This is how it works, folks. When an authoritarian is rewarded with a blank check – courtesy of the rule-of-lawless Republican party – he runs wild. He unleashes hellfire on his enemies (including Lt. Col. Vindman’s twin brother), and unlocks the jailhouse for his friends. He dubs himself “the chief law enforcement officer of the country.” He molests Lady Justice because a celebrity can do anything.
And so it came to pass, yesterday, that the authoritarian pardoned a passel of white-collar criminals – including junk-bond king Michael Milken and Rudy Giuliani pal Bernard Kerik, a former New York police commissioner who was nailed for tax fraud and perjury. And, arguably worst of all, he freed an infamous Illinois inmate, Rod “Hot Rod” Blagojevich, an ex-governor and notorious shakedown artist who was serving a 14-year sentence. Before Blagojevich was convicted on 17 counts, the Illinois legislature impeached and ousted him from office by a combined vote of 173-1.
But the authoritarian explained yesterday that Blagojevich deserved to be freed because he “seemed like a very nice person, I don’t know him.” Oh, and because Blagojevich appeared years ago on Trump’s reality show, The Apprentice. Oh, and because “I watched his wife on television…His wife, I think is fantastic.”
Mrs. Blagojevich is “fantastic” because she has repeatedly surfaced on Fox News, attacking Democrats for trying to “undo” the 2016 election and declaring that “it takes a strong leader like President Trump to right these wrongs.”
Sounds about right; in an authoritarian state, where law enforcement hinges on the whims of the Leader, a little flattery can go a long way. After all, “the authority of the Leader is total and all-embracing. The Leader’s authority is subject to no checks and controls. It is overriding and unfettered.”
That’s a quote from Ernst Rudolf Huber, a constitutional lawyer in Nazi Germany, writing in 1939. I’m not equating Trump with Hitler, but the emerging American form of authoritarianism carries faint echoes. German justice in that era operated on two tracks: a “normative” system (as scholars called it) that preserved traditional institutions and policed ordinary people, and a “prerogative” system that derived its extralegal authority from the Leader, who was “unfettered” to reward friends and punish enemies.
We’re seeing a form of that now. And nothing, and nobody, can stop him from getting worse.
Remember during the impeachment trial when the servile Republicans described Trump as an anti-corruption crusader? It was funny then; it’s farcical now. Because Blagojevich is exactly Trump’s kind of guy: a transactional hack. He was found guilty (among other things) of trying to extort the CEO of a children’s hospital for a political donation, in exchange for hiking the state’s Medicaid reimbursements to doctors.
But perhaps his most infamous crime was trying to sell a vacant U.S. Senate seat – hoping to work a deal with the incoming Obama team, hoping to appoint an Obama ally in exchange for a top administration job or a financially lucrative gig (especially the latter, because he was $200,000 in debt at the time).
The FBI wiretaps were epic. Blagojevich said, “I mean, I’ve got this thing (Senate vacancy) and it’s f—–g golden. And I’m just not giving it up for f—–g nothing…U.N. ambassador. I’d take that.” Alternatively, he wanted the Obama team to line up wealthy donors who’d pay him to create and run a non-profit group: “Can’t they get, like, Warren Buffet and some of those guys to put up, like, $10-, $12-, $15 million in that, like, right away?” (Obama didn’t bite. Blagojevich raged on the wiretap, “F–k him.”)
As Blagojevich prepared yesterday to leave jail, five House Republicans from Illinois released a statement: “We are disappointed…We believe he received an appropriate and fair sentence, which was the low end of the federal sentencing guidelines for the gravity of his public corruption convictions. Blagojevich is the face of public corruption in Illinois, and not once has he shown any remorse for his clear documented record of egregious crimes that undermined the trust placed in him by the voters. As our state continues to grapple with political corruption, we shouldn’t let those who breached the public trust off the hook.”
Wow, five Republicans stood tall for the rule of law. How noble of them. But in the House last December, four of them voted No on impeachment (the fifth was absent). Along with the rest of their House and Senate brethren (except Mitt Romney), they’ve left Trump unfettered to make a mockery of American justice. Their “disappointment” is pathetic. They are complicit in crimes against democracy, and may the verdict of history eviscerate them.