Saying Goodbye

Today, President Biden eulogized President Carter: “We have an obligation to give hate no safe harbor and to stand up to … the greatest sin of all — the abuse of power.”

Jimmy Carter seems to have timed his death to send the country a much needed message.

While Donald Trump was present in the National Cathedral, his lawyers were busy filing court papers on his behalf. No word yet from the U.S. Supreme Court on whether they will interfere with his sentencing hearing tomorrow in Washington, D.C. In the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Trump filed an amicus brief arguing the Special Counsel’s report should not be released.

His lawyers argued that, “Issuing the Final Report … violates the Executive Vesting Clause … and Congress’s goal, embodied in the Presidential Transition Act … of ensuring a smooth and orderly transition of power.”

Yes, you read that correctly. Irony is dead right there.

They go on to write, “Congress intended the Act to facilitate ‘the orderly transfer of the executive power in connection with the expiration of the term of office of a President and the inauguration of a new President … Any disruption’ of the transition ‘could produce results detrimental to the safety and well-being of the United States and its people.’ And thus ‘all officers of the Government’ are ‘to avoid or minimize disruptions that might be occasioned by the transfer of the executive power, and … otherwise to promote orderly transitions in the office of President.’”

Todd Blanche, who is Donald Trump’s pick to be the Deputy Attorney General, the number two position at the Justice Department, is on the brief.

The artifice employed to make the argument that release of the report would stigmatize Trump with evidence of unproven crimes and interfere with the transition between administrations has the power to stun, even coming from a man of such character that there is virtually nothing he does that is surprising any longer. But there you have it. Donald Trump doesn’t think Joe Biden’s administration should interfere with the smooth transition of power to his presidency.

Jimmy Carter, I’m certain, would have had something to say about that.

We’re in this together,

Joyce