To the Journal editor:

In the United States of America, we have a principal that has held us together as a nation since 1788 when our Constitution was ratified. This is the rule of law. This means that everyone, including the president, is accountable to the Constitution; laws duly enacted by state and local governments; and orders issued by the courts.

Our Constitution, laws and courts are, like anything else, produced by humans and are not always perfect. However, their goal has always been to provide for our well-being and to promote justice. Until recently, this has been something in which we could have confidence. Sadly, our current president, and those around him, have launched an attack on the rule of law. This attack has been devastating in many ways.

The Department of Justice is now a presidential fiefdom. The compliant Attorney General has been ordered to bring trumped up (no pun intended) charges against honorable former public servants and others who are perceived as “enemies” of the president. The DOJ has failed to bring charges against friends of the president, such as Tom Homan, the leader of the anti-immigrant crusade …. The DOJ used to be filled with many capable and dedicated attorneys. In my years on the federal bench, I have known and respected many of them. Today, many of these attorneys who have refused to surrender their integrity, have resigned or have been fired. There are a few good people left. However, they are lying lower to avoid an even more comprehensive Stalinesque purge. The rule of law is supposed to be nurtured and sustained by the DOJ. At the direction of the president, this DOJ does neither.

The president has grossly abused the pardon power. If you are a friend of his or have made a contribution to him or the Republican Party, you can get a pardon or commutation of your sentence. The recipients of the president’s largesse are people who have been duly convicted by proof beyond a reasonable doubt and sentenced in accordance with the law. Many of these people have been convicted of various types of fraud and are now relieved of their obligation to pay any restitution to the victims. The most atrocious example of the president’s pardon spree is, of course the wholesale pardoning of the people who attacked capitol police officers and trashed the capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to overturn the election. Recently, he has pardoned one of these attackers a second time for a crime committed after his first pardon. If you have found favor with the president, don’t worry. Nothing will happen to you no matter what laws you have broken. What does that do to the rule of law?

The president and his friends have launched unrelenting attacks on the judiciary, the only institution that has stood up to him. (Here I am excluding from the judiciary the Supreme Court with its manufactured, broad definition of presidential immunity and it’s inexplicable shadow docket). The verbal and Truth Social attacks have regrettably caused a need to ramp up security for federal judges. Ironically, the U.S. marshals, who are supposed to provide that security, are controlled by the president. The courts are there to ensure that the law is being followed; yet the president continues to deport people, some of whom are U.S. citizens, in clear violation of the Constitution and court orders, without providing them with due process of law. To the president, there is apparently no law or Constitutional provision that cannot be broken.

This is only a partial exposition of some of the ways that the rule of law is being trashed. Without the rule of law, the law becomes whatever the president says it is. The president then becomes an absolute ruler, a dictator or king, take your pick. This is not what the founders of this country envisioned after risking their necks in eight years of war to separate themselves from King George.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Al Edgar is a retired U.S. district judge. He was appointed by President Reagan and served as an active judge in the eastern district of Tennessee and the western district of Michigan for 31 years. He resides in Marquette.