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In Op-Ed, John Boehner Reveals He Has No Actual Legal Justification For Suing President Obama

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Speaker of the House John Boehner announced over the weekend — in a ghostwritten CNN op-ed — that he has pretty much zero legal or logical justification for suing Barack Obama, but he’s going to try to do it anyway.

Last month Fox News pundit George Will, in his Washington Post column, outlined a hair-brained and likely legally faulty scheme designed to give the Republican-led House a path to sue President Barack Obama. Why? What George Will called the President’s so-called “lawlessness” — aka, doing his job by issuing executive orders, which every president for decades has done. Will presented an idea formed by occasional Fox News guests, attorneys David B. Rivkin and Elizabeth Price Foley.

President Barack Obama’s “offenses against the separation of powers have been egregious in quantity,” Will wrongly claimed, offering his “reason” to sue the President.

Last week and then, in a CNN op-ed this weekend, Speaker John Boehner took the GOP base bait, “borrowing” Will’s suggestion — and the Rivkin-Price Foley tactics — and announced he indeed will sue President Obama.

Clearly, though, he has no idea why — and nor did his CNN ghostwriter.

Boehner (or his ghostwriter,) claims that “too often over the past five years, the President has circumvented the American people and their elected representatives through executive action, changing and creating his own laws, and excusing himself from enforcing statutes he is sworn to uphold — at times even boasting about his willingness to do it, as if daring the American people to stop him.”

If he has been daring the American people to stop him, it certainly wasn’t when he passed Obamacare, ended “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” or moved the country forward more than 570 times. 571 if you count getting re-elected.

CNN’s Sally Kohn writes that the idea of suing Obama is “frivolous” and “nothing more than a flagrant partisan stunt.”

House Republicans are using taxpayer dollars to fund a lawsuit against a President who has literally done not only what every president before him has done but has done it less often and is doing so now only because House Republicans repeatedly refuse to even vote on legislation, let alone pass anything.

Will claims Obama’s “offenses against the separation of powers have been egregious in quantity.” Kohn proves that’s false.

President Theodore Roosevelt enacted 1,081 executive orders during his presidency. President Dwight Eisenhower had 484. President Ronald Reagan had 381. And President George W. Bush had 291.

President Barack Obama has enacted 182 executive orders — yet the GOP accuses him of being an “imperial president,” and Republican members of the House of Representatives are preparing to sue him for violating the Constitution.

If House Republicans don’t like these executive orders, then pass immigration reform and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Don’t sue the President. Passing laws that our nation wants and needs is doing your job. Suing the President just because you don’t like him is irresponsible partisan petulance.

And indeed, Boehner’s op-ed offers no legal explanation, no actual justification, no respectable argument for suing President Obama.

Instead, he offers this:

After years of slow economic growth and high unemployment under President Obama, they are still asking, ‘where are the jobs?’ The House has passed more than 40 jobs bills that would help. But Washington Democrats, led by the President, just ignore them.

Even worse, the President’s habit of ignoring the law as written hurts our economy and jobs even more. Washington taxes and regulations always make it harder for private sector employers to meet payrolls, invest in new initiatives and create jobs — but how can those employers plan, invest and grow when the laws are changing on the President’s whim at any moment?

“Where are the jobs?” That’s laughable, considering 48 hours earlier, Bloomberg News reported a “plunge in U.S. unemployment to the lowest level in more than five years,” and noted that payrolls “surged in June by 288,000 workers and unemployment fell to 6.1 percent, a level that Fed officials didn’t expect to see before the end of the year.”

Seriously, that’s Boehner’s entire argument — eviscerated by “plunging unemployment” and “surging payrolls.”

To quote Rick Perry, “oops.”

Attorney Jonathan Turley has spoken out in opposition to Obama’s use of executive orders. But on his blog this weekend, contributor Mark Esposito wrote a scathing analysis of Boehner’s impending lawsuit and his CNN op-ed: “The Boehner Manifesto: How To Do Nothing And Look Constitutional?“

It’s a time-tested feature of the American Presidency that holders of the office are judged by what they do for people and not how they do it. Lincoln is remembered in the consciousness of the public  for ending the Civil War not suspending habeas corpus. FDR is lionized for the New Deal and his leadership against fascism not the court-packing plan. And even ol’ unpopular ‘W” himself has received a popularity renaissance of sorts for his efforts to combat terrorism with hardly a mention of the dubious methods he employed. Why would the public in the last two elections be looking for anything different?  Give us someone who can bring about positive change in Washington and the society it oversees was the order from the populace.

And at the ever-insightful and ever-irreverent Balloon Juice:

The reasons stated to justify Boehner’s lawsuit are fuzzy, unconnected to the law, the Constitution, logic or even reality. That will no doubt make it a winning stunt and distraction for the White Walkers animating the corpse of the GOP.

…

The base is outraged that a black man is President. They are outraged that he dares to exercise the exact same type of Presidential powers that white Presidents have used in the past. They are outrage that he does not seek permission of the white GOP minority before he acts.

John Boehner gets the outrage of his base. He fears his base and needs them at the same time. To fluff them he will do anything. And so he is preparing to sue the President of the United States for the “crime” of being an uppity negro.

Take the racial code-talking away and there is nothing to support or justify his lawsuit at all.

As silly as this lawsuit will be, sillier still will be the way that the very serious people inside the beltway will pretend that race has nothing to do with it.

Yes, John Boehner, the man who allowed the Tea Party to shut down the government last year, costing American taxpayers $24 billion, the man who spent $3 million to defend DOMA in federal court (you’ll remember, he lost each time,) is now going to take your hard earned money and use it to sue the President, offering another stunt to take the public’s eye off immigration reform, minimum wage reform, and, well, passing laws of any kind.

UPDATE: The White House Deputy Press Secretary just tweeted this:

 

Image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr

 

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News

‘Blood on Your Hands’: Tennessee Republicans OK Arming Teachers After Deadly School Shooting

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April 23, 2024

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Republicans in the Tennessee House passed legislation Tuesday afternoon allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons in classrooms across the state, thirteen months after a 28-year old shooter slaughtered three children and three adults at a Christian elementary school in Nashville.

The measure is reportedly not popular statewide, with Democrats, teachers, and parents from the school, Covenant Elementary, largely opposed. The Republican Speaker of the House, Cameron Sexton, at one point literally shut down debate on the bill by shutting off a Democratic lawmaker’s microphone and then smiling.

Ultimately, Republican Rep. Ryan Williams’s legislation passed the GOP majority House as protestors in the gallery shouted their objections: “Blood on your hands.”

READ MORE: Trump Complains He’s ‘Not Allowed to Talk’ as He Gripes Live on Camera

The legislation bars parents from being informed if their child’s teacher has a gun in the classroom.

State Troopers were called to “prevent people from getting close to the House chambers,” WSMV’s Marissa Sulek reports.

“You’re going to kill kids,” one woman had yelled at Rep. Williams from the gallery on Monday, The Tennessean reports. “You’re going to be responsible for the death of children. Shame on you.”

READ MORE: Biden Campaign Hammers Trump Over Infamous COVID Comment

Democratic state Rep. Justin Jones said on social media, “This is what fascism looks like.”

“In recent weeks,” the paper also reports, “parents of school shooting survivors, students and gun-reform advocates have heavily lobbied against the bill, with one Covenant School mom delivering a letter to the House on Monday with more than 5,300 signatures asking lawmakers to kill the bill.”

The bill, which already passed the state Senate, now heads to Republican Governor Bill Lee’s desk. He is expected to sign it into law.

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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OPINION

Trump Complains He’s ‘Not Allowed to Talk’ as He Gripes Live on Camera

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April 23, 2024

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At the end of another short courtroom day that required barely three hours of Donald Trump’s time, the ex-president spoke to reporters inside Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building to complain about a wide variety of perceived and alleged wrongs he is suffering, including, not being “allowed to talk.”

The ex-president’s presence was required only from 11 AM until just 2 PM. Judge Juan Merchan is overseeing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of the ex-president in a case that has already drawn a straight line through the “hush money” headlines to correct them to alleged criminal conspiracy and election interference.

Judge Merchan, for nearly two hours Tuesday morning, heard prosecutors’ allegations that Trump has violated his gag order ten times, and heard defense counsel’s claims that he had not.

It did not go well for the Trump legal team, with Judge Merchan toward the end of the hearing, during which no jurors were allowed, telling Trump lead attorney Todd Blanche, “You’re losing all credibility.”

READ MORE: Biden Campaign Hammers Trump Over Infamous COVID Comment

During the day’s hearing, jurors heard prosecutors’ lead witness, the former head of the company that publishes the National Enquirer tabloid, David Pecker, explain how he was working to help the Trump campaign.

“David Pecker testifies that, following his 2015 meeting with Trump and [Michael] Cohen, he met with former National Enquirer editor-in-chief Dylan Howard,” MSNBC’s Kyle Griffin reports. “Pecker outlined the arrangement and described it as ‘highly private and confidential.’ Pecker asked Howard to notify the tabloid’s West Coast and East Coast bureau chiefs that any stories that came in about Trump or the 2016 election must be vetted and brought straight to Pecker — and ‘they’ll have to be brought to Cohen.’ Pecker told Howard the arrangement needed to stay a secret because it was being carried out to help Trump’s campaign.”

Trump did not discuss any evidence against him with reporters, but he did complain about the gag order. And President Joe Biden. And the temperature in the courtroom. And his apparent attempt to stay awake, which has been a problem for him almost every day in court.

“We have a gag order, which to me is totally unconstitutional, I’m not allowed to talk but people are allowed to talk about me,” Trump told reporters, emphasizing the last word in that sentence.

“So they can talk about me, they can say whatever they want, they can lie. But I’m not allowed to say anything, I just have to sit back and look at why a conflicted judge has ordered me to have a gag order.”

READ MORE: ‘Rally Behind MAGA’: Trump Advocates Courthouse ‘Protests’ Nationwide

“I don’t think anybody’s ever seen anything like this,” Trump claimed, falsely implying no criminal defendant has ever had a gag order imposed on them previously. “I’d love to talk to you people, I’d love to say everything that’s on my mind, but I’m restricted because I have a gag order, and I’m not sure that anybody’s ever seen anything like this before.”

Trump then started to discuss the “articles” in his hand, what appeared to be dozens of articles he said had “all good headlines,” while implying they claimed “the case is a sham.”

Trump oversimplified the legal arguments attached to his gag order, as discussed with Judge Merchan Tuesday morning. The judge has yet to rule on prosecutors’ request to hold Trump in contempt.

“So I put an article in and then somebody’s name is mentioned somewhere deep in the article and I end up in violation of a gag order,” he told reporters, apparently referring to his posts on Truth Social with persecutes say violated his gag order. “I think it’s a disgrace. It’s totally unconstitutional. I don’t believe it’s ever – not to this extent – ever happened before. I’m not allowed to defend myself and yet other people are allowed to say whatever they want about me. Very, very unfair.”

“Having to do with the schools and the closings – that’s Biden’s fault,” Trump said, strangely, as if the COVID pandemic were still officially in process. “And by the way, this trial is all Biden, this is all Biden just in case anybody has any question. And they’re keeping me, in a courtroom that’s freezing by the way, all day long while he’s out campaigning, that’s probably an advantage because he can’t campaign.”

“Nobody knows what he’s doing. he can’t put two sentences together. But he’s out campaigning. He’s campaigning and I’m here and I’m sitting here sitting up as straight as I can all day long because you know, it’s a very unfair situation,” Trump lamented. “So we’re locked up in a courtroom and this guy’s out there campaigning, if you call it a campaign, every time he opens his mouth he gets himself into trouble.”

Watch below or at this link.

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News

Biden Campaign Hammers Trump Over Infamous COVID Comment

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7 hours ago

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April 23, 2024

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Four years ago today then-President Donald Trump, on live national television during what would be known as merely the early days and weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, suggested an injection of a household “disinfectant” could cure the deadly coronavirus.

The Biden campaign on Tuesday has already posted five times on social media about Trump’s 2020 remarks, including by saying, “Four years ago today, Dr. Birx reacted in horror as Trump told Americans to inject bleach on national television.”

Less than 24 hours after Trump’s remarks calls to the New York City Poison Control Center more than doubled, including people complaining of Lysol and bleach exposure. Across the country, the CDC reported, calls to state and local poison control centers jumped 20 percent.

“It was a watershed moment, soon to become iconic in the annals of presidential briefings. It arguably changed the course of political history,” Politico reported on the one-year anniversary of Trump’s beach debacle. “It quickly came to symbolize the chaotic essence of his presidency and his handling of the pandemic.”

How did it happen?

“The Covid task force had met earlier that day — as usual, without Trump — to discuss the most recent findings, including the effects of light and humidity on how the virus spreads. Trump was briefed by a small group of aides. But it was clear to some aides that he hadn’t processed all the details before he left to speak to the press,” Politico added.

READ MORE: ‘Cutting Him to Shreds’: ‘Pissed’ Judge Tells Trump’s Attorney ‘You’re Losing All Credibility’

“’A few of us actually tried to stop it in the West Wing hallway,’ said one former senior Trump White House official. ‘I actually argued that President Trump wouldn’t have the time to absorb it and understand it. But I lost, and it went how it did.'”

The manufacturer of Lysol issued a strong statement saying, “under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route),” with “under no circumstance” in bold type.

Trump’s “disinfectant” remarks were part of a much larger crisis during the pandemic: misinformation and disinformation. In 2021, a Cornell University study found the President was the “single largest driver” of COVID misinformation.

What did Trump actually say?

“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out, in a minute,” Trump said from the podium at the White House press briefing room, as Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx looked on without speaking up. “Is there a way we can do something like that? By injection, inside, or almost a cleaning, ’cause you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. You’re going to have to use medical doctors, right? But it sounds interesting to me.”

READ MORE: ‘Rally Behind MAGA’: Trump Advocates Courthouse ‘Protests’ Nationwide

Within hours comedian Sarah Cooper, who had a good run mocking Donald Trump, released a video based on his remarks that went viral:

The Biden campaign at least 12 times on the social media platform X has mentioned Trump’s infamous and dangerous remarks about injecting “disinfectant,” although, like many, they have substituted the word “bleach” for “disinfectant.”

Hours after Trump’s remarks, from his personal account, Joe Biden posted this tweet:

Tuesday morning the Biden campaign released this video marking the four-year anniversary of Trump’s “disinfectant” remarks.

See the social media posts and videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument

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