Former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has no love for the “craven video” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and five Democrats released to the public advising military members to ignore illegal orders. But he said President Donald Trump’s executive power abuses in reacting to it represent a whole “new level” of threat.
McCarthy tells the National Review that he partially blames Democrats for Trump ordering the Pentagon to demote Kelly and cut his benefits because “Kelly knows, when Democrats poke another hole in another norm, the president’s MO is to drive a truck through it.”
The author and National Review Institute senior fellow also notes Trump is howling “sedition” like he knows what it means.
“What is truly bizarre is to find the president, who likes to remind us that he is the nation’s chief law enforcement official, grossly misstating the law while claiming that the ‘Seditionist Six’ are dangerously misstating the law (when in fact they’ve accurately stated the law),” McCarthy said. “As one of the few current or former prosecutors in the United States to have actually charged and convicted people for seditious conspiracy, I’m here to tell you that the heart of any sedition offense is the use of force against the nation or its government.”
Section 2384 of federal criminal law defines the crime as conspiring to levy war against the United States or to forcibly (1) destroy the government, (2) prevent execution of the laws, or (3) seize government property. The military law definition, said McCarthy, is even more narrow: One must join in the creation of a “revolt, violence, or other disturbance against” government authority, “with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of” that authority.
“Nothing on the Democrats’ video comes close to urging or promoting violence. Indeed, in comparison to Trump’s fiery Ellipse speech prior to the Capitol riot … the lawmakers’ video is vanilla,” said McCarthy. “If Kelly had been urging his fellow military members to disobey lawful orders, that would be insubordination, not sedition. But he wasn’t.”
“As the president watches his poll numbers plummet, it either doesn’t dawn on him or he just doesn’t care that he is in office, in part, because the voting public was unnerved by Democratic lawfare.” Said McCarthy. “Clearly, Trump’s statist mismanagement of the economy is his biggest problem, as it was Biden’s. But lawfare … is a bigger problem for Trump.”
“Trump and his minions revel in lawfare,” said McCarthy, which “further normalizes the noxious practice, potentially entrenching it.”
“Trump is also handing Democrats the articles of impeachment they will swiftly enact if, as seems increasingly likely, his erratic governance hands them back the House next year — and maybe even the Senate the way things are going,” McCarthy warned. “… Incorporating the Pentagon into the lawfare campaign against political enemies raises the abuse of executive power to a new level.”
“For the president to begin pulling the military he commands into his ongoing, punitive use of government processes against his partisan opponents is a red line,” said McCarthy. “Justice Department lawfare is bad, but the courts are equipped to handle it. Politicization of the military is a different, more threatening beast.”
Read the National Review report at this link.