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by Kurt Schlichter on Townhall.com March 20, 2025 (bio below)

We’ve all seen those uppity federal judges presuming to tell the executive branch when it can deport enemy aliens, when it can fire useless government flunkies, and when members of the administration must stand or sit to pee. Like much of the lawfare against Donald Trump, this craziness is going to come to nothing. It’s all going to turn to ashes in their soft, girlish little hands. But here’s the thing – we control federal law enforcement right now. That means we get to set the agenda, and we need to ruthlessly and brutally use the law to defeat our enemies’ outrageous and disgraceful attacks upon patriotic Americans.

Here are three great examples of where we can leverage the power we have from standing at the helm of federal law enforcement to get the kind of results we need to make the changes we want. Remember, we’re not here for the short haul. We don’t want to do things they will easily roll back. We want to establish precedents, and we want to establish an understanding on the part of our enemies that we’re going to hit them back twice as hard when they wage lawfare on us. The one thing we’re not going to do is something they tried to do. We’re not going to frame people. That’s morally wrong and unAmerican, and God has something to say about that in the Ten Commandments, so that’s never something we can do. But we don’t need to lie about them. We have only to address what they’re actually doing. And they’re doing a lot of bad things.

Let’s start with that autopen pardon thing. The demented eggplant who was masquerading as our president for the previous four years allegedly pardoned hundreds and hundreds of weirdos, losers, mutations, degenerates, and congresscreatures, to the extent that’s any different, before his humiliating ejection from office. However, people noticed that these pardons were not signed by hand. Rather, his handlers used an autopen. That’s a device that signs someone’s name mechanically. Presumably, it is done at the guidance and behest of the person whose name is being affixed to the document. This is where the controversy comes in. Joe Biden seems manifestly unable to have understood what he was doing with regard to these pardons.

So, the question is whether these pardons are legitimate and enforceable. The president’s pardon power is very broad, and nothing in the Constitution requires him to sign the document granting one personally. In fact, there’s nothing that requires a pardon to be in writing at all. It’s a plenary power, and arguably he can pardon someone simply by waving his hand and uttering the words “I pardon thee.”

Here’s my take and some people aren’t going to like it. He can autopen pardons all day long, and they’re absolutely effective. The discrete autopen issue is a certain loser in the courts, and it should be. But the question really isn’t how something got signed but, rather, whether Joe Biden actually meant to issue these pardons of all sorts of scumbag criminals or whether he, in his advanced state of dementia, thought he was signing off on a proclamation proclaiming National Ice Cream Cone Day.

His competence to issue these pardons is a real issue. Let me give you some more lawyer analysis you might not like. This theory has a practical problem. It’s going to be very hard, if not impossible, to prove he didn’t know what he was doing. The burden of proof would almost certainly fall on the government to invalidate the pardon rather than on the accused criminal asserting it. Then there’s the legal problem – it’s not clear that he had to know what he was doing specifically when granting pardons. He was president; he had not been removed by the 25th Amendment. So, you have an issue of proof – how do you prove he did not mean to give a specific pardon? – and a practical issue of law – does he even have to mean to give a specific pardon? I think the answer – after doing law for 30 years – will probably be that the first one can’t be proven and that he does not have to specifically know what he’s doing as long as he holds office. Sorry.

But hey, who cares what I think? That issue is not for me to decide. Other lawyers and judges might think differently, and I have (rarely) been wrong before. This important issue – it actually is an important issue – sounds like something that should be decided through litigation. How do you get this issue before the courts? Well, the courts don’t issue advisory opinions, so there must be a case or controversy between the United States government and some individual where the validity of a Biden pardon is at issue. That means the Trump administration should consider pressing charges against one of the allegedly pardoned individuals. 

Once again, we’re not here to frame people. It must be a real crime. But if there is a real crime and the only bar to prosecuting it is the alleged pardon, why not try it? Let the pardon recipient litigate it. Perhaps there is probable cause to believe that Adam Schiff or Liz Cheney is guilty of a crime for which they could be prosecuted but for the alleged pardon. If that evidence exists, and the DOJ has evidence of Joe’s incompetence – maybe it could just offer into evidence the video of the debate with Trump – why not give it a try? Make it a test case. Sure, that legal argument has never been used before and might get thrown out by the Supreme Court. But hundreds and hundreds of J6 defendants had to defend themselves against a novel legal theory brought by DOJ prosecutors which was eventually rejected completely by the Supreme Court, so cry me a river, Adam and Liz.

I warned you guys about the new rules. But you didn’t listen.

Next, we’ve got a real federal civil rights problem in Illinois. In the town of Deerfield, three middle-aged white women employed by the school allegedly tried to force 13-year-old girls to get naked in front of a boy. Of course, the boy was pretending to be a girl. Now, as a lawyer, I know there are always two sides to every story, and the girls’ allegations have not been heard or challenged. Further, when you hear something that sounds completely insane, you should at least take a moment to think that maybe there’s more to it than you have been told. But on the other hand, I can totally see committed leftist women allowing their SSRI-driven wokeness to drive them to do something horrible like this. 

Illinois is a leftist state with a leftist court system and a fat leftist governor, so the victims will get no relief by going to child protective services, though in a just society they could. Governor Hindenburg would never let a conviction stand – he would give them medals. No, this is akin to the Southern states during the Civil Rights Movement when local governments would not prosecute KKK killers. This is Illinois Burning. This requires federal intervention. 

There are federal civil rights violations, and the FBI under Kash Patel and Dan Bongino should step in and investigate the facts to get the full story. Hopefully, this will all prove to be a misunderstanding because it sounds pretty horrible. But if the facts come out as they have been reported, this was a potential crime that can be prosecuted in the federal courts. The federal government should put these monsters on notice that they will be punished for real if they do these things, and complicit blue state governors and courts will not be able to protect them from justice.

The third issue is swatting, and this one could actually kill people. Swatting occurs when a leftist calls a police department and sends them to a conservative’s house late at night claiming that the conservative has committed murder, has a gun, and is holed up inside the house. Well, you don’t have to be a genius to see how that could go very wrong. You have heavily armed, hyped-up cops going to what is probably a heavily armed citizen’s home in the middle of the night. That’s a recipe for somebody getting killed, whether it is somebody whose crime was participating in the political debate, or his kid, or a cop. And it’s happening a lot. The leftists are doing it all over the place and not just against big names. They apparently think it’s okay to murder political opponents and anyone else who gets in the way. We need to squash that like a bug.

Even assuming a local blue state law-enforcement agency would be willing to spend time on this kind of criminal activity, the technological issues of finding who is making the swatting calls require more advanced resources. The FBI has that technology and experience. It also has the mandate. The use of telephonic communication is squarely within federal jurisdiction—ever heard of wire fraud?

Kash Patel has already tweeted that this is a priority, but it needs to be a super-mega priority. We cannot allow political murder in our society because it won’t stop with false police reports. If it has not already happened, we need an FBI task force to get on it, and there are lots of FBI agents without much to do now that we’re not arresting people for praying about abortion or taking selfies in the Rotunda anymore. And these crimes must be charged as what they are: attempts to murder political opponents. This can also involve civil rights crimes because these actions are self-evidently designed to intimidate people into not exercising their right to free speech and to participate in the political process. It’s hard to imagine a more vicious attack on democracy than trying to kill other people for participating in it. There must be no mercy for these monsters.

So, that’s three great initiatives for federal law-enforcement, but there are so many others out there. We need to show that the Department of Justice will no longer target just us. We’ve got the reins until at least January 2029, so let’s ride this horse hard and put it away wet.

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Read the original here: https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2025/03/20/time-for-the-trump-doj-and-fbi-to-deal-the-pain-n2654034

Biography

Kurt Schlichter (Twitter: @KurtSchlichter) was personally recruited to write conservative commentary by Andrew Breitbart. He was a Los Angeles trial lawyer, is a retired Army Infantry colonel with a masters in Strategic Studies from the United States Army War College, and is a former stand-up comic.

He is a frequent guest on Fox News, Newsmax, and elsewhere, and he appears on air with such luminaries as Hugh Hewitt, Larry O’Connor, Tony Katz, and Chris Stigall, among others. 

He is also the author of “People’s Republic” Kelly Turnbull novels and the novel “The Attack.” As an Army officer, he commanded a cavalry recon squadron, and served in Desert Storm and Kosovo as well as multiple disaster operations. He lives in the South Bay area of Los Angeles where his hobbies include red meat and red wine. His favorite caliber is .45.