***This letter is in response to another letter. Here is the series of the letters thus far:
LETTER: Writer’s entire argument is taken from absolute fringe of political reality
LETTER: Premises of professors caricature of Trump false, just another anti-Trump hit piece in DM Register***
I am amused by Professors Zagacki’s and Cherwitz’s attempt to rebut portions of my letter responding to their absurd thesis that President Trump is a “strong man” authoritarian based on premises I successfully rebutted in my letter.
They did catch one error. I inadvertently referred to Federal District Attorneys as “attorneys general”. Shame on me.
They also claim that I presented my view “in an imperious and condescending voice.” Perhaps they ought to reread their own letter, as well as their original article in the Register, if they want to see the models for writing “in an imperious and condescending voice.”
In their attempted rebuttal, they mainly rely on name-calling and ad hominem attacks instead of reason and logic. They smear millions of Trump supporters as willing to “believe that the earth is flat if he told them so.” I (apparently along with anyone who uses facts, logic and reason to disagree with them) am supposedly claiming to be “a prophet given special knowledge from God.” I read what happened to John the Baptist. No thank you. I disavow the honor they attempt to bestow on me.
In their mass of hyperbole, the communications professors describe plans to reform the unelected administrative state so it will act in accordance with the policies of the elected president “as Trump’s proposed plans to gut federal agencies and replace them with his true believers and . . . impose a dictatorial regime.” I would suggest that we are a lot closer to a dictatorship when administrative agencies can lie to the media in order to get them to promote narratives, such as the “Hunter Biden laptop is Russian disinformation” narrative, to ensure the election of their preferred candidates than we are when such agencies are reformed to be the servants of the elected representatives of the people, whether Republican or Democrat, and not rogue actors.
John Eastman, (not “Charles Eastman”), a respected constitutional law expert on such matters as the Electoral College, is dismissed as a Trump “crony”. (Anyone in the Trump circle who disagrees with the views of Zagacki and Cherwitz is, as decreed by them, “a crony” whose views are to be given no weight despite their qualifications).
They note that Eastman is currently indicted (and presumed innocent) in Georgia for merely giving legal advice to Trump on the elections.
George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley described this indictment as “[E]xcessive and . . . dangerous. It essentially criminalizes challenges to elections. There is no limiting principle in this document. They are charging things like the president saying publicly we need to have a recount. . . . Willis didn’t really show any semblance of restraint. She indicted everyone for everything she could think of. It is sort of the Jackson Pollock school of prosecution. She threw it all against the canvas.”
Former Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz described the Georgia indictment as being designed “to get a conviction before the election, even if they’re going to lose on appeal. . . It’s what Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist – it’s the most dangerous threat to democracy. And we’re seeing it unfold in front of our eyes, very, very tragically. . . . I’m not a Republican. I’m not a Trump supporter, but I care deeply about the Constitution. I care deeply about preserving the rule of law, and we’re seeing it being frittered away for partisan political purposes.”
The disagreement that Eastman and other constitutional law experts, such as John You, University of California Professor of Law, and Robert Delahunty, Professor of Law at St. Thomas University, have with Lawrence Tribe on the role of the Vice President in counting electoral votes does not make that conflict a crime. Professor Tribe, by the way, said in The Atlantic magazine that Kamala Harris may have a role to play in stopping a Trump win in 2025, but he is keeping what she may do a secret. So Pence acting in 2021 would have been a crime. But Harris acting in 2025 will be A-OK!
Molly Hemingway, a respected journalist and senior editor of the Federalist, is dismissed as a “propagandist for the MAGA political echo chamber.” Perhaps the professors ought to read Ms. Hemingway’s article in Imprimis “’Zuckerbucks’ and the 2020 Election” or her book “Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Election”’ in order to gain a minimal acquaintance with the facts.
They might also wish to read “Debunked?: An Auditor Reviews the 2020 Election – and the Lessons Learned,” probably the most objective book addressing 2020 election issues.
McSwain claimed there were various voter fraud allegations in Pennsylvania generally, not Philadelphia specifically, that he was not allowed to investigate. The communications professors don’t understand that there are not just state laws, but also federal laws dealing with election crimes. Pilger, R., Federal Prosecutions of Election Offenses Eighth Edition (2017). Those are the laws McSwain would have enforced.
The communications professors also assume that Trump’s lawyers in Pennsylvania could “easily have presented [evidence of voter fraud] before federal judges two years ago.” That would only be true if the judges decided to hear the case on the merits. The federal judges held that Trump had no standing to bring the claims. Out of 92 election law cases where Trump, the GOP or voters were parties, only 31 were heard on the merits, of which Trump or the GOP won 23. Those facts came from one of a collection of studies on the 2020 election linked to by John Droz at https://election-integrity.info/, not Gnostic revelation.
The professors also don’t understand my position, which is that there were so many illegalities and irregularities in the 2020 election that Donald Trump and others could reasonably believe that the outcome was due to election law violations. In support of that reasoning, I cited rulings of the Wisconsin Supreme Court on that state’s election law violations and the effect of those violations on the legitimacy of election outcomes as well as a few undisputed facts, such as the FBI lying about the Hunter Biden laptop. Despite the facts, I, apparently along with the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and the majority of the American public, are dismissed as being on “the absolute fringe of political reality.” At least I am in good company.
By the way, if the professors actually want to look for authoritarians, they might investigate those who falsely declare their political opponents are “semi-fascists”, must be “formally deprogrammed,” or even removed “from the human race,” and use the legal system in the same way Beria suggested to Stalin, “show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime.”
- Donald Bohlken
Donald W. Bohlken of Indianola is an attorney and a retired administrative law judge with the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals. He worked for seven years combined at the Iowa Civil Rights Commission and Cedar Rapids Human Rights Commission as an investigator and then for 21 years as an administrative law judge at the Iowa Civil Rights Commission and the Department of Inspections and Appeals. He received his J.D. with Honors from Drake University in 1986.
