Georgetown Law Prof. Randy Barnett: “…. in which governmental power is not allowed by them to be peacefully transferred after a lawful election”

Georgetown Law Professor Randy Barnett had a tweet on December 5, 2017, that I’ve been meaning to write about.

It reflects a subject I, and others, have been focusing on since election night — the refusal of Democrats and #NeverTrump Republicans to accept the outcome of the election not just emotionally, but as to the transfer of power that continues to this day, over a year since the 2016 election.

Here is Prof. Barnett’s tweet, referencing the attempt by outgoing CFPB Director Richard Cordray preemptively to install Leandra English as Interim Director over the objections of the Trump administration.

The tweet references a separate tweet from law professor Josh Blackman about attempts of the CFPB bureaucracy to subvert the authority of Mick Mulvaney, the Interim Director appointed by Trump:

Democrats’ #Resistance is creating a genuine constitutional crisis in which governmental power is not allowed by them to be peacefully transferred after a lawful election. The potential for escalation is very very dangerous.

I think this is right.

The peaceful transition of power is fundamental to our constitutional system. The attempt, which still in the courts, to prevent the Trump administration from appointing an Interim Director of the CFPB is not even the most stark such example.

In a post on December 12, 2016, about the attempt to undermine the Electoral College, I wrote The one thing you must understand about the unfolding media-Democrat Electoral College coup attempt:

We are witnessing nothing short of an attempt to steal the election by some Democrats and a very supportive mainstream and leftwing media, by causing Electors in the Electoral College to go rogue and vote for Hillary, or at least not vote for Trump…. These are not, with few exceptions, people who actually believe that something has changed so dramatically since the election that the Electors need to intervene. Rather, this is a pure power play to undermine the electoral system by people who never thought Trump was fit for office for reasons unrelated to Russia, who now are using the Russian “hack” as an excuse. Do you really think that Nancy Pelosi’s daughter, an Elector demanding a CIA briefing to vet the accusations against Trump, actually and honestly believes anything other than that she never wanted Trump to be president? It’s one thing to say that allegations of foreign tampering should be thoroughly investigated. They should. But it’s quite a different thing to use that alleged tampering to overturn elections.

And so it continues, with

the apparent set-up of the incoming administration on a phony Logan Act violation,

the Mueller investigation that obviously has strayed far from alleged Russian interference in the election to post-election political strategy of the incoming Trump administration,

the unprecedented delay in confirming nominees that Dems didn’t even object to for the sake of depriving Trump of the ability to control the bureaucracy,

the rogue elements in the intelligence community and FBI leaking information (assuming news reports are not completely lying about their sourcing),

and so on and so on.

There has been a never-ending attempt not just to oppose Trump and Republican legislative and policy initiatives, which is legitimate politics, but to prevent the transfer of power. It is, as I wrote last August, a Slow-Motion Coup d’Etat, and it’s dangerous.

Which is why anti-anti-Trumpism is a legitimate pro-constitutional form of resistance to the slow motion coup:

You don’t need to be pro-Trump to be against those who collectively are a greater threat to our liberty than Trump. Being anti-anti-Trump is no vice, at least not now.



