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Jonathan Turley

The Disqualification of Donald Trump and Other Legal Urban Legends

Monday August 21, 2023

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The popularity of urban legends is a testament to the will to believe. The desire of people to keep Elvis alive or prove that a Sasquatch could exist furtively in our backyards shows the resilience of fables.

Constitutional urban legends often have an even more immediate appeal and tend to arise out of the desperation of divided times. One of the most popular today is that former President Donald Trump can be barred from office, even if he is not convicted in any of the four indictments he faces, under a long-dormant clause of the 14th Amendment.

This 14th Amendment theory is something that good liberals will read to their children at night. It goes something like this: Donald Trump can never be president again, because the 14th Amendment bars those who previously took federal oaths from assuming office if they engaged in insurrection or rebellion. With that, and a kiss on the forehead, a progressive’s child can sleep peacefully through the night.

But don’t look under the bed. For as scary as it might sound to some, Trump can indeed take office if he is elected…even if he is convicted. Indeed, he can serve as president even in the unlikely scenario that he is sentenced to jail.

Democrats have long pushed this theory about the 14th Amendment as a way of disqualifying not only Trump but also dozens of Republican members of Congress. For some, it is the ultimate Hail Mary pass if four indictments, roughly 100 criminal charges and more than a dozen opposing candidates fail to get the job done.
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'A Monopoly in Expressing its Views': D.C. Circuit Hands Down Major Free Speech Victory for Pro-Life Group

Thursday August 17, 2023

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The US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has handed down a major victory for free speech against the District of Columbia. In Frederick Douglass Foundation v. District of Columbia, Judge Neomi Rao reversed district court judge James E. Boasberg who dismissed the challenge by pro-life protesters who alleged that they were treated differently from Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters. The selective enforcement of city ordinances gave what Judge Rao called “a monopoly in expressing its views . . . the antithesis of constitutional guarantees.”

The contrast in these cases was raised by a few commentators and sites in prior years. In the summer of 2020, the city allowed thousands of Black Lives Matter protesters to take over streets in D.C. without any permit. The police watched as protesters wrote slogans and slurs on stores, streets, and sidewalks with paint and chalk. No one was arrested.

However, later two pro-life advocates in a protest in front of a D.C. Planned Parenthood facility were immediately arrested when they chalked “Black Pre-Born Lives Matter” on a public sidewalk.

Chief Judge Boasberg previously held that they had no right to challenge the selective enforcement of the laws. They simply had to plead guilty and accept that their views were not given the same official tolerance.
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'Shoeless Joe' and the Fixing of the Biden Scandal

Monday August 14, 2023

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Roughly 100 years ago, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson admitted that, as a player for the Chicago White Sox, he and seven other teammates had intentionally lost the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds in 1919. When a kid stopped him outside of the grand jury room and asked “It ain’t true, is it, Joe?” Jackson responded “Yes, kid, I’m afraid it is.”

This is not a case of history repeating itself. After being confronted by allegations of a fixed investigation, Attorney General Merrick Garland just sent Shoeless Joe back into the game.

The appointment of Delaware US Attorney David Weiss as the new special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden left many with the same disbelief as that kid in Chicago. This is, after all, the same Weiss who headed an investigation that was trashed by whistleblowers, who alleged that his investigation had been fixed from the outset.

It is the same Weiss who ran an investigation in which agents were allegedly prevented from asking about Joe Biden, obstructed in their efforts to pursue questions and compromised by tip offs to the Biden team on planned searches.

It is also the same Weiss who reportedly allowed the statute of limitations to run out on Hunter’s major tax offenses, even though he had the option to extend it.

It is the same Weiss who did not indict on major tax felonies and cut a plea deal that brushed aside a felony gun charge.
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Federal Court Declares Trump a Flight Risk in Secret Subpoena Decision

Thursday August 10, 2023

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The disclosure of a subpoena of Twitter by Special Counsel Jack Smith was surprising in a number of respects, including the hefty $350,000 fine imposed by US District Court Beryl Howell for a three-day delay as the company sought to address the demand. However, the two most surprising, and concerning, elements were that the subpoena was secret and Howell justified it, in part, on Trump being a flight risk. Neither seems warranted in this case even assuming that the subpoena was in other respects warranted.

Special counsel Jack Smith subpoenaed and obtained a search warrant related to former President Trump’s account on Twitter, now X. However, he also sought the information with a nondisclosure order that prohibited X from disclosing the existence or contents of the search warrant to Trump or anyone else. However, Trump already knew he was under investigation, so why was there a need for nondisclosure?

The court found that Trump might change his course of conduct but that seems unlikely. If anything Trump has been most consistent in his social media practices. Indeed, while some of us have criticized him for his posting, he has remained entirely undeterred.
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Making History in the Wrong Way: The Second Trump Indictment is a Threat to Free Speech

Friday August 4, 2023

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Special counsel Jack Smith made history on Tuesday. It wasn’t just the federal indictment of a former president. Smith already did that in June with the indictment of Donald Trump on charges that he mishandled classified documents. No, Smith and his team have made history in the worst way by attempting to fully criminalize disinformation by seeking the incarceration of a politician on false claims made during and after an election.
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'Four Pinocchios': The Washington Post Admits Biden Has Been Lying About Hunter Not Accepting Money from China

Thursday August 3, 2023

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President Joe Biden has been a regular recipient of “Pinocchios” by the Washington Post for his false statements on subjects ranging from election laws to abortion protections to deficit reduction. Biden is undeterred and regularly repeats false stories from his life that have ranged from an invented arrest with Nelson Mandela to a zombie-like train conductor. Undeterred, this week he continued with the false claim about the “Joey, Baby” conductor. Now, the President has a fresh set of “Four Pinocchios,” but the false claim is far more serious than inventing a conductor or rewriting the history of the Second Amendment.
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Pew: Seventy Percent of Democrats and Democratic-Leaning Independents Support Speech Limits

Thursday July 27, 2023

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I have previously written columns about the rising generation of censors in our country. After years of being told that free speech is harmful and dangerous, many young people are virtual speech phobics — demanding that opposing views be silenced as “triggering” or even forms of violence. Now a Pew poll shows just how much ground we have lost, including the emergence of the Democratic Party as a virulent anti-free speech party. Pew found that “Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are much more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to support the US government taking steps to restrict false information online (70% vs. 39%).”

I was raised in a politically active Democratic family in Chicago. Free speech was viewed as one of the defining values of the party and championed across campuses in the country. That changed dramatically in the course of the last ten years as many liberal politicians and professors called for opposing voices to be banned or canceled. I no longer recognize the party as it pushes for censorship and speech regulation.

The result is reflected in the poll which shows that “Just over half of Americans (55%) support the US government taking steps to restrict false information online, even if it limits people from freely publishing or accessing information.”

What is particularly chilling is that this poll is occurring after the disclosure of biased censorship efforts by the government and corporations, including the suppression of views that were later found to be legitimate. That includes the banning or cancelling of scientists who raised concerns over Covid-19 that are now considered valid from the lab theory to the efficacy of masks to natural immunities. It also includes the suppression of political stories like the Hunter Biden laptop.
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The White House Changes Long-Standing Position of President on Hunter Biden’s Foreign Deals

Wednesday July 26, 2023

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Starting with his campaign for the presidency and continuing until this week, President Joe Biden has maintained one clear and consistent position on his son’s influence peddling schemes. As a virtual mantra, Biden — and the White House staff — have categorically maintained that he had no knowledge of any foreign dealings of his son. That has been proven to be a lie, but Biden continued to maintain the position.

Yet, on the eve of the testimony of a key Biden associate, the White House has changed its position. Now the President is only claiming that he was “not in business” with his son.Some of us have written multiple columns over the last four years arguing that the President was clearly and knowingly lying in his denials of knowledge and discussions of these deals. Even when he made the statement, it was clearly untrue but most of the media shrugged and happily walked away.

Then the evidence began to mount.

The laptop includes pictures and appointments of Hunter’s foreign business associates with Joe Biden. There is also a recording of Joe Biden discussing a Times report on Dec. 12, 2018, detailing Hunter’s dealings with Ye Jianming, the head of CEFC China Energy Company. He assures his son that “I think you’re clear” after lawyers worked on the New York Times before the story ran.
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Friendly Fire: Dan Goldman Demolishes the Biden Defense in Whistleblower Hearing

Thursday July 20, 2023

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One of the most basic lessons that we teach law students is that you should “never ask a question you don’t know the answer to.”

The peril of the poorly crafted question was on display in Wednesday’s hearing with two whistleblowers on political interference in the Hunter Biden investigation.

Most Democrats avoided any questions on the substance of the allegations, focusing instead on everything from systemic racism to the use of the term “two-tiered system of justice” and, of course, Donald Trump.

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) often goes where wiser members fear to tread. On this occasion, Goldman may have delivered one of the most damaging moments for the Democrats.

In the course of just a few minutes, the freshman New York congressman seemed to demolish the defense of President Biden.

Goldman was trying to get the witnesses to say that there is no evidence that President Biden was personally involved in the alleged felonies of his son.


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Gallup: Public Confidence in Higher Education Plunges

Saturday July 15, 2023

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We have previously discussed how activism in the media and corporations has triggered increasing public backlash. Social agendas have undermined trust and profits, but the pressure to pursue those goals remains high regardless of their cost. The same appears to be true for higher education. Universities and colleges have been criticized for purging their ranks of conservative or dissenting faculty while creating environments of political orthodoxy and viewpoint intolerance. A Gallup poll shows the result of years of erosion in viewpoint tolerance with only 36 percent of polled Americans saying that they have confidence in the country’s colleges and universities. That is a sharp decline from 2018 when almost half trusted our colleges and universities.

Not surprisingly, the greatest drop was among Republicans who face increasingly hostile environments on campuses and cancel campaigns for conservative or libertarian speakers. Republicans with either a “great deal” or “quite a lot of confidence” in higher education dropped from 37 percent to 19 percent. The poll suggests a growing view of colleges and universities as hostile environments for those with conservative, libertarian, and dissenting views.

At the same time, many are simply rejecting higher education as an option due to a mix of high costs and lower relevancy for them personally. The view of campuses as places of indoctrination also likely plays a role in that trend. Few conservatives relish the idea of paying high tuition to have their children spend four years with unrelenting attacks on their views and values while limiting their own speech opportunities.
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