Trump Demolishing Democratic Law In Name Of Cleansing America
Trump is carrying his message of threats and intimidation to a new level to far away places while he works to eliminate bedrock principles of democratic law.
Trump was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on May 13, when he brought smiles to his Saudi hosts by saying that America won’t be giving a “lecture on how to live.” That is bad news for America’s traditional support for democracy around the world and opposition to authoritarianism but it is good news for countries like Saudi Arabia, which earned a political rights score of 1 out of 40 in the 2024 Freedom House report.
Freedom House was founded in 1941 to rally policymakers and a broadly isolationist American public around the fight against Nazi Germany, and to raise awareness of the fascist threat to American security and values. In the decades since, Freedom House has been a leader in advocacy, programs, and research in support of democracy around the world.
Following his performance in Saudi Arabia, trump pandered to white supremacists when he offered stinging advice about how the democratic South African government should live. Trump falsely claimed that the democratic South African government committed “genocidal” practices against white farmers. Trump leveled the lies in May during a meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. Trump showed a video of an alleged burial site of scores of murdered white farmers. Trump claimed he had web page printouts describing supposed atrocities against Afrikaners, including an image of Red Cross workers lifting body bags that Trump said contained “all white farmers.”
Fact checkers determined that the crosses at the purported burial site were a protest installation, and the picture of body bags depicted victims of a massacre during the Congolese Civil War.
Closer to home, trump has been frantic to deflect an avalanche of criticism that he is covering up for accused serial pedophile rapist Jeffrey Epstein.
He has been pushing the Cleveland Guardians baseball team to revert to its formerly, racist name, the Cleveland Indians and pressed the Washington Nationals football team to do likewise and get back to its equally racist name, the Washington Redskins.
Trump followed this by posting an outrageous AI video showing President Barack Obama being arrested by the FBI in the Oval Office, while trump is on the side, smirking. There was no disclaimer that the video was a fake made by AI.
The video was posted after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard claimed that she has “striking” and “overwhelming” evidence that ex-Obama officials allegedly manufactured the Trump-Russia collusion theory after the 2016 election to thwart the trump presidency. The administration has routinely targeted critics of the president and has sought to relitigate the 2016 election, which trump won in a close race and the 2020 presidential election, which he clearly lost yet continues to claim he was the rightful winner but was a victim of voter fraud.
In a rare statement in response, Obama’s office said it “does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction. Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes. These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio.”
The Gabbard claims and the doctored images of Obama were followed by a bizarre, frightening graphic posted by trump showing him in the foreground with American flags, eagles and fireworks in the background and a quote, “I was the hunted — NOW I’M THE HUNTER.”
“They came after the wrong man,” the White House’s official X account ominously added in its caption.
Innocents Detained
The latest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) statistics show that as of June 29, there were 57,861 people detained and 41,495, 71.7 per cent, had no criminal convictions. That includes 14,318 people with pending criminal charges and 27,177 who are subject to immigration enforcement, but have no known criminal convictions or pending criminal charges.
In March 2025, the U.S. deported 137 Venezuelans to El Salvador, to be immediately and indefinitely imprisoned without trial and without prison sentences nor release dates. They were detained at the notorious maximum security Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT). Many deportees have no criminal charges, records, nor convictions in either country.
The trump administration offers no solid evidence while alleging that the deportees are gang members, The U.S. did not publish the Venezuelans’ names, nor did it acknowledge the fate and location of individuals to the public, their families, or their legal representation. The names were later leaked by CBS News.
The legal justification for the deportation was the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which gives the president wartime authority to summarily arrest and deport citizens of a nation that is in a declared war with the U.S., or which perpetrates, attempts, or threatens an “invasion or predatory incursion.” Trump invoked the act on the false basis that the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua was invading the United States at the behest of the Venezuelan government.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that the migrants sent to CECOT should remain there “for the rest of their lives.” Trump’s border czar Tom Homan rationalized that “a lot of gang members don’t have criminal histories, just like a lot of terrorists in this world, they’re not in any terrorist databases, right?”
Immigrants have been deported as far away as South Sudan and Eswatini in Africa while ICE is holding around 59,000 immigrants at detention centers across the U.S., the most detained in U.S. immigration detention history. Among the facilities housing detainees is newest, infamous center known as Alligator Alcatraz in the Florida everglades.
While trump follows the fascist’s rulebook of spreading terror, intimidation and racism, he also has been hard at work to dismantle two bedrock aspects of the rule of law: The so-called Blackstone principle that it is better to free 10 criminals than to imprison one free man; and the right of habeas corpus.
By detaining and deporting thousands of immigrants without charges or trials, trump has been blackening a centuries old rule that forms the basis of law in democratic nations around the world. The rule is known as the Blackstone principal, named after an English jurist, William Blackstone, and published in the 1760s in his seminal work, “Commentaries on the Laws of England.”
“It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer,” wrote Blackstone, in an effort to emphasize the importance of protecting innocent people in the legal system, suggesting the consequences of convicting the guilty are outweighed by the potential harm to the innocent.
Benjamin Franklin endorsed the same principle when he said, “it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer.” John Adams even defended British soldiers who were charged with murder for their role in the Boston Massacre. Adams said it is “of more importance to community, that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt should be punished; for guilt and crimes are so frequent in the world, that all of them cannot be punished; and many times they happen in such a manner, that it is not of much consequence to the public, whether they are punished or not.”
Adams said that when innocents are routinely condemned, “there would be an end to all security what so ever.”
Maimonides, the legendary middle ages philosopher and rabbi, wrote that “the Exalted One has shut this door” against the use of presumptive evidence, for “it is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death.”
Maimonides said that executing an accused criminal on anything less than absolute certainty would progressively lead to convictions merely “according to the judge’s caprice” and was expounding on both Exodus 23:7 (“do not bring death on those who are innocent and in the right”) and an Islamic text, the Jami’ al-Tirmidhi.
The canon has largely been followed in the U.S., with the glaring exceptions of trump and former Vice President Dick Cheney, who both have turned the rule on its head, claiming the need for national security demonstrates it is “better to kill a hundred innocent people than let one truly guilty person go free.”
Cheney did not back off his support for the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” against suspected terrorists despite the fact that 25 percent of CIA detainees subject to the treatment were later proven to be innocent, including one who died of hypothermia in CIA custody. He said he was more concerned that real terrorists might go free.
“I’m more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that in fact were innocent,” Cheney said. “The problem I have was with all of the folks that we did release that end up back on the battlefield.”
Cheney said he had “no problem” with seizing innocent people because, “our objective is to get the guys who did 9/11 and it is to avoid another attack against the United States.”
Asked whether the 25 percent margin was too high, Cheney responded, “I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective. … I’d do it again in a minute.”
Other authoritarians had similar views, including those in Communist China, Vietnam and Cambodia’s notorious dictator, Pol Pot, who decreed “better arrest an innocent person than leave a guilty one free.”
Despots like trump have also consistently violated a related legal principle that every person accused of any crime is considered innocent until proven guilty. Instead the trump regime, in its deportation policies, have decided that immigrants are guilty unless proven innocent.
Under the presumption of innocence, the legal burden of proof is on the prosecution, which must present compelling evidence to a judge or a jury. If the prosecution does not prove the charges true, then the person is acquitted. The prosecution must in most cases prove that the accused is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If reasonable doubt remains, the accused must be acquitted.
The presumption of innocence is a legal right of the accused in a criminal trial in many nations and it is also an international human right under the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 11.
Even the Russian constitution states that “Everyone charged with a crime shall be considered not guilty until his or her guilt has been proven in conformity with the federal law and has been established by the valid sentence of a court of law.”
Historically, Roman law provided the dictum, “Proof lies on him who asserts, not on him who denies.”
Habeas Corpus
Stephen Miller, a senior adviser in the trump administration, is the chief architect of trump’s draconian immigration policy which aims to deport millions of immigrants with no due process, in violation of the legal right of habeas corpus.
Miller has suggested the possibility of suspending habeas corpus as part of immigration enforcement strategies, raising significant legal and constitutional concerns.
Habeas corpus translates literally into “you shall have the body.” It is a legal principal that allows people to challenge in court the legality of their detention. Habeas corpus is generally enforced via writ, and accordingly referred to as a writ of habeas corpus.
The Constitution restricts the suspension of habeas corpus only in cases of rebellion or invasion. Habeas corpus was suspended only a few times in U.S history, including during the Civil War when president Lincoln suspended the right and in World War II when President Franklin D. Roosevelt temporarily suspended it. Following the September 11 attacks, President George W. Bush attempted to place Guantanamo Bay detainees outside of the jurisdiction of habeas corpus, but the Supreme Court overturned the action in Boumediene v. Bush
On May 9, Miller indicated the trump administration was considering suspending habeas corpus in addressing illegal immigration. Trump has said the nation is under attack from undocumented migrants and could use this as a rationale for denying habeas corpus.
Miller’s comments on habeas corpus reflect a potentially unconstitutional approach to immigration enforcement, raising critical questions about the balance of power between the executive branch and the judiciary.
Any move to moderate or destroy the right to habeas corpus would bring a cringe of opposition from the likes of Revolutionary War patriot Ebenezer Smith Platt.
By the time of the War of Independence, habeas corpus had long been a bedrock of the rights to due process under colonial and British law. American revolutionaries feared threats that they would be held without charges during the revolutionary war and that British King George III would remove American colonists “beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.”
The demand that the king respect the right of habeas corpus came to a head in 1776, when Platt was transported across the seas and imprisoned far from home. Platt eventually gained his freedom, a result of public pressure from elected officials combined with the efforts of friends and constant press coverage and the right of habeas corpus was sanctioned.
The writ of habeas corpus was described in the 18th century by Blackstone as a “great and efficacious writ in all manner of illegal confinement.” The writ remains “universally known and celebrated as the ‘Great Writ of Liberty.’”