Click here for an article at Substack by Robert Reich entitled "What Trump's lawyer is really advocating."
Trump’s lawyer, John Sauer, argued on Tuesday (before the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit) that a precondition for a president to face criminal trial is impeachment by Congress.
In effect, John Sauer was arguing for the equivalent of the 1933 Enabling Law in Germany.
Reich explains that the 1933 Enabling Law was passed by the German parliament, giving Hitler the authority to enact new laws without interference from either the president or the Reichstag for four years.
Hitler had used this law to eliminate opposition and cement his authority.
Over the next four months, Hitler and his Nazi henchmen swept away most of the guarantees of freedom and the rule of law in the German Constitution. They did this remarkably quickly by destroying every countervailing center of power.
They took over the governments of the individual states so that no possible opposition could come from places like perennially contrary Bavaria.
They took over radio stations and newspapers, under the direction of Joseph Goebbels’s new Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.
They took over the civil service. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service allowed Hitler’s regime to dismiss from public service anyone whose political record did not “offer sufficient guarantee” that they would “at all times wholeheartedly stand up for the national state” or who were “non-Aryan.” University professors and private lawyers fell under its terms.
They outlawed other political parties. Hitler’s government issued a decree declaring the Nazis the sole political party in Germany.
They targeted Jews. A week after passage of the Enabling Act, Hitler’s government declared a boycott of Jewish businesses and professional offices.
They rounded up political opponents. Hitler said he planned to bring “ruthlessly to account” his political opponents and “the whole clique around this vermin.”
In March, the Nazis declared with great fanfare the creation of their first concentration camp, at Dachau, near Munich. The first wave of victims were Hitler’s political opponents — liberal, left-wing, or pacifist politicians, activists, journalists, writers, and lawyers. In nearly all cases, the prisoners were tortured and beaten. Many were murdered.
They took over the judiciary. After the German Supreme Court acquitted four communists against whom evidence was either nonexistent or fabricated, Hitler ordered the creation of a new court, the People’s Supreme Court, especially for political offenses. Judges were subject to dismissal for verdicts that displeased the Führer.
They took over the military and all civilian militia. Hitler put Hermann Göring in charge of the Prussian police. As early as February 17, Göring ordered all Prussian police officers to use their firearms against “enemies of the state.” On February 22, a further decree allowed members of the so-called “Patriotic Associations” — militia such as the SA, SS, and Steel Helmet — to become auxiliary police officers.
Regarding comparisons between Hitler and Trump, Reich says:
Don’t get me wrong. The United States is not the Weimar Republic on the eve of 1933. American democracy is far stronger. Our economy is much stronger. We have not been through a grueling and destructive world war. We are polarized, to be sure, but we are not on the verge of civil war.
And Donald Trump is no Adolf Hitler. Trump may be a sociopath, but he is not as cruelly and cleverly demented as was Hitler.
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