Disgraced and fired former FBI director Jim Comey is finally facing his day in court for having lied while under oath. Unethical New York Attorney General Letitia James has been indicted on bank fraud charges. Warmonger and former national security advisor John Bolton might soon be indicted for illegally retaining classified documents. Russia Collusion Hoax co-conspirator, anti-American communist, and former director of the CIA John Brennan might similarly find himself in the dock. Notoriously dumb “yes-man,” Russia Collusion Hoax co-conspirator, and former director of national intelligence James Clapper is under criminal investigation. Former FBI director Chris Wray has been accused of lying to Congress regarding the number of plainclothes agents operating during the January 6, 2021, protest for fair elections. Other well-known names are being scrutinized for criminal prosecution.
As each shoe drops, the corporate news media shriek about President Trump going after his “political enemies” and directly involving himself in Department of Justice charging decisions. A reasonable journalist might wonder how former chiefs within the Intelligence Community could be considered “political enemies” if they weren’t performing their duties in a political manner. But such an obvious follow-up question is never asked, and instead Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Wray, and other former, powerful officers within the administrative state are described as if they acted, at all times, selflessly and for the good of the country.
The propaganda press is very concerned about portraying members of the permanent government as being above politics because if the American people understood them to be just as political as members of Congress, then voters might start to wonder why such a vast, unelected administrative state is allowed to exist. The financial and media elites who control the mainstream press constantly convey to the public the unconstitutional idea that the heads of important departments and agencies act unilaterally and independently. They pretend that the director of the FBI and the attorney general of the United States do not answer to the president. They pretend that the CIA and U.S. military operate autonomously from the White House. Mainstream media “reporters” desperately work to convince Americans that unelected bureaucrats are entitled to wield tremendous power all on their own. They are not.
Article II of the Constitution lays the foundations for the Executive Branch, and the first sentence of the first section is specific and clear: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” The first sentence of the second section defines the president’s authority over the military: “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.” When it comes to executive authority, all power resides with the president. Likewise, every Executive employee — from cabinet secretary to parking attendant — acts as a delegated beneficiary of the president’s Executive power.
It is the president of the United States — not the attorney general — who is the chief law enforcement officer of the federal government. If President Trump decided to exercise his vested prosecutorial powers, he could try cases in federal courts. When federal prosecutors enforce the law in courtrooms across the country, they are empowered to do so only because they are acting on the president’s behalf. When corporate news publications pretend that federal prosecutors are entitled to act independently from the White House, they are willfully disregarding the U.S. Constitution and foisting an illegitimate form of government upon the American people.
As a simple thought experiment, consider what it would mean if senior officials in the Department of Justice were exclusively empowered to decide how to enforce the law. It would mean that an unethical attorney such as Andrew Weissmann would be in a position to tell the president of the United States what he can and cannot do. It would give government lawyers — whose Executive authority comes directly from the Office of the President — more authority than the president. It would effectively rewrite the first sentence of the first section of Article II of the Constitution into some variant of this: The executive Power shall be vested in Andrew Weissmann or other unethical attorneys who have weaseled their way into becoming career bureaucrats within the Department of Justice.
We saw this illegitimate form of government play out in President Trump’s first term. During the run-up to the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had conspired with Intelligence Community officers and White House officials to frame candidate Trump as a Russian spy. Even though then-FBI director Jim Comey knew these allegations were false, the corrupt law enforcement officer used this frame-up job as leverage against President Trump the following year.
Conniving career bureaucrats in the Justice Department convinced Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from all investigations involving the manufactured Russia Collusion Hoax. President Trump eventually fired serial-liar Comey, and career bureaucrat and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (in his capacity as acting attorney general) appointed former FBI director Robert Mueller as a special counsel responsible for investigating the Democrat-constructed Russia Collusion Hoax.
Unbeknownst to the American people, Special Counsel Mueller was suffering from some form of dementia, so unethical government prosecutor Andrew Weissmann effectively ran a two-year harassment campaign whose ultimate purpose was to impeach President Trump and remove him from office. During this time, dishonorable lawyer Andrew Weissmann effectively held more power than the president of the United States.
At any time, President Trump could have put an end to this nonsense. He could have fired his attorney general and deputy attorney general. He could have fired Mueller and Weissmann. He could have concluded the whole affair and moved on. But the pressure from Congress (Republicans included) and the propaganda press for President Trump to comply with the special counsel charade was intense. Paul Ryan and other congressional RINOs even suggested that Trump would be impeached if he did not permit the manufactured investigation into the Democrat-constructed Russia Collusion Hoax to proceed. In an effort to keep the peace, President Trump essentially gave corrupt lawyer and staunch Democrat Andrew Weissmann control over the presidency.
The Weissmann presidency was absurd. When corrupt lawyers are empowered to tell the president of the United States what he may legally do, the Constitution has been entirely shredded. Instead of an elected president exclusively vested with Executive power, we end up with an unelected legal bureaucracy that enigmatically delegates a handful of incidental powers to the sitting president.
The administrative state likes this arrangement. Permanent government bureaucrats prefer to limit the president of the United States to theatrical performances that include signing ceremonies and kissing babies. For everything else, they insist, Americans should leave it to the experts. Let the prosecutors decide whom to indict. Let the generals and admirals decide whom to attack. Let the central bankers decide the value of American currency. Let the spies wage covert wars at home and across the globe. “Trust the vast bureaucracy,” the bureaucrats say, “because the administrative state is made up of impartial, incorruptible, competent, and well-meaning experts.”
Except there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution about a Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internal Revenue Service, or Environmental Protection Agency. These armies of unelected bureaucrats wield power as if they were a separate and unrivaled branch of government. To the extent that these oversized monsters are remotely constitutional, however, it is only because they exercise delegated powers belonging exclusively to the president of the United States.
The buck stops with the president, not with the bureaucrats. Corporate news publications that insist it should be the other way around have no interest in protecting the Constitution. They seek to undermine it.
Image: Trump White House Archived via Flickr, public domain.