A true conservative believes in the rights of the individual, over the state. A true conservative would not countenance the government exerting its police power to spy on the citizenry, without probable cause under our sacred Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Indeed, the Fourth Amendment was designed by the Framers as an antidote to the tyranny which King George III had wreaked on the colonies, where his red coat henchmen would break into homes, rob them of their wares and property, and sometimes rape their women and rough up their children.
The Deep State’s intelligence agencies and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under the Obama administration in particular — the George W. Bush administration did similarly — was revealed to train mass surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the FBI on hundreds of millions of American citizens, intercepting their telephone calls with any probable cause that terrorism was afoot or that a crime was occurring. While it was Edward Snowden who disclosed this, other NSA/CIA/FBI whistleblowers later came forward to confirm this.
As a lawyer who depends on confidential attorney client privilege to represent my clients, and thus confidentiality, I and a few of my associates brought suit in the federal court in Washington, D.C., just a few days after Snowden’s disclosure. The case was randomly assigned to the Honorable Richard J. Leon, and in a few months the court ordered that this mass illegal surveillance cease as the lawsuit wound its way through the judicial process. Judge Leon ruled that the government had engaged in “almost Orwellian” Big Brother behavior, and that this must stop, as even one day that the Constitution is violated is one day too much.
The findings of the court gained much national and international attention and ultimately lead Congress to enact the USA Freedom Act, which was intended to legislatively end this illegal mass surveillance without the necessary probable cause under the Fourth Amendment. It did not however and I pressed forward with my case.
Using the USA Freedom Act as a phony pretext, the Obama Justice Department (DOJ) petitioned Judge Leon to vacate, that is nullify his preliminary injunction orders, claiming that the landmark case that I had filed was now moot, as lawyers put it. When Leon would not do so, the Obama DOJ then petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to do so. There the primarily leftist judges comprised of mostly Obama and Clinton appointees happily obliged and ordered that Judge Leon’s orders stopping the mass surveillance be vacated as moot.
At this point there was no reason to say more than what the Obama DOJ had argued, namely that the USA Freedom Act, with its so called protections, solved the problem. In this regard, this was all that two judges on the D.C. Circuit wrote in their order. However one of their colleagues on the panel deciding this issue, chose to gratuitously write an opinion rubber stamping this illegal and constitutional mass surveillance. His name is Brett Kavanaugh. (Kavanaugh Order of 6/28/15 in Klayman v. Obama, Appeal No. 25-5307 D.C. Circuit.)
One has to ask why Judge Kavanaugh would go the effort to write an opinion which even his leftist colleagues found unnecessary given their finding of mootness. The answer in my opinion is tragically simple. Judge Kananaugh either has no respect for the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, or he was unethically attempting to curry favor with the Republican establishment, exemplified by former President George W. Bush and his administration, which Kavanaugh had worked for as staff secretary in the White House Counsel’s office. President Bush and his Vice President Dick Cheney, not coincidentally, had also put in place this mass surveillance, using September 11 as the pretext.
Kavanaugh obviously understood that his aspirations to someday become a Supreme Court justice would depend on his close ties to this Republican Bush-Cheney establishment, who would someday, if the chance arose, push for his nomination. And, indeed this came to pass in the last weeks, after Kavanaugh’s mentor who he clerked for in his early career, Justice Anthony Kennedy, announced his retirement from the Supreme Court. The swamp creatures of this slimy Republican establishment, which ironically President Donald Trump successfully defeated to gain his nomination for the presidency, pushed The Donald to name Kavanaugh as the next SCOTUS justice. Groups like the American Conservative Union, led by Republican establishment lobbyist Matt Schlapp (who had opposed Trump for president), lead the charge.
Regrettably, passing over three other truly conservative judges who were on President Trump’s short list for nomination, The Donald caved into the very same Republican establishment that he ran against and vanquished. One has to ask why?
I truly support and love this president, but in this instance he has made a grave error which could sow the seeds of his own demise, not to mention the rest of the citizenry. Ironically, the mass surveillance without probable cause which Judge Kavanaugh finds “peachy keen,” was trained on the president, his family, staff and colleagues leading to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s alleged Russian collusion witch hunt, which threatens to destroy him and his administration to the detriment of all of us.
Few, save for Judge Andrew Napolitano and Shannon Bream, on even the so called conservative network Fox News, understand the terrible ramifications of having a politicized Republican establishment jurist on the Supreme Court. Conservatives believe and fight for privacy, not the implementation of an Orwellian police state that can coerce and blackmail the citizenry into submission with dirt it feels empowered to dig up on any adversary or activist critical of the government.
It is not too late for President Trump to withdraw Judge Kavanaugh’s name for confirmation by the U.S. Senate and to nominate a true conservative, not a Bush-Cheney Republican establishment swamp creature. But if he does not do so, as a “favor” to him and the nation, Freedom Watch and I will do all ethically and legally proper to oppose Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation. The Fourth Amendment prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures is too important to trash, as this was what our Founding Fathers pledged their sacred honor and risked their lives for to form a new free nation — and then write, enact and implement our Constitution. Go to www.freedomwatchusa.org to support this cause.
Larry Klayman, founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, is known for his strong public interest advocacy in furtherance of ethics in government and individual freedoms and liberties. To read more of his reports, Go Here Now.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.