Honest Evil – Just Prosecute My Enemies

This is not the first time a President decided to use the Justice Department to prosecute his political opponents.

This is just the first time a President is proud enough to boast about it in public.



 
I was despondent when he died in 2015. In retrospect, he seems like one of history’s anti-Trumps.

Republican Michael Steele, who was once Maryland’s Lieutenant Governor:

He was a transformational governor. The state had been going through a lot of changes at the time, and he saw a way forward for Maryland, and sort of making government more accountable, making government more responsive, putting in place sort of the infrastructure, if you will, that … a lot of successors have used and still use.

Current Maryland Governor, Republican Larry Hogan:

He had more of an impact on all three branches of government, with all due respect, than any other governor before or after.

I worked for him as a volunteer when he ran for election during the Nixon/Agnew days. Governor Marvin Mandel stood up against the bully-boy tactics of Spiro Agnew. Later, I came to regard him as a hero for standing against medical and political establishments to establish Shock Trauma helicopter transport systems. It sounds like such a small, common-sense, accomplishment today. Back then there was fierce opposition, and not much political benefit. I mean, helicopters don’t vote. But Maryland became the model for similar systems across the country. In fact, people who may never hear about Marvin Mandel are alive today because of his courage.

Here is how Marvin Mandel summarized his time as Maryland’s governor:

And I think the future will show that, during my administration, nothing was ever done to defraud the public of the state of Maryland.

Huh?

That’s right. My hero turned out to be a crook. It was a complicated scheme involving 3rd party gifts and cash and fees paid in chains from one friend to another friend to another and then to Mandel. Until finally, one of these contrivances came unraveled:

Federal prosecutors claimed the owners of the old Marlburo racetrack in Prince Georges County gave Mandel more than $350,000 in cash, favors, and gifts and, in exchange, Mandel was to push through legislation that would benefit the track owners.

A few months later, President Reagan pardoned him and the Supreme Court eventually overturned the conviction. The ruling said that the law he was convicted as violating did not actually outlaw bribery and corruption.

Maybe there oughtta be a law, but there wasn’t.

Marvin Mandel is still my hero, mostly for saving lives when it cost him politically to do it. But I also think my hero should have stayed in his prison cell.

Mandel’s defenders insisted he was innocent and that the prosecution was politically motivated. He was targeted because he had endorsed Governor Jerry Brown for President in 1976.

What?

Yeah, that’s right. When Jimmy Carter first ran for President, a last minute quixotic boomlet for California’s Jerry Brown hit the news. He toured around Maryland and Governor Mandel endorsed him.

That political influence accusation went nowhere. Even defenders of the corrupt governor didn’t quite buy it. It just seemed kind of ridiculous to think that a political figure could be targeted and put into jail for endorsing the wrong candidate.

Those were innocent times.

It is true that the Nixon administration had put together an enemies list. The enemies list was a real thing.

There was also maintained what was called an “Enemies List” which was rather extensive and continually being updated.

John Dean in Senate testimony

A list of enemies against whom the levers of government might be used was considered a scandal in those days.

But nobody thought about putting political enemies in jail simply because they were political enemies. The Mandel accusation was an absurdity.

In those days, prosecution of political enemies, at least on a federal level, was considered to be akin to fantasy fiction.

During the Bush administration decades later a couple of US Attorneys, prosecutors for the federal government, resigned in protest. A few more were fired. They all accused Bush aide Karl Rove of ordering them to stop any prosecutions, and to put a halt to any investigations that might result in prosecutions, of Republicans. Karl Rove allegedly went a little further. He ordered federal prosecutors to actively investigate Democratic officeholders, because they were Democrats.

At least one Governor, Don Siegelman of Alabama, went to prison for convincing a health expert to join a non-paying advisory board after that expert contributed to the governor’s campaign for a state lottery to benefit education. The idea was that the governor had traded a campaign contribution for a state job. Seems kind of strange. The job paid nothing. The campaign was not for his, or anyone else’s, election. It was to use a state lottery to finance state education.

But even back then, Karl Rove denied directing federal attorneys to prosecute anyone just for being a Democrat, or to protect anyone just for being loyal to a Republican president.

You see, even when it happens, people have the good sense to know it’s wrong, real wrong. Wrong enough to deny.

That is, until this administration.

Jeff Sessions does attempt to follow tradition and deny that politics is involved in Justice. He issued a statement:

While I am Attorney General, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.

But our President is not intimidated by tradition. He lists a series of long since disproven tales of crimes by those who oppose him, even in minor ways. Why are these people not prosecuted?

But what really gets under my President’s skin, what really bothers him, is that Republicans are investigated by a Department of Justice that ought to belong to him. He is the President, after all.

We do have a President that is honest in a way that aides to our last Republican President were not. There is no pretense about it.

He is enraged when his own Department of Justice only goes after evidence of crime.

He promises to put an end to it.
 

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