Before John Dean testified in front of the Watergate Committee, before Woodward and Bernstein wrote about Watergate in the Washington Post, there was Judge John Sirica. He was a district judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
When the men arrested for the break-in of Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel appeared before him, something just didn’t seem right to Judge Sirica. Call it experience, call it intuition, but he sensed that it didn’t add up. So, legally, he leaned on the defendants to give up information. I don’t remember the details. But eventually one of the defendants did give up some information, and the whole thing unraveled for the White House and Richard Nixon.
So when I see Judge James “Jeb” Boasberg, the chief judge of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, say that he “will get to the bottom of whether they violated my order— who ordered this and what the consequences will be,” I’m encouraged that once again, a judge is determined to find out who is behind a situation that stinks, and to hold them responsible. So far he certainly seems up to the task.
And what was Trump’s response? When asked when he signed the proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act, which was the justification for the deportations, Trump declared “I didn’t sign it.” It’s already been pointed out that the proclamation, with Trump’s signature, can be found in the Federal Register. Now the White House is trying to clean up Trump’s statement by saying he was referring to the original Alien Enemies Act, signed into law in 1798. Trump just keeps digging himself a deeper hole every time he opens his stupid yap.
Hard to say who might be the next John Dean. Trump seems to be willing to toss Marco Rubio under the bus the past few hours. I doubt Rubio would stand for that shit.
But at least we might have our next Judge John Sirica. Until the election subversion case got removed from her courtroom, I had thought it might be Judge Tonya Chutkan. I would have liked to have seen that. Maybe she’ll get another chance. I hope so. At least for now we can all pull for Judge Boasberg.
