MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY

"I don't like being pushed around and now they're beginning to learn it." 

Donald Trump

If you recall President Donald Trump uttering those words on August 16, 2018, when he withdrew the security clearance of John Brennan, the former CIA Director, (and threatened to do the same to a raft of other named former government employees who are publicly critical of his policies and deportment,) then you misremember.

Those words were indeed spoken by Donald Trump, but it was in 1985. He was speaking to the New York Post, explaining why he had just filed a federal lawsuit seeking 105 million dollars from a small law firm that had the temerity to represent tenants who lived in a rent controlled building that Trump wished to demolish.

Trump amplified the bullying message by boasting to the Post,
"The rich have a very low threshold for pain!"

It was classic Donald Trump, the devoted adherent to the teachings of his infamous attack-dog lawyer, Roy Cohn. Trump has never forgotten or forsaken the lessons he learned from Roy before he was exposed as a thief and a perjurer, and disbarred. 

Trump's lawsuit was a classic ugly power play.  He assumed that because he had a lot more money than his adversaries, he had power over them, and he could use that power to bludgeon the lawyers into abandoning or selling out their clients. In Trumpworld, a win by any means is a win.

To enhance the assault, Trump' charged that the lawyers' persistent legal defense of their clients' rights was a violation of the criminal statute designed to reign in the mob, The Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known a RICO. The  Trump legal complaint was all bluster, no substance. There was no allegation that the defendant lawyers had used the courts corruptly, no allegation they were complicit with a faithless court employee. But Trump's claim was so outlandish on its face, in both monetary scope and criminal threat, so inflammatory, that it prompted, for a brief time, the law firm's bank to freeze its account! Ouch!  

No  surprise: the bankers and the firm's stunned partners learned of the existence of the lawsuit by reading about it in New York Post!  More Trump-Cohn shtick.

But Trump misjudged his adversaries. The lawyers that Trump attacked could not match his wealth, but they had other values The Donald lacked. They had a sense of loyalty to their clients, and they had the guts to resist the bully. And that's what they did. I was pleased to be asked to represent them, pleased when the trial court and the appellate court, in quick succession, dismissed the Trump claim as being totally without merit, and I was pleased again when Trump submitted to our demand that he pay our clients' legal fees, pursuant to a court rule sanctioning frivolous litigation.

The real estate tyro is now President, and has much greater power than just being rich, but he plays by the same rule book as before. But the Constitution and its Article III judicial system remains devoted to real facts, the rule of law, and as a result is a staunch defense against this President's misconduct, even as the nation's legislative branch seems, for the moment, to have abandoned its Constitutional responsibilities.

 As the pressure from the Mueller inquiry mounts, so does the volubility of the President's frantic tweet storm and his erratic conduct. At what point the cracks in the pressure-containment vessel will bust wide open remains to be seen. And the consequences of that breach are as yet unknowable. (While I cannot even begin to grasp the core of the Trump/Amerosa connection and I have not read her book, I believe she nailed it with the title: Unhinged.)

Meanwhile, I expect the judicial system will continue to do its job, despite the shameful efforts of the leadership of the other two branches of our government to frustrate that result.

Amen.

............................

N.B.  Yup, readers of The Client Decides may recognize the description of the 1985 lawsuit. The facts are right out of my chapter entitled, "Trumping Trump."