I’m old enough to remember when Donald Trump said, “If we don’t have free speech, then we just don’t have a free country. It’s as simple as that.”
He made this statement, of course, while accusing the Biden administration of censorship and of crushing free speech. Which, looking back, is kind of a joke, but not the funny kind. In fact, it was viewed by many — like me and probably you — as a joke when he first said it.
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SUBSCRIBEHe spoke the words in a video released just as he was beginning to ramp up his 2024 campaign for his second term, which I like to call — although I don’t like it at all — the Trump Restoration.
As Susan Glasser points out in a New Yorker piece on Trump’s war on the First Amendment, among other assorted rules and guidelines, it’s one of the few times that Trump has actually spoken the truth.
So, do we have a free country?
It depends on how you look at things, I guess. I can write this column, and no one is arresting me for writing it. I hope, anyway.
On the other hand, they recently charged longtime journalist Don Lemon for embedding with a protest at a Minneapolis church, doing exactly the kind of thing that journalists legally do. I’ve done it myself. On Friday, Lemon pleaded not guilty.
And on one more hand — loaned to me by a friend — a federal judge granted Sen. Mark Kelly’s request for a preliminary injunction against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s attempt to punish him for political speech.
Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote in his opinion that “This Court has all it needs to conclude that Defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly’s First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees.”
Leon added this, making of me a fan for life: “After all, as Bob Dylan famously said, ‘You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.'”
And, I’m guessing, you don’t need a weatherman to know why I’m writing this column.
It was just a few days ago when we learned that a D.C. grand jury had refused to indict the so-called “Seditious Six” — a mix of U.S. House members and senators, all with military or intelligence backgrounds, including Kelly and Colorado Rep. Jason Crow — for a video advising troops that they should not obey unlawful orders. Trump and his team of liars, of course, led by spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, insisted they said lawful orders. You could look it up.
In Trump’s continued assault on the Constitution and the rule of law, he proclaimed the six were “traitors to our country and should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL.”
And for good measure, he suggested that maybe they should be hanged, saying that’s what George Washington would have done.
They were investigated, of course, because Trump demanded it. And yet, when U.S. Attorney and former Fox Newser Jeanine Pirro brought the charges before the grand jury, they were rejected, apparently unanimously.
There’s an old saying in the legal community that you can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. How rare is this? In 2016 — the last year for which statistics are available — the Justice Department investigated more than 151,000 suspects, and grand juries returned just six “no bills,” per DOJ statistics. Yes, six. Or as Trump would write, SIX. That’s how rare.
But it’s not quite as rare as the government charging sitting members of Congress for exercising free speech. You have to go back to 1798 — in the bad old days of the Alien and Sedition Acts — to find one. And only one. Connecticut Rep. Matthew Lyon was convicted and jailed for four months for writing an editorial critical of John Adams. And that’s it.
Those embarrassing and long-repudiated parts of the Alien and Sedition Acts are long gone, but obviously Trump wants to bring them back. You should expect to see a new version in an executive order eventually, maybe after the midterms.
In Glasser’s article, she lists many of the ways Trump and his goons have tried to crush dissent, not least on the protesters in Minneapolis, including Renee Good and Alex Pretti. I’ll give you a partial list. Trump suing the New York Times, the BBC and the Wall Street Journal for critical articles. The FBI raiding a Washington Post reporter’s home. Trump not only censoring truth-telling exhibits in national parks and in the Smithsonian, but inviting the public to rat out any violators. Trump officials expelling disfavored journalists from the White House and the Pentagon while calling a female reporter “piggy.”
When the Times published an article on Trump’s health and age, he called it sedition. When Chris Christie, Trump’s former friend, said something on TV that angered Trump, he threatened to reopen an investigation of Bridgegate. And so forth and so on.
What’s to be done — aside from ensuring the Democrats win back the House, and maybe even the Senate, this November?
In post-non-indictment interviews with several national and local news outlets, Jason Crow, the much-decorated former Army Ranger, offered up a few ideas while noting that no one in the House on the Republican side offered him a single word of support. He said of Speaker Mike Johnson — who said Crow and the others should have been charged — it “has been very clear that his longtime selling of his soul to Donald Trump is thoroughly complete at this point.”
In an interview with The Sun’s Unaffiliated newsletter, Crow took the point even further.
When asked how he would move forward from this, Crow said, “We sure as hell aren’t backing down.”
No one will be surprised if Trumpists, who have no shame, come after the Seditious Six again. Crow said his lawyer had already sent a note to Pirro and AG Pam Bondi and others in Trump’s administration, warning that if they continue these abuses they’ll go after them in court.
”We’re not just sitting here waiting for the next shoe to fall,” Crow said. “We have to make sure that we impose costs on people who are violating the law and abusing process. They have to understand that they can’t skirt responsibility.”
Then he said the words I was hoping to hear.
”We’re taking names, I’m making lists, and accountability is coming one way or another at some point or another.”
Take names. Make lists.
I’m not for a Trump-style retribution tour, and neither is Crow. But I am for justice.Trump is busy pardoning his friends and prosecuting his enemies as part of what may be the most corrupt administration in U.S. history.
I was reminded of those Watergate posters, which showed the faces of all the Nixon unindicted co-conspirators — OK, they were big posters — and how we’d X out each face following indictments against them.
Trump has immunity, of course, granted him by an obsequious Supreme Court. But his administration can be held responsible, unless Trump pardons them all in advance.
But still.
Take names. Make lists. Make sure this never happens again.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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