The past week's decisions on gun and abortion rights by the conservative-majority Supreme Court have the Left's outrage meter cranked to full capacity.
Some, including angry old ex-sportscaster Keith Olbermann, have even called for the dissolution of the high court. More sober analysts have other concerns.
While the judicial branch is in the spotlight today, the U.S. Department of Justice in the executive branch has been "weaponized" against former President Trump and his supporters even when the agency was under his control, critics say. We'll leave it to the legal experts to debate whether this qualifies as a "constitutional crisis."
Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro was arrested and handcuffed by FBI agents on June 3, 2022 without notice to his attorney for daring to stand up to the House Select Committee on Jan. 6.
In the past few days, feds searched the home of Jeffrey Clark, a former DOJ official during the Trump administration, and the FBI served a search warrant on Nevada’s top GOP official.
"What we're seeing here isn't really about Peter Navarro or Steve Bannon, what we're seeing is a massive escalation in the use by the Democratic Party of our justice system for partisan revenge. That's what that was. Peter Navarro wouldn't shut up, so they threw him in handcuffs," Fox News host Tucker Carlson said.
"At the same moment, Peter Navarro was thrown in jail for asserting executive privilege, a Clinton lawyer named Michael Sussmann was acquitted... Three of the jurors in that case gave money to Hillary Clinton's campaign."
"This is a partisan play by a political party that has somehow completely taken over our largest law enforcement agency [the FBI]," Carlson said.
On June 3, the FBI pulled Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro off a plane at Nashville airport. He was handcuffed and dragged into custody “for no reason,” the New York Post editorial board noted, adding the Navarro “said he would have voluntarily surrendered over his contempt of Congress charges relating to his refusal to work with the Jan. 6 Committee and noted he was given no warning that he was going to be arrested. Defendants in similar situations are nearly always given the opportunity to surrender.”
Navarro has no history of violence and is not a flight risk. The judge in his case released him on his own recognizance.
Related: Who is Peter Navarro and why did DOJ target him but not Mike Pence and Mark Meadows?, June 5, 2022
In a Telegram post, Garrett Ziegler, who was an aide to Navarro in Trump’s White House, said he and Navarro were all but alone among White House staffers who fought for Trump to the very end. He detailed how Navarro documented 2020 election fraud in a December 2020 report and made all the right enemies in terms of taking on those he considered hostile forces against the Trump administration, including most of official Washington, Fauci, China, etc.
China is an important part of the story as Navarro was integral to Trump crackdown on China’s rarely-discussed grip on Washington’s sprawling policy industry. His full title was Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, and the national Defense Production Act policy coordinator
“Peter Navarro is a legend in American political economy. I consider him to be a high-energy, 21st century Hamilton. He understands the American System better than Henry Clay himself,” Ziegler wrote.
Clark was interviewed on Carlson's program and described how armed federal agents wearing body armor and carrying heavy weapons arrived at his house at dawn.
"They didn’t do so because he committed a violent crime or was trafficking human beings," Carlson said. "In fact, he committed no crime at all. Yet, he was forced out of his home, denied the ability to even put pants on, and then submitted to a forcible search and seizure of his property. “Soviet” is the description offered, and it’s an apt one. This isn’t about 'protecting democracy.' It’s about criminalizing the opposition."
Clark himself described the scene further, saying there were 12 agents present just to take some electronic devices from someone accused of no crime. They even brought an “electronic sniffing dog.”
Clark went on to say he doesn’t blame the individual agents who swept his house, but Carlson said he objected "to that notion. Yes, I blame the leadership at the FBI and DOJ the most, but I absolutely blame the individual agents as well. We are long past the point of believing the rank and file are innocent bystanders in all this. Members of the KGB didn’t get to claim they were just 'doing their job,' and when you participate in these kinds of abuses of power, you are culpable. Whistleblower provisions exist and there are other options than just 'following orders.' "
Although the DOJ and FBI are under the executive branch, they were at war with the Trump White House since Day 1.
"This is not the way civilized countries operate. Just because you control the White House and both houses of Congress, does not mean you get to throw your political opponents behind bars. That's not what we do in America," Carlson said. "That's what they do in Haiti, but that's what we're doing now and Peter Navarro was not the first. Biden's Justice Department also arrested former Trump adviser Steve Bannon for a similar fake crime. Steve Bannon is awaiting trial this summer."
Carlson added: "So, this is not something we've seen before. It's a huge step toward the politics of the Third World, but the media whose job you thought of was to push back against power are not. They are, in fact, applauding because it turns out no punishment is too severe for those who disagree with the national news media. Watch them gloat."
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