Trump calls civilian prosecution of terrorism “a joke.” It’s anything but
In his first public remarks after the terrorist
attack in New York City on Tuesday night, President Donald Trump simultaneously
managed to both insult the US criminal justice system and propose something
that sounded scarily like a crackdown on basic civil liberties — all within the
span of just a few minutes.
Trump’s comments came near the end of a
prepared statement on the attack given to reporters on Wednesday afternoon. The
president called the legal system’s method for handling terrorism prosecutions
“a joke” and “a laughing stock,” arguing its insufficiently harsh punishments
made future attacks more likely. He called for replacing it with an unspecified
“far quicker and far greater” new system that would inflict greater pain on
“these animals."
Here’s the full quote:
We have to come up with punishment
that’s far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are
getting right now. They’ll go through court for years. At the end, they’ll be —
who knows what happens. We need quick justice, and we need strong justice. Much
quicker and much stronger than we have right now, because what we have right
now is a joke, and it’s a laughing stock. And no wonder so much of this stuff
takes place.
This is verifiably false pretty much from top to
bottom.
There is no evidence that US courts are
unable to prosecute terrorism suspects in a timely fashion. The opposite: Since
9/11, more than 620 individuals have been convicted on terrorism charges in 63
separate federal courts, according to a May 2017 count by Human Rights First.
None of these terrorists have broken out of prison, and none of the courts have
suffered retaliatory attacks.
Moreover, the US already tried to set
up an alternative system — the military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that
George W. Bush established after 9/11 — and it was a disaster.
Military courts are well equipped to
try US service members who violate military laws, but aren’t set up to deal
with complex and wide-ranging constitutional and classification issues raised
by major terrorism prosecution. This makes them slower and puts verdicts on
less sure legal footing. In the same time span that civilian courts convicted
620 individuals on terrorism charges, military commissions convicted a grand
total of eight people.
“The Guantanamo Military Commissions
are a failed experiment,” Marine Gen. John G. Baker, the chief defense counsel
at the Guantanamo Bay war court, said in a September speech. “Considering the
gravity and importance of these cases, that failure is one that hurts us all.”
This isn’t just a problem for military courts.
Whatever system Trump might want to set up as an alternative to the normal
court process would have the same issues of ad hoc rules and dubious legal
authority. Constitutional rights to due process and fair trial procedures apply
to anyone living in the United States, citizen and noncitizen alike. The
president appears to edging toward saying those protections should be shredded
— or, at very least, circumvented — for people his administration accuses of
being terrorists.
It would be bad enough if Trump were
saying this on his own. But Sen. John McCain, perhaps Trump’s fiercest critic
in the Republican Party, argued for suspending the constitutional rights of the
suspect in the New York case, saying that he “should not be read Miranda
rights,” as “enemy combatants are not entitled to them.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, another
Trump-skeptical Republican, took a similar line, saying “the moment you read
someone their Miranda rights there is an impediment to interrogation.”
This is not true — lawful civilian
interrogations have been, per the FBI, the source of some of the most valuable
information on terrorist groups the US government has — but that didn’t stop
Graham for calling for a return to the bad old days right after 9/11.
It’s a reminder that Trump didn’t come
out of nowhere; that he is, in many ways, a blunter and more honest expression
of ideas that even his opponents inside the GOP widely accept.
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