An Agenda for the Day After

acaletters_toutby Seth Rogovoy

Assuming there is a decisive victor in Tuesday’s presidential election – but regardless of who that victor is – this is what must happen on Wednesday, the day after, in order to restore democracy and the rule of law in our political system:

  • FBI director James Comey must do the honorable thing and tender his resignation. If he does not offer it, US Attorney General Loretta Lynch or President Obama must ask him to resign. If he doesn’t do so quickly and quietly, he must be fired. The reasons are clear: he used woefully poor judgment throughout the presidential campaign on what was and what was not said and done regarding investigations into the presidential candidates. By doing so, he besmirched his office and his agency, resulting in an utter lack of confidence among the public on all sides of the political spectrum. And as a result of setting a poor example and presumably owing to poor leadership, he also left the FBI as an agency exposed to charges of currying favor with the Donald Trump campaign, allowing a renegade faction of agents to pursue baseless charges against Hillary Clinton with the self-confessed encouragement of Trump handmaiden Rudy Giuliani.

 

  • The president must immediately charge the National Security Agency with investigating the FBI and its agents for evidence of using their non-partisan police powers for political ends, the likes of which this nation hasn’t seen since the days of J. Edgar Hoover. The investigation must begin with James Comey and continue with Rudy Giuliani and his ties to the FBI Agents Association (FBIAA), which represents 13,000 former and current agents, with particular attention paid to his relationship to Jim Kallstrom, the former head of the New York FBI office, installed in that post in the 1990s by then-FBI director Louis Freeh, one of Giuliani’s longtime friends, as well as Kallstrom’s financial ties to Donald Trump.

 

  • Since the FBI cannot be trusted to do so, and whether or not he wins the election, the US attorney general needs to charge a relevant prosecutor – perhaps Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York – to investigate the entire morass of Donald Trump’s criminal conspiracies: his abuse of IRS regulations to avoid paying taxes; his abuse of the bankruptcy system to repeatedly avoid paying his debts; his trail of stiffing his creditors merely because he decides not to pay them; his long history of rape and sexual abuse of women; his discriminatory practices as a landlord; his and his associate’s illicit connections to foreign and enemy governments, along with Paul Manafort, and engaging with them to spy on and hack the American political and electoral systems, as well as their bribery and theft of foreign governments, and the potential implications of these acts as the basis for charges of treason.

 

  • The president must immediately resubmit his Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland to the US Senate, imposing a deadline of December 15 for their ultimate advice and consent (or lack of such), after which President Obama shall appoint Justice Garland to the court, given that the Senate had their opportunity to advise and consent, as the US Constitution requires, but declined to do so in this case, freeing the president’s hands to make the appointment.

 

  • Any moves by so-called militias or groups such as the Ku Klux Klan to foment violence or intimidation during or in the wake of the presidential election must be met with swift and severe state police action directed by the Department of Homeland Security. Such militant action needs to be dealt with under the same rubric as terrorism, foreign-inspired or otherwise. In this case, it needs to be labeled domestic terrorism, and the instigators must be deal with in a manner no different from members or leaders of groups such as ISIS or Al Qaeda, as the methods and goals of these domestic terrorists and terror groups are exactly the same – to destroy our civil society and the rule of American law.

 

The future of our democracy hangs in the balance, no matter who wins the presidency. That should keep President Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch busy on Wednesday.

 

 

 

 

 

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