The tip of the Lawfare spear consists of a small group of former DOJ attorneys and Main Justice leftists who helped AG Eric Holder create the DOJ National Security Division (DOJ-NSD) when it was formed on behalf of President Obama.
Lawfare, writ large, are a tribe of leftists who strategically weaponize the justice systems within the DOJ. They are also the main guides, strategists and legal analysts who previously used Robert Mueller and currently use Jack Smith.
The tribe is led by a trio of fellow travelers: Mary McCord, Norm Eisen and Andrew Weissmann.
If you research the group, you will discover that Mary McCord sits at the center of every attack approach deployed against President Trump {CITATION}. The influence of McCord cannot be overstated, while gender fluid leftists like Eisen, Weissmann (and others), wax philosophically about which statutes can be twisted and interpreted to assist their Lawfare strategy du jour.
Everything we have watched unfold, from using “The Logan Act” against Michael Flynn, to using “The Insurrection Act” against President Trump and the J-6 targets, comes from this small crew of effeminate leftists.
The similarity of the Lawfare behavioral proclivities is an outcome of their tribal synchronicity. Much like the McClintock or Wellesley effect, when you isolate Lawfare individuals into a small tribe, their collective behaviors replicate.
This crew of Brookings funded Lawfare ideologues was also described by Christine Blasey-Ford as her “Beach Friends.” Since leaving official government positions, the key trio of leadership congregate professionally on MSNBC and feed the leftists in media and politics from their primary cable outlet.
I noted, during a recent flight filled with DC bureaucrats and IC officials (United Airlines), how they all watched MSNBC on their seat monitors as if it was a religious service that needed to be attended. It really was a sight to see. Every bureaucrat, active or retired, seated with their laptop under the headrest monitor while typing, texting and DM’ing in unison like synchronized swimmers.
That experience was the first time I realized how the term “NPC’s” or non-Player Characters might have originated as a meme, but the label was eerily accurate.
FBI HQ left, Main Justice building right
The alarming aspect to the tribal Lawfare approach, is to realize how this essentially very small group of former DOJ-NSD lawyers commands such an oversized influence on our national politics.
In reality, this crew is likely less than 20 full-time characters with about a half-dozen lawyers used as spokespeople. Essentially, the public voice to keep the hardcore leftists on the optimal message. However, this group also writes the legal strategies for all of the attack approaches used in Atlanta, Georgia (Fani Willis), New York (Alvin Bragg) and DC/FL with Special Counsel Jack Smith.
Within Main Justice, it is Deputy AG Lisa Monaco who takes the Lawfare instructions from the outside group and funnels them back into actionable work within the DOJ (ie to Jack Smith). It’s a similar process as to how the inside and outside group coordinated and used Robert Mueller.
Andrew Weissmann, Mary McCord and Norm Eisen (with occasional guests), can be seen daily watching very closely how their legal briefs, citations and structured legal motions are being used. Yes, it is their written words, their legal briefs, and their filings that are signed by the government officials and submitted into multiple judicial venues.
[NOTE: FOIA or subpoena the Lawfare communication pipeline, and you end up with 15 iPhones that mysteriously and identically have the wrong password entered 10 times, and that deletes all the content – just like the last time someone tried with the Lawfare group around Mueller {citation}.]
♦ Well, that’s who they are…. So, we cannot say we don’t know the exact names of the people at the epicenter of the operation, and you do not need to read the proverbial overuse of the word “they” without knowing exactly who they are.
With the Supreme Court ruling yesterday on presidential immunity, the Lawfare group is absolutely apoplectic and fraught with anxiety about it.
Why?
Why this much extreme vitriol?
The answer is very simple. Andrew Weissmann speaks about the exact reason in this soundbite. Listen at the 01:37 point, when Weissmann says the ruling now puts the President in charge of the DOJ-NSD. THAT reality is beyond alarming to a group who have lived in a world where they were untouchable. WATCH:
What exactly is the background here?
This is where CTH readers are miles ahead, at least a year ahead, of where the reality of this story will eventually end up. Andrew Weissmann is concerned because the Supreme Court just put the DOJ-NSD back into a box where they are accountable within the Executive Branch.
Remember, Barack Obama and Eric Holder created the DOJ-NSD using the authorities granted to the administrative state by the bureaucracy following 9/11. Specifically, because the Dept of Homeland Security (DHS) was created, and within that dynamic the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) was established. DHS would now be the weaponized umbrella organization, and the power granted to the DNI would establish the need for the DOJ-NSD.
In the era shortly after 9/11, the DC national security apparatus was constructed to preserve continuity of government and simultaneously view all Americans as potential threats. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) were created specifically for this purpose.
What Barack Obama and Eric Holder did with that new construct was refine the internal targeting mechanisms, so that only their ideological opposition became the target of the new national security system. This is very important to understand as you dig deeper.
Washington DC created the modern national security apparatus immediately and hurriedly after 9/11/01. DHS came along in 2002, and within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 the ODNI was formed. When Barack Obama and Eric Holder arrived a few years later, those newly formed institutions were viewed as opportunities to create a very specific national security apparatus that would focus almost exclusively against their political opposition.
Eric Holder created the DOJ-National Security Division for exactly the purpose of weaponizing the DOJ to target their political opposition. This is what the DOJ-NSD does under the auspices of “National Security.” The FARA violation monitoring is one of the more well-known operations within the DOJ-NSD, and from that construct you find the original justification for the NSA database monitoring.
The surveillance of Americans shifted around the roles and responsibilities within Main Justice after the DOJ-NSD was created. The National Security Division took over Foreign Agent Registration Act monitoring as well as FISA. Both FARA and FISA required some form of downstream surveillance within the authority of the NSD.
The FBI counterintelligence division became the investigative offshoot to assist the NSD, and due to the tightrope of legal compliance issues, lawyers from the NSD were dispatched into the FBI to give legal assistance on the surveillance side. This is how NSD lawyers like Lisa Page, Tashina Guahar and Kevin Clinesmith end up encircling FBI officials like Peter Strzok and Andrew McCabe.
Within this newly created DOJ-NSD, there was no inspector general oversight, so the internal officials were unaccountable, had no reason to worry about anyone looking at them, and they were generally running amok. In 2015 the Office of the DOJ Inspector General requested oversight, and it was Deputy AG Sally Yates who responded with a lengthy 58-page legal explanation saying, essentially, ‘nope – not allowed.’ (PDF HERE) All of the DOJ is subject to oversight, except the NSD.
We discover just how ridiculous and partisan the NSD became through the outcomes of the Hillary Clinton investigation. The Clinton investigation was operated by the FBI and the unaccountable DOJ-NSD.
Yesterday, in a stunning opinion that destabilized the Lawfare ideologues, the Supreme Court affirmed the Unitary Executive principle around the constitution.
The 6-3 opinion held that the President is “a person alone who comprises a branch of government.” This is important to understand. The Executive Branch is the President.
As noted by reader Alex1689: […] Read the SCOTUS opinion, not from a point of view of apprehension about President Trump (he’ll be fine), but from the point of view of what does this allow him to do in his second term, and what straightjackets does it remove that were a threat during his first term?
To start, the court wrote about powers that carry with them core, absolute immunity, the exercise of which cannot come under question in any forum. It specifically identified:
Pardons
Recognition of foreign governments
Removal of executive branch officials.
If it can’t be questioned . . . It also cannot be the grounds for impeachment, can it?
Let’s repeat: If it’s a core power, the exercise of the core power cannot be grounds for impeachment (*except if done in connection with taking a bribe).
In his first term, there was the threat that if President Trump fired . . .
Rosenstein
Barr
Fauci
That he would be prosecuted for obstruction of justice or impeached.
That threat is forever off the table now.
He can fire anyone he likes in the executive branch. The straightjacket is gone.
On that point, further, the majority opinion uses strong language consistent with the Unitary Executive theory of the Constitution. The President is “a person alone who comprises a branch of government.”
While there are areas of shared constitutional responsibility, the core powers of the Executive Branch, including personnel, are the President’s alone.
Boom.
While impeachment is a political process within the Legislative Branch, and the Supreme Court is extremely hesitant to overstep their role therein, they did put this sentiment clearly into the opinion about immunity: …“The President is not above the law. But Congress may not criminalize the President’s conduct in carrying out the responsibilities of the Executive Branch under the Constitution.”…
Congress may not criminalize the conduct of the President simply for carrying out his core executive branch duties. Removal of Executive Branch officials is a core duty, an official act, carrying absolute immunity.
That newly affirmed reality is exactly why Andrew Weissmann and the Lawfare crowd are very alarmed.
