Joe’s Social Contract

In return for the gift of the presidency to round off his undistinguished career as a political hack, Joe Biden carries water for his woke enablers.

by Paul Gottfried for American Greatness

Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan famously argues that a covenant between a sovereign and his subjects may be based on implicit consent, even if no formal contract has been made. Providing the ruler furnishes his subjects with protection, they are morally bound to obey him. The same kind of implicit arrangement may obtain between Joe Biden, on the one side, and the woke media and the dominant wing of the Democratic Party, on the other. Biden did not reach his current lofty position because of his uncorrupted political and personal past; or because he was the brightest bulb on the political scene. He is scandalously corrupt, has always been embarrassingly thick and inclined to make gaffes, and was never, before 2020, taken seriously as a presidential candidate.

By the time his party’s leaders, with drooling media support, chose him as a presidential candidate, he was already showing signs of senile dementia. It was an open secret among those who had contact with Joe that his incoherence on the stump and the manner in which his handlers protected him from difficult questions were the result of his deteriorating mental condition. From recent reports, it seems that Joe’s wife, Jill, had to ply him with pills during the 2020 campaign to allow him to read smoothly from a teleprompter. Even then, his cognitive decline had already become a serious problem.

Despite these challenges, Biden as president remained an asset to the cultural-political Left. He would do and say what they wanted. Indeed, he happily raced to the woke Left in his nonage, e.g., when he championed gay marriage as Barack Obama’s vice president, and more recently, when he favored public funding for abortion, belittled white Americans as inherently racist, kept America’s southern border dangerously open, and launched a Green New Deal. Joe also took far-out positions while campaigning for the presidency, although the media’s efforts to depict him as a “moderate” were so persistent that they clearly overshadowed what the Democratic candidate actually said. Equally relevant, as a candidate Joe was so inept in answering even the puffball questions that journalists lobbed at him that his verbal difficulties may have become more noticeable than his policy intentions.

Joe was carried across the finishing line by forces he hardly controlled, from the electronic media, globalist woke industries, the furnishers of drop boxes for what was a highly dubious method of voting, and anti-Trump interpreters of the COVID pandemic. All of these fixers helped catapult their candidate into the Oval Office, not because they viewed him as intelligent or principled but because he would carry out their ideological mission. No one had to tell us what this Hobbesian covenant involved. It was simply understood that in return for the gift of the presidency, to round off his undistinguished career as a political hack, Biden would carry water for his woke Left enablers. Not surprisingly, he’s been keeping his side of the bargain with exemplary obedience. 

Therein lies the problem. Biden’s woke positions are not sustaining him politically. Joe has become the American presidential version of the Terminator, a robot who carries out orders almost mindlessly without any regard for the consequences. This unlikely president also resembles the legendary Golem, the alleged creation of a late 16th-century Prague rabbi, who, according to Jewish legend, fashioned his nonhuman servant out of mud. 

The creator, Rabbi Loeb, supposedly came to regret his extraordinary achievement when he saw what it did. The Golem would execute commands so recklessly that it had to be deactivated. Mindless obedience does generate problems even for those who are faithfully following orders. As one watches the fitful behavior of our barely coherent chief executive, straining to please his “base,” one wonders how much of a favor he is doing his benefactors. Each day one waits for Joe to issue a new “executive order” that seems even nuttier than what he said or did the day or week before. It is also noticeable that these promises and actions show no possible connection to anything that Biden did or said during his many years in the U.S. Senate.  

Carrying out the wishes of one’s benefactor requires intelligence and moderation, not the reckless, rote obedience of a Golem or Terminator. Last week an East Tennessee judge blocked directives from the Biden Administration allowing employees and students in all public schools to use bathrooms and lockers that correspond to whatever they state as their present gender identity. Biden’s federal overreach is not likely to win him much applause, except among zealous LGBT activists. Right now, he is toying with the idea of declaring an environmental emergency executive order to grab even more power, on behalf of his media protectors and diminishing fan base. Please note that a Golem just acts without thinking. Or to get back to my original image, Hobbes’s subject is obligingly executing what he takes to be the unspoken demands of his sovereign.  

X22, Christian Patriot News, and more- July 25

 

Evening. Here's tonight's news:

How To Erode the World’s Greatest Military ~ VDH

Alienating half the country is not a 

wise strategy of military recruitment.

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

The U.S. Army has met only 40 percent of its 2022 recruiting goals.  

In fact, all branches of the military are facing historic resistance to their current recruiting efforts. If some solution is not found quickly, the armed forces will radically shrink or be forced to lower standards—or both.  

Such a crisis occurs importunely as an aggressive Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea believe the Biden Administration and the Pentagon have lost traditional U.S. deterrence.  

That pessimistic view abroad unfortunately is now shared by many Americans at home. In 2021, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute conducted its periodic poll of attitudes toward the U.S. military. The result was astonishing. Currently, only 45 percent of Americans polled expressed a great deal of trust in their armed forces. Confidence had dived 25 points since an early 2018 poll. 

Military officials cite both the usual and a new array of challenges in finding suitable young soldiers—drug use, gang affiliation, physical and mental incapacities, and the dislocations arising from the COVID pandemic and vaccination mandates. But they are too quiet about why such supposedly longer-term obstacles suddenly coalesced in 2022—as if their own leadership and policies have had no effect in discouraging tens of thousands of young men and women to join them. 

The Greatest Skedaddle in Modern American History 

A year ago, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley were assuring the country not to worry over Joe Biden’s strange ideas of abruptly pulling out all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. The radical step was purportedly to coincide with Biden’s planned 20-year celebratory event marking his role in ensuring an iconic end of the war on terror that began on September 11, 2001.  

What followed was the worst U.S. military humiliation since Pearl Harbor.  

U.S. forces abandoned hundreds if not thousands of American contractors and loyal Afghan employees, a $1 billion embassy, a huge $300 million refitted air base, and reportedly somewhere between $60-80 billion in military equipment and infrastructure. That sum was nearly double all the current military assistance sent to Ukraine.  

Thirteen Americans were murdered by terrorists during the chaotic flight. In response, the United States mistakenly blew up 10 innocent Afghans after misidentifying them as ISIS terrorists. The horrific scenes at the Kabul airport surpassed the 1975 catastrophic ending of the Vietnam War on the U.S. embassy roof.  

The global aftermath was eerie. Russia in a few months thereafter invaded Ukraine. Iran proudly announced it would soon have enough fissionable material to make a nuclear weapon. North Korea resumed its provocative missile launches. China openly talked of storming Taiwan.  

The common denominator was the global perception that any president and military responsible for such colossal, televised incompetence would or could neither deter enemy aggression nor protect allied interests.  

In response, widely reported furor arose among the ranks of some American officers and the enlisted. Mid-level officers especially claimed they were ignored after warning that the abrupt withdrawal was suicidal, that Pentagon grandees were lying about the dire facts on the grounds in efforts to lubricate the Biden agenda, and that thousands of Americans and loyal Afghans would be cast adrift, along with our NATO allies.

The shame of defeat and the cloud of incompetence from Afghanistan has continued to harm recruitment efforts of the military. 

The White Rage Unicorn 

About a year ago Austin and Chairman Milley took time out from assuring Americans that all would be well in Kabul, to testify before Congress about the Pentagon’s effort to address “white rage” in the six-month aftermath of the January 6 riot.  

Both were also asked to explain why the armed services were recommending soldiers read inter alia the often-discredited “antiracist” theories of Ibram X. Kendi. His polarizing doctrine asserts that the entire U.S. system of government, all social and political life, and our very culture are racist to core. As a result, Kendi’s solution requires radical and overt racial preferencing and discrimination supposedly to fight such an insidious system.  

Yet what was startling about the two officials’ testimonies was the utter lack of data showing any general trends that white soldiers were any more or less likely to practice racial discrimination or chauvinism than other ethnic and racial groups in the military. An array of officers defended various workshops and course work at the military academies purporting that white rage is an existential problem in the military.  

The subtext of the entire testimony debacle was that the two titular heads of the military wished to reassure progressive majorities in the U.S. Congress that they were sympathetic to the woke movement and, along with other high-ranking officers, wanted publicly to virtue signal to that effect.  

In their emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion—the latest euphemisms for using race and gender quotas to assure proportional or even reparatory representation—throughout the officer corps, Austin and Milley seemed entirely oblivious that the U.S. Army depends on generations of family loyalty to the armed forces. Such heritage and legacy considerations have ensured a steady stream of recruits for front-line combat units.  

In other words, over generations the same families, drawn from mostly middle-class cohorts, have served disproportionately in combat units in Vietnam, the various Iraq conflicts, and Afghanistan. Indeed, if the military was consistent in its racial fixations, it might have noted that white males—the purported targets of the Austin and Milley efforts to ferret out supposed white rage cells— died in three wars at roughly twice their numbers in the general population. 

Current analysis of the recruiting crisis reveals what almost any observer would have predicted a year earlier from the haughty virtue signaling of Austin and Milley: traditional military families are not sending their sons and daughters into the ranks. It is not the danger of combat or the rigor of military life that families fear, but the suspicion their offspring will be targeted for ideological indoctrination and coercion that is either extraneous or antithetical to military efficacy. 

Traditionally, 40 percent of new recruits cite the military service of their parents—not to mention their veteran grandparents. Currently only 13 percent of new recruits arrive from such military families. Yet Austin and Milley made no connection between the Pentagon fixations on current hot-button social issues and its apparent inability to secure an honorable and safe withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

The Weaponization of the Pentagon 

There is a general perception in and outside the military that the top ranks of the services are increasingly politicized. High profile officers have used the great authority, influence, and power of the Pentagon in polarizing progressive advocacy roles from transgenderism to abortion—to the detriment of military efficacy and lethality. Much of unhappiness with the military arises partly from the woke hysteria, the institutional disdain for Donald Trump and his response to it, and the perceived rewards for those retired military lobbyists and corporate board members who reflect a new woke creed.   

The nadir in politicization came in 2021 when it was revealed that Milley secretly contacted his Chinese communist counterpart during the height of the 2020 presidential election. Milley claimed he believed that his own commander-in-chief, Trump, was unstable. And so, after his layman’s diagnosis, he wished to assure the People’s Liberation Army’s ranking officer that he would tip the Chinese off about any thought of a preemptive American strike on China. Milley also ordered his own subordinate theater officers to report to him first should Trump contemplate any nuclear action against China. 

Upon public disclosure of those facts, Milley should have been summarily fired. By law, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is an advisory official only. The position enjoys no operational command.  

Milley violated the chain of command by usurping theater authority that was not his. Nor can a military long exist, if its iconic leader freelances in contacting enemy counterparts without the knowledge of the commander-in-chief.  

Can we imagine the outrage that would now ensue, if Milley should once again warn his Chinese counterpart that another president, Joe Biden, in the chairman’s own opinion, suffers bouts of cognitive debility and early onset senility, forcing Milley to take matters in his own hands? Yet such freelancing insubordination is now Milley’s legacy.  

In fact, some in the retired U.S. military for over four years systematically violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice, sometimes to the extent of engaging in a sort of coup porn. 

In a Washington Post op-ed, retired generals Paul Eaton, Antonio Taguba, and Steven Anderson melodramatically and without evidence warned the nation of a supposedly impending coup should their commander-in-chief Donald Trump be elected again in 2024. 

In August 2020, two retired officers John Nagl and Paul Yingling, wrote an op-ed urging Milley to simply remove Trump from office should Milley himself feel such a move was necessary after a disputed election. That was a de facto call for a possible coup d’état. But it was not unique.

Earlier, civilian Rosa Brooks, a former Obama-era Pentagon legal official, published an inflammatory call to arms in Foreign Policy. She discussed three major possible avenues to remove newly inaugurated Donald Trump from the presidency. One of her alternatives was a military coup.  

For the entire Trump presidency, retired four-star generals and admirals had routinely smeared their commander-in-chief as a veritable Nazi, a Mussolini-like figure, an abject liar, and comparable in his policies to the architects of the Nazi death camps. One retired admiral called for the removal of Trump “the sooner, the better” as if regularly scheduled elections were insufficient remedies. 

Aside from clear violations of Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, these officers were oblivious that nearly half the country supported the president and his policies. And so, millions of people would logically conclude that the highest-ranking retired officers, and by extension the culture of the current military, had nothing but contempt for their own views and voting decisions. Alienating nearly half the country is not a wise strategy of military recruitment.

Nor is hypocrisy. The perceptions in the ranks have grown that applications of the law are asymmetrical and politically warped. Article 88, applicable to retired generals and admirals, prohibits military officers from using contemptuous words about top civilian elected and appointed officials. It says nothing about the spouses of said officials.

None of the retired officers who in the media libeled their commander-in-chief from 2017-2021 faced any consequences—reprimands, court martials, or sanctions from doing business with the Pentagon from their corporate billets. Yet one recently did.  

The U.S. Army just fired retired consultant Lt. Gen. Gary Volesky from a contractual position with the Pentagon because he poked fun at First Lady Jill Biden. Note that Volesky did not suggest Jill or Joe Biden was a Nazi, a fascist, or liar —much less that her husband should be removed from office “the sooner, the better.” Retired General Volesky’s crime was mocking Jill Biden’s purported hypocrisy on the recent overturn of Roe v. Wade. 

Unfortunately, the crisis in the U.S. military transcends even the Afghanistan misadventure, unsupported accusations against an entire demographic, the erosion of military familial loyalty, freelancing politicized officers, and asymmetrical applications of laws and codes. 

Fairly or not, the perception among the public and our enemies is that the U.S. military has become a political entity with an agenda that transcends defending the U.S. and its interests. 

Its perceived main agenda by half the country is progressive social justice, administered top-down from a cadre of elites who can implement controversial policies through the chain of command without the messy work of the Congress—to the delight of the Pentagon’s newfound sunshine friends on the woke Left. 

Such military social engineers unfortunately appear to share contempt for a large group of Americans who voted for a president they despised. And this is a fact warmly welcomed by our worst enemies abroad.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk Have Something in Common

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse 

Donald Trump and Elon Musk have something in common….

“It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones.”

~Machiavelli

For Elon Musk it is the organization of Twitter with 7,500 employees dedicated to ensuring he would never succeed in his takeover effort.  From the board of directors to the data engineers who build the controlling algorithms, to the third-party service providers who manage the data demand, there are likely only a handful of people within the entire corporation who would welcome the type of change Elon Musk represents.

As a result of the scale of opposition, any organizational takeover would ultimately deliver a company filled with sleeper cells and activist agents who consider it their personal and ideological mission to destroy the social media platform rather than accept change.  The purchase effort was doomed from the outset, considering Musk represented something akin to Rand Paul being nominated to lead the World Bank or Federal Reserve.  Some stuff just isn’t possible.

We The People attempted the Musk route when we sent President Donald Trump into Washington DC.  However, instead of one institution with 7,500 people, it was dozens of institutions housing hundreds of thousands of entrenched ideologues.  Most MAGA voters did not realize it at the time because grade school civics was never updated with our post-9/11 political outcome.

Imagine what the 7,500 Twitter folks would do as employees within an institution they abhorred overnight.  What scale of effort would be exhausted to kill baby Elon Hitler for the greater social good?  You don’t have to go too far in your imagination, because that’s exactly how Washington DC reacted to Trump’s arrival.

From day one to day one-thousand-four-hundred-sixty-one, no opposition was too much opposition by anyone, in every institution and every branch – including both wings of the UniParty congress, upper and lower chambers.

The threat that Trump represented needed to be managed, attacked and ultimately removed.  There were/are trillions at stake, and keep in mind, DC is the epicenter of the global financial universe.  As a result, the financial foot-soldiers of almost every western nation were aligned to assist the DC system in removing the threat.

Sometimes I laugh at the hindsight of people who say Donald Trump had terrible judgement in his appointments.  I snicker because these are the same people who said General James “Mad Dog” Mattis was the greatest military leader since George Washington.  How did that role as defense secretary work out?

No wait, Trump could have done a better job against the 147,000 people in the United States Dept of State, extending like metastatic cancer around the globe from their primary origination point in foggy bottom DC.

Oh, I’m sure the Ron DeSantis advocates have a plan for that, just as assuredly as they can jump to the typeset to instruct Musk how to modify the personnel outlooks of the social media network.  Something that involves the multi-billion global media corporations folding up shop to shift their ideological compass headings, right?

Maybe free cookies will help the kids who work 3 hours a week, smile as they adjust to a 40-hour expectation.

I’m told that Donald Trump also planned badly to take over the 90,000 employees and $8.7 billion payroll at the U.S. Dept of Justice.  Trump should have listened to the advice of the esteemed and well-regarded senior Senator from deep red Alabama, Mr. Jeff Sessions, who was also praised effusively by the same conservative crowd who praised the Mad Dog.  If only Trump had installed a great stalwart for conservative principles like Sessions.  Alas, we lost the opp… wait, huh, no.. wait,.. I mean, what?

Former UN official Ric Grenell was awesome as the “acting” Director of National Intelligence.  If only President Trump had nominated Grenell from the outset, instead of that insufferable DC insider from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Dan Coats, things would have been so much better.

With an ODNI confirmation from the same senate intelligence group that was trying to block Trump from ever reaching Washington DC, things would have been awesome.  Hey, why is that “Acting” word always in front of Grenell anyway?  Oh, wait, the “Republican” committee members wouldn’t what?

Alas, if Trump had only done a better job of hiring the 2,400 people who work for the White House, he would have avoided all of those horrible stealth terror cells who were in place to facilitate his removal.  Surely it wouldn’t have taken him that long to go through the candidate pool and interview everyone willing to live within a 100-mile radius of the epicenter of morality and truthfulness known as Washington DC.

And boy did President Trump ever screw up with his 400+ staff National Security Council, who report to the National Security Advisor and come from every executive agency, including intelligence, to deliver wholesome and practical advice to the oval office holder they hated.

I’m sure Musk has a better plan to manage the Silicon Valley coders who design the algorithms at the Twitter.  I mean, Musk and Ron DeSantis being all smarter than Trump would have a plan for stuff, right?

Speaking of “intelligence”, what was candidate Donald Trump thinking when he selected former Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his vice-presidential running mate?  I mean everyone in the republican sphere of conservative politics hated Mike Pence in 2015 and 2016, knowing his conservative bona fides were a mask just waiting to drop and create havoc for the America-First agenda.   I mean it’s not like everyone didn’t know Mr. Pence surrounded himself with liars, fabricators and political club staff who hated the Tea Party base.   We all knew that in 2015 and 2016, right?

If only Donald Trump had hired the right kind of people within his administration, then the multinational global corporate media would not have needed to treat him like he was the walking personification of the antichrist.  A few people here, and a few different people there, and everything would have gone swimmingly.

Many people know -to a demonstrable certainty- that Ron DeSantis has, right now, a list of about 200,000 people ready to move themselves directly into Washington DC and finally change the system for the better.  I am certain this list exists because all the right crowd in conservative media tell me they are sure of it.

These betters are the people who would know such things because they knew Senator Ted Cruz was the reformist lightbringer in 2015.   The word is that DeSantis uniquely carries the power to replace every corrupt republican member of the House and Senate simply by raising his chin a certain way when the sunlight glistens upon him.

It was the Fourth Quarter of 2019…..

….despite two years of doomsayer predictions from Wall Street’s professional punditry, saying Trump tariffs on China would create massive inflation…. It wasn’t happening!

Overall year-over-year inflation was hovering around 1.7 percent [Table-A BLS]; that was our inflation rate.  The rate in late 2019 was firmed up with less month-over-month fluctuation, and the rate remained consistent.   [See Below]

A couple of important points.  First, unleashing the energy sector to drive down overall costs to consumers and industry outputs was a key part of President Trump’s America-First MAGAnomic initiative.  Lower energy prices help the worker economy, middle class and average American more than any other sector.

Which brings us to the second important point.  Notice how food price had very low year-over-year inflation, 0.5 percent.  That is a combination of two key issues: low energy costs, and the fracturing of Big Ag hold on the farm production and the export dynamic:

(BLS) […] The index for food at home declined for the third month in a row, falling 0.2 percent. The index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs decreased 0.7 percent in August as the index for eggs fell 2.6 percent. The index for fruits and vegetables, which rose in July, fell 0.5 percent in August; the index for fresh fruits declined 1.4 percent, but the index for fresh vegetables rose 0.4 percent. The index for cereals and bakery products fell 0.3 percent in August after rising 0.3 percent in July. (link)

For the previous twenty years food prices had been increasingly controlled by Big Ag, and not by normal supply and demand.   The commodity market became a ‘controlled market’. U.S. food outputs (farm production) was controlled and exported to keep the U.S. consumer paying optimal prices.

President Trump’s trade reset was disrupting this process.  As farm products were less exported the cost of the food in our supermarket became reconnected to a ‘more normal’ supply and demand cycle.  Food prices dropped and our pantry costs were lowered.

The Commerce Dept. then announced that retail sales climbed by 0.4 percent in August 2019, twice as high as the 0.2 percent analysts had predicted. The result highlighted retail sales strength of more than 4 percent year-over-year.   These excellent results came on the heels of blowout data in July, when households boosted purchases of cars and clothing.

The better-than-expected number stemmed largely from a 1.8 percent jump in spending vehicles. Online sales, meanwhile, also continued to climb, rising 1.6 percent. That’s similar to July, 2019, when Amazon held its two-day, blowout Prime Day sale. (link)

Despite the efforts to remove and impeach President Trump, it did not look like middle-class America was overly concerned about the noise coming from the pundits.   Likely that’s because blue-collar wages were higher, Main Street inflation was lower, and overall consumer confidence was strong.  Yes, MAGAnomics was working.

Additionally, remember all those MSM hours and newspaper column inches where the professional financial pundits were claiming Trump’s tariffs were going to cause massive increases in prices of consumer goods?

Well, exactly the opposite happened [BLS report] Import prices were continuing to drop:

[Table 1 – BLS report link]

This was a really interesting dynamic that no-one in the professional punditry would dare explain.

Donald Trump’s tariffs were targeted to specific sectors of imported products.  [Steel, Aluminum, and a host of smaller sectors etc.]  However, when the EU and China respond by devaluing their currency, that approach hit all products imported, not just the tariff goods.

Because the EU and China were driving up the value of the dollar, everything we were importing became cheaper.   Not just imports from Europe and China, but actually imports from everywhere.   All imports were entering the U.S. at substantially lower prices.

This meant when we imported products, we were also importing deflation.

This price result is exactly the opposite of what the economic experts and Wall Street pundits predicted back in 2017 and 2018 when they were pushing the rapid price increase narrative.

Because all the export dependent economies were reacting with such urgency to retain their access to the U.S. market, aggregate import prices were actually lower than they were when the Trump tariffs began:

[…]  Prices for imports from China edged down 0.1 percent in August following decreases of 0.2 percent in both July and June. Import prices from China have not advanced on a monthly basis since ticking up 0.1 percent in May 2018. The price index for imports from China fell 1.6 percent for the year ended in August.

[…]  Import prices from the European Union fell 0.2 percent in August and 0.3 percent over the past 12 months.

[Page #4 – BLS Report, pdf] – BLS press release

…There is only one Great MAGA King.

Fulton County DA’s J6-Style Crusade Against Lindsey Graham Is Unconstitutional, And Here’s Why

The Fulton County district attorney is making the Jan. 6 show trial look like a paragon of propriety and due process.

by Margot Cleveland for The Federalist

A Georgia county prosecutor is making the Jan. 6 show trial look like a paragon of propriety and due process. But now the targets of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s political hit job are beginning to push back in the courts against her outrageous abuse of the criminal justice system.

In January 2022, Willis requested that the chief judge of the Fulton County Superior Court, Christopher Brasher, impanel a “special grand jury” to assist in her supposed investigation “into any coordinated attempts to unlawfully alter the outcome of the 2020 elections in this state.” Willis’s request, however, made clear that the “special grand jury” would not be used to indict anyone but to issue a report at the conclusion of its supposed investigation, making “recommendations concerning criminal prosecution as it shall see fit.” 

The fact that Willis’s special grand jury lacks the power to return criminal indictments provided the initial proof that Willis seeks both self-promotion and to damage her political opponents, not to prosecute purported lawbreakers. Willis then confirmed her dual fame-seeking and political-warfare goals earlier this month when, as part of Fulton County’s purported investigation into “criminal disruptions” of Georgia’s administration of the 2020 general election, she obtained court approval to subpoena some big names. These included Trump’s election lawyers such as Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, Cleta Mitchell, and Kenneth Chesebro, as well as Sen. Lindsey Graham and attorney and podcast host Jacki Pick Deason. 

Willis’s use of the special grand jury to subpoena several of Trump’s attorneys serves no purpose but to push a “political farce because attorney-client privilege will prevent Trump’s lawyers from answering many of the questions likely to be posed.” The county prosecutor’s reported targeting of some of the top Georgia Republicans, including the GOP’s current candidate for lieutenant governor — who will face off this fall against Democrat Charlie Bailey — likewise screams of a political witch hunt, for Willis just happens to be a strong supporter of Bailey, having donated $2,500 to his campaign and having hosted a fundraiser for the Democrat candidate last month.

But it is the local prosecutor’s decision to target Graham that represents the apex of Willis’s absurdity because the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution protects our U.S. senators and representatives from such local political crusades. 

Look to the ‘Speech or Debate Clause’

Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution provides that “for any Speech or Debate in either House, [members] shall not be questioned in any other Place.” This clause, known commonly as the “Speech or Debate Clause,” applies not merely to “speech” and “debate” in the literal sense, but to all “legislative acts.” 

Over the years, the courts have further explained the scope of the Speech or Debate Clause, stressing that it must be applied “broadly” to achieve its purpose, and “protects a member’s conduct if it is an integral part of the due functioning of the legislative process.” Thus, the clause protects acts by which members deliberate and communicate “with respect to the consideration and passage or rejection of proposed legislation or with respect to other matters which the Constitution places within the jurisdiction of either House.” 

Notwithstanding the breadth of the Speech or Debate Clause, a county prosecutor in Georgia demands that the South Carolina senator travel to the Peach State to be questioned before a grand jury about two telephone conversations he allegedly had with state officials after the November 2020 election. While Willis seeks to portray Graham’s calls to state officials as somehow nefarious, a senator questioning the secretary of state on reported irregularities in Georgia’s election falls squarely within the “matters” the Constitution places within the jurisdiction of Congress.

Specifically, Congress, which has “all Legislative powers” under our federal Constitution, passed the Electoral Count Act, which authorizes federal lawmakers to raise objections to the states’ certificates of electors. Further, under the Electoral Count Act, members of both chambers must then “decide upon an objection that may have been made to the counting of any electoral vote or votes from any State.” First, though, under this law, members of Congress may “speak to such objection or question” for five minutes.

Graham did precisely that on January 6, 2021, when in response to objections to the electors of various states, he rose to the Senate floor and explained his rationale for rejecting the objections. Graham’s floor speech made clear he had inquired about both claims of illegal voting and fraud. “Georgia: They say the secretary of state took law into his own hands, he changed the elections laws unlawfully,” Graham noted. But “a federal judge said ‘no.’ I accept the federal judge even though I don’t agree with it,” he continued. “Fraud: They say there’s 66,000 people in Georgia under 18, voted,” the South Carolina senator added. “I asked, ‘give me 10,’” but he “got one.” Graham then proceeded to vote to certify the election.

Clearly, Graham’s statements from the floor of Congress are protected by the Speech or Debate Clause. But again, the protections afforded by that clause are not so limited as to apply only to words spoken from the seat of the Capitol. Rather, the Supreme Court has noted that while not everything “in any way related to the legislative process” is protected by the clause, legislators’ preparations for the “legislate process” are protected.

While case law interpreting the clause provides little to no guidance on what constitutes such “preparations,” last term the U.S. Supreme Court — in Trump v. Mazars USA, in discussing whether Congress has the power to issue certain subpoenas — elaborated on the “legislative function.” 

“Without information,” the court explained, “Congress would be shooting in the dark, unable to legislate ‘wisely or effectively.’” Accordingly, “congressional power to obtain information is ‘broad’ and ‘indispensable,’” and “it encompasses inquiries into the administration of existing laws, studies of proposed laws and ‘surveys of defects in our social, economic, or political system for the purpose of enabling the Congress to remedy them.’” 

The Mazars opinion thus makes clear that obtaining information for the purpose of legislating “wisely or effectively” constitutes an appropriate “legislative function.” And the Supreme Court has held that “when the Speech or Debate Clause is raised in defense to a subpoena, the only question to resolve is whether the matters about which testimony are sought ‘fall within the “sphere of legitimate legislative activity.”’” If so, that clause serves as an “absolute bar to interference.” 

Reading the Mazars analysis, then, in light of case law interpreting the Speech or Debate Clause, strongly supports the conclusion that a state prosecutor cannot force the South Carolina senator to appear in Georgia to be questioned about his conversations with Georgia officials regarding the 2020 election. That holds true no matter how Willis frames Graham’s motive because the Supreme Court precludes any inquiry into the motivations for acts that occur in the regular course of the legislative process. 

Founders Tried to Prevent Bad Actors Like Willis

Beyond the plain language of the Speech or Debate Clause, the original intent of that constitutional provision confirms that the founding generation, in ratifying the Constitution, sought to prevent precisely the shenanigans Willis is playing. 

The Founding Fathers included the Speech or Debate Clause in the federal Constitution, the Supreme Court explained, “to protect the integrity of the legislative process by insuring the independence of individual legislators.” “The central object of the Speech or Debate Clause is to protect the ‘independence and integrity of the legislature,’” the high court explained, and to prevent “intimidation of legislators by the Executive and accountability before a possible hostile judiciary.” Further, the “rights of the people,” the authors of our Constitution believed, would be best protected if the representatives could “executive the functions of their office without fear” of interference.

Now, some 230 years later, a partisan Democrat D.A. in Georgia is proving the prescience of the framers, with her targeting both Graham and Republican Rep. Jody Hice with subpoenas approved by a local judge, who is arguably hostile to the Republican representatives: The chief judge of the Fulton County Superior Court, Christopher Brasher, who both impaneled Willis’s “special grand jury” and approved her requests for subpoenas, is the same county judge who delayed appointing a judge to hear Trump’s Georgia election challenges until it was too late to matter.

Both Graham and Hice seek to sidestep the state court sideshow by removing the cases to federal court and obtaining orders quashing the subpoenas. Graham had also filed a motion in a South Carolina federal court last week and obtained an initial order staying Willis’s efforts to question him pending further proceedings. However, Graham later agreed to dismiss that case and refile his challenge to a grand jury subpoena in a federal court in Georgia, which he is expected to do sometime early next week.

Hice has already filed his motion to quash the subpoena in a Georgia federal court, and a hearing is scheduled before Judge Leigh Martin May, a Barack Obama appointee, on Monday at 2:00 p.m. 

While Monday’s hearing on Hice’s motion will provide a first read on how the courts will apply the Speech or Debate Clause in the context of Willis’s grand jury probe, no matter how she rules, Judge Martin May’s decision will likely be appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals by the losing party. Further, even pending that appeal, Martin May’s decision in Hice’s case will not dictate the outcome in Graham’s forthcoming case for two main reasons. 

First, as a district court judge, rulings by Martin May do not bind other federal judges. Thus, if Graham draws a different federal judge in the northern district of Georgia, that judge may disagree with Martin May’s ruling. Second, Hice’s case differs from Graham’s case in that Hice attempts to block questioning on “any discussions” he “may have had with individuals or organizations that had information on, or an interest in investigating, alleged irregularities in the election,” while Graham seeks protection from questioning about two alleged conversations with Georgia state officials — which is the only purpose for which Willis claimed Graham was an indispensable witness. 

In ruling on Hice’s motion, the court may be more inclined to rule that certain categories of questions are off limits, as opposed to all questioning, whereas with Graham, since Willis seeks only to question Graham about his conversation with Georgia state officials, all questioning should be off limits. Courts have taken both tacks in prior Speech or Debate cases, either precluding all questioning or limiting questioning to certain categories. 

But in this case, a court would also be justified in telling Willis to wait until she has a real grand jury — one that can indict — because anything less establishes that her interest is political and seeks solely to “intimidate” the legislators. And that is precisely what the Speech or Debate Clause seeks to prevent.