You didn’t quote the post where he posted his knowledge of people being prevented from traveling and how that may lead to harm, even death. You quoted a different post.
What knowledge? He basically posted a FOAF story. How is that evidence?
No, no. It’s Russell Brand.
It might not be great evidence, but it’s not Russell’s Teapot.
We could probably do some Fermi estimation to get a rough approximation of the risk of a person being arrested and dying as a political prisoner.
Assuming most dictatorships are fairly similar in how they run, we can use data from Cuba as a proxy (since that’s probably the country that we have the best English language information on).
This site says that there are hundreds of people being imprisoned per month:
http://www.ishr.org/countries/republic-of-cuba/political-prisoners-in-cuba/
We’ll estimate that to mean 150 per month. The population of Cuba is 11.4 million.
We’ll assume that the average political prisoner is arrested for a particular act and that the average time to arrest is within 2 days and if they aren’t arrested within 2 weeks, then there is a 90% chance that they are home free. We’ll also assume that only about 33% of criminals will ever be identified and arrested (this seems like a reasonable success rate based on US metrics and assuming that police in places like Cuba, Iraq, etc. are going to be less well-trained and equipped than American police). This means that there should actually be 450 people arrested in Cuba, per month, but most get away.
We’ll also assume that it takes about 10 days to set up a route out of the country and flee it, and that this is only a feasible option for 10% of people.
To calculate this properly, I’d pick some probability distributions (chi-square, etc.) and adjust them to fit the above parameters, but I’m just going to wing it for the moment.
With a combined total of 222.2 million people, we would expect 8771 politically criminal infractions per month from the seven nations affected by the ban. Of these, 10% will have the means to try and escape (877). We’ll guess that roughly 20% (given that the max is 33%) of those will be picked up by the police within the 10 day period, leaving 702.
We will assume that political criminals are an equivalent percentage of all travelers as they are of the origin country (it should be slightly higher, but close enough for our purposes) since that’s easier than trying to track down the breakdown of flight destinations from the seven countries. According to:
In 2015, there were 138,365 immigrant and tourist visas approved. Over the course of the week that the ban threw everything to hell, it would have affected 2661 people.
So 702 from 222.2 million adjusted down to 2661 would be 0.008 people.
So, there’s an 8 in 1000 chance that there was one person denied a flight, who was a political criminal. And, since we are assuming that by the time it would take to arrange the trip most people would already have been arrested and that only 1/3rd of people would ever be arrested, anyone who did have their flight suddenly canceled was probably already in the clear. And, of course, this isn’t even getting into the question of what percentage of people who are arrested for political crimes are actually executed.
Barack Obama’s friend’s worry notwithstanding, he and everyone else was probably safe.
ETA: Actually, I messed up. I forgot to reduce down the per month statistic of criminals to a week. So the 0.0008 number should probably be 1/4th as likely.
Anyone surprised?
crickets
A Constitution is but words on paper. It means nothing if the people in power decide it means nothing.
When people babble about how this Constitution is great or that one is not great, well, just you wait as the GOP keeps ignoring mounting evidence of Trump’s corruption. A Constitution is just a form of words. A real Constitution is what people agree it is, and if half the country loses interest in it, well, it’s not really the Constitution.
Do they have some argument as to why they feel the order is invalid? Or did they just. . . fail to comply?
Best I can find is this:
Sounds a bit similar toObama’s (failed) attempt to withhold “Fast and Furious” documents by invoking executive privilege too. Not sure though if the argument as to why it did not apply holds in this case.
We’ll see what the judge thinks I guess.
Sounds like an executive privilege argument.
This is an interesting pickle.
I’d say they (the administration) is on solid ground for memos produced during Trump’s presidency. The strongest claim of executive privilege is the need to protect the President’s ability to receive candid counsel and advice from his staff, unfettered by worry that their words may become public someday. In other words, the President is (so goes the theory) allowed to get advice from his staff without his staff having to keep one eye on their own future political prospects.
HOWEVER – this does not apply to advice given to candidates. So the Guliani memo cannot be covered by executive privilege. Except that the opposing party is seeking to use the memo to show that it influenced Presidential actions. In other words, the ACLU is simultaneously claiming that in order to suss out the real motives behind the travel ban, it’s appropriate to look at the campaign staff work, and that the campaign staff work is bereft of the protections of executive privilege.
I’m not sure they’re right.
On the other hand, the administration has also adopted a seemingly contradictory position. They have argued that the campaign rhetoric cannot be imputed to the Presidential deliberative process, but simultaneously that executive privilege protects campaign decision-making advice.
I don’t know which side is going to carry the day.
If I were the judge, I’d decide that executive privilege does not extend to campaign work product.
Could the logic that was applied in the Obama case also apply? Giuliani has already publicly stated what was in the memo so any harm that might flow (to the advisor in any case) from the public revelation of the deliberations at issue here has already been self-inflicted.
What would surprise me would be to see any president comply with such an order without first trying to fight it. That is the way the game is played. This is not a Cub Scouts’ Den Meeting.
If Trump’s lawyers gave an argument about why they’re not obligated to produce the memo, that’s different from what The Hill made it sound like, which was that Trump just blew them off without explanation. Which would have been a bit more of a big deal, needless to say. But since that’s not what happened, there really is nothing to see here but the usual legal wrangling.
Except Giuliani is not an employee of the federal government and thus not a staff member of the executive branch. It looks like, at best, he is an informal advisor. I don’t know how executive privilege could expand to cover a non-employee. Even Jared Kushner and Ivanka have official, but unpaid positions to get around nepotism laws. Giuliani doesn’t appear to have even that.
Well, I’d say it’s a tad unusual for the reasons I mentioned. “Executive privilege,” was confirmed as an extant privilege arising from the separation of powers doctrine back in the 1970s, but the contours of the privilege have remained a bit murky. Presidents have often invoked the privilege in response to judicial or Congressional requests and then “voluntarily” responded with some or all of the requested material anyway, to maintain the privilege without testing it.
Here, there is a novel question. (So far as I know, and this is not my area of law). Does the privilege apply to advice given to a candidate if the candidate relies upon it when he’s President? Both sides in the matter are taking a different view than they were in their original arguments: ACLU says, in effect, “Treat the pre-January 20th material as relevant to determine what official policy means, but don’t grant it the same privilege that it would have after Jan 20.” And the White House says, “Hey, no fair treating the campaign stuff as ‘official’ in determining what the policy really means, BUT it should still get granted executive privilege as if it were official.”
So, I’d say slightly unusual wrangling.
No, I disagree. Nothing in the decision makes a distinction between paid and unpaid assistance to the President. The rationale rests simply on the need for confidential communication between President and adviser.
The privilege was successfully invoked by the Bush 43 White House defending a refusal to release details about Cheney’s meetings with energy company executives, clearly non-government employees.
I’ll defer to you on the nature of the wrangling, but the reason I brought it up in this thread was my erroneous belief that there was no wrangling of any sort, just a refusal with no justification provided.
Compared to that, even novel wrangling is still very much within the normal bounds of the legal process.
A little over a year later, I think my OP is holding up all too well. Dammit.
This could get interesting.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/16/nra-russia-election-donations-fec-investigation-468661
I’m watching Preet Bharara on CNN. Bharara, recall, was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, one of “the nation’s most aggressive and outspoken prosecutors of public corruption and Wall Street crime,” who earned a huge reputation prosecuting crooked Democrats, crooked Republicans, crooked Wall Street traders and terrorists, and was fired by Donald J. Trump for the crime of having been appointed by Obama.
Anyway, the discussion centered on Trump’s immunity. Rudy Giuliani asserts that the President is immune from subpoenas etc.; just as Nixon asserted “if the President does it it’s not a crime” Rudy thinks that, since Trump is Justice, any prosecution of Trump would be like Trump prosecuting himself. (Yes, this is the very same Rudy Giuliani who insisted in 1998 that Clinton had to obey a subpoena.)
Anyway, Giuliani asserts that Trump has the right to pardon himself. Bharara didn’t take a stand on that, but claimed that for Trump to pardon himself would be to ensure his impeachment.
True? And what does “ensure impeachment” mean, anyway? That the House would vote to impeach or that the Senate would vote to convict?
Recall that fifty GOP Senators voted to confirm Betsy DeVos, one of the most loathsome and unqualified Secretaries ever. Only one GOP Senator voted against Scott Pruitt. Does anyone expect 19 GOP Senators to vote against the Greatest Man on Earth, the MAGA man?
If I were a Senator I’d certainly not want to convict Trump. Better that an emasculated dotard stay in charge than that the most loathsome Veep in history get promoted.