Ex-Trump Lawyer: 'The Constitution Is Not Adequate to Contain a President as Evil as Trump'

By Brian Daitzman

Ty Cobb, the former White House lawyer who once represented President Donald J. Trump, issued a public warning this week, saying the president’s conduct and his approach to the judiciary pose what Cobb described as a serious risk to the country’s constitutional structure.

“The Constitution really is not adequate to deal with a president as evil as Trump,” Cobb said in an interview broadcast on MSNow, adding that the president’s recent actions reflected “a desire to accumulate and abuse power.”

Cobb said his assessment was shaped by his time inside the Trump administration. “Never before in American history … have most Americans been as concerned about their president,” he said. He added that aides around Mr. Trump historically grew concerned “when President Trump gets like this,” referring to periods when the president responded sharply to criticism.

Cobb pointed to a series of recent legal setbacks for the administration as part of the context for his comments. “An appeals court rejected Trump’s efforts to revive his defamation lawsuit against CNN,” he said. He also noted that “a federal judge ruled Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., was illegal,” and that another judge found the president “likely violated the law when he tried to cut millions of dollars in funding” to local governments over immigration and diversity policies. Cobb said the number of such rulings highlighted the extent to which courts have been called upon to review executive actions.

Addressing the president’s decision-making style, Cobb said Mr. Trump reacted intensely to perceived personal slights. “Any insult tweaks his narcissism in a way that brings out a fight or flight instinct,” Cobb said, “and with Trump, the flight instinct really doesn’t kick in. It’s really just fight, and it’s fight by any means possible — legal or otherwise.” He said he viewed actions such as “sending in the National Guard” and “zip tying mothers and separating [them] from their children” as examples of this pattern.

Cobb also described what he believed were constitutional vulnerabilities exposed during the administration. “Congress … ceded basically all control to the president,” he said. “They’ve neutered themselves through their cowardice and greed.” He said the framers intended Congress — and not the courts — to be “the first wave of resistance to an evil president.” While federal judges interpret law, he said, “the courts don’t have the ability to say what’s best for America… They have to say what does the Constitution require.”

Cobb cited reporting that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch described a “war against the federal judiciary,” and said he believed that rhetoric reflected a broader pattern of institutional confrontation. “By denigrating the judiciary… Trump is basically trying to weaken one of the only remaining pillars that is standing up to him,” Cobb said. He added that these developments were occurring “at a time where the constitutional stresses are extreme.”

Cobb leveled additional allegations about U.S. activities abroad. “He’s committing war crimes in Venezuela and Colombia,” Cobb said, asserting that military legal officers who raised concerns “were fired or sidelined.” He added: “There’s no question under international law and domestic law that what’s going on… is murder.” Cobb said he believed U.S. personnel involved were likely relying on a classified Office of Legal Counsel opinion, which he described as “a phony opinion… written precisely to provide cover to Trump.” He added that “if you’re a soldier and there’s an OLC opinion and you’ve been told that it’s legal, that makes it unlikely that you would ever be prosecuted.”

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Cobb said he viewed some domestic legal disputes through the same lens. “There is a war,” he said, referring to conflict with judges in matters involving former FBI Director James Comey and former deputy director Andrew McCabe. “We should be very concerned about it,” he added. Cobb said service members witnessing such disputes “should understand that they don’t have to follow illegal orders.”

Cobb added that he doubted accountability would follow these events.

“It’d be nice to have a Nuremberg trial of all these people, but I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he said. “We need somehow to get the resistance to bring this to a close.”Cobb concluded by saying that the judiciary remains the key institutional safeguard. “We need a very strong judiciary,” he said. “Particularly at this time.”

Brian Daitzman is the Editor of The Intellectualist. Read the original article here.

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