 (1976). Accord Dennis v. Sparks, 449 U.S. 24, 28, n.5 (1980); Briscoe v. Lahue, 460 U.S. 325, 345, n.32 (1983). In Section 242, the “qualification” regarding “alienage, color and race” does not apply “to deprivations of any rights or privileges.” United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299, 326 (1941).
Ex parte Virginia, 100 U.S. 339 (1880) is particularly insightful for multiple reasons. That decision highlighted that judges can be prosecuted (criminally) for abusing their official power. It is a decision that Justice Thomas has invoked (cited) repeatedly in his opinions. The D.C. Circuit also invoked it (cited it) in its decision regarding Trump’s lack of immunity. So SCOTUS implicitly considered it when six judges hand-picked by presidents deceitfully pretended that (somehow) our Constitution authorized them to give presidents immunity when they attack and undermine our Constitution.
Judges (as much as presidents) should be mindful of SCOTUS’s ominous (and highly relevant) Miranda warning:
“Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.”
Miranda v. Ariz., 384 U.S. 436, 480 (1966) (quoting Justice Brandeis (joined by Justice Holmes) dissenting in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 485 (1928)). As Justice Holmes added, It “is desirable that the Government should not itself foster and pay for” any public official’s “crime,” as “the means by which” purported public servants abuse and oppress the public they purport to serve.