Elie Honig’s strange journey, from Trump Hater to Trump Enabler

Why does New York magazine pay Elie Honig to lie to its readers? Good question!

If Elie Honig had been Donald Trump’s Attorney General, January 6 never would have happened—because Donald Trump would already have been in jail! To see why, read Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor’s Code and Corrupted the Justice Department. Elie’s excellent study of a morally ugly man, William Barr, Trump’s real Attorney General.

Elie, a former federal prosecutor who is currently a columnist for New York magazine and CNN  talking head, begins his study of Barr’s perfidy by recounting the ugly story of how Barr, well, lied his fat ass off regarding the fabled “Mueller investigation” of possible illegal collaboration between Russia and the Trump campaign in 2016, claiming that Mueller’s investigation of Trump completely exonerated Trump and his campaign, which is most emphatically not the case, despite what the Trump-fluffing windbags on the right will tell you.

In fact, Elie argues, if you bother to look at, you know, the facts, Trump himself was guilty of several felonious acts of obstruction of justice while Mueller was conducting his investigation, struggling to prevent the truth about the links between Russia and his campaign from being brought to light! As Honig tells it in his book,

Eventually, after the actual Mueller Report became public, more than a thousand former federal prosecutors who served under administrations of both parties (including me) would disagree with [Attorney General William] Barr’s no-obstruction conclusion. The group of veteran prosecutors signed an open letter concluding that Trump’s conduct should “result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.”

Here are the opening paragraphs of the actual letter:

We are former federal prosecutors. We served under both Republican and Democratic administrations at different levels of the federal system: as line attorneys, supervisors, special prosecutors, United States Attorneys, and senior officials at the Department of Justice. The offices in which we served were small, medium, and large; urban, suburban, and rural; and located in all parts of our country.

Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.

The Mueller report describes several acts that satisfy all of the elements for an obstruction charge: conduct that obstructed or attempted to obstruct the truth-finding process, as to which the evidence of corrupt intent and connection to pending proceedings is overwhelming. These include:

• The President’s efforts to fire Mueller and to falsify evidence about that effort;

• The President’s efforts to limit the scope of Mueller’s investigation to exclude his conduct; and

• The President’s efforts to prevent witnesses from cooperating with investigators probing him and his campaign.

If Barr, as attorney general, had been interested in enforcing the law, instead of allowing Trump to break it, argues Honig, he would begun an investigation of Trump. Barr should also have investigated Trump, says Honig, in connection with Trump’s notorious pressuring of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, claiming that President Trump was guilty of bribery, extortion, and solicitation of foreign election assistance—or as Trump would call it, “Tuesday”.

Now, considering the contempt with which Elie contemplated Trump pre-January 6, his loathing post-January 6 must be over the top, right? Well, not so much. Check out the heads for his recent columns for New York chronicling Trump’s legal woes:

The Supreme Court Doesn’t Give a Damn About Jack Smith’s Timeline (and It Shouldn’t) (Arguing that it’s okay if Donald Trump’s attempts to overthrow the Constitution shouldn’t come to trial before the November 2024 election, because who cares if Trump is guilty or not?)

The 14th Amendment Effort Only Ended Up Helping Trump (The Supreme Court rewrote the 14^th amendment to avoid having to rule on whether Trump is guilty of sedition (Hint: He is!) and Elie doesn’t give a shit.)

Trump’s Claim of Presidential Immunity Is Not As Ridiculous As You’ve Heard¹ (Self explanatory)

What Are the Chances the Trump Trial Ends in a Hung Jury? (Higher than you think …) (Okay, guess Elie blew that one.)

 Trump’s Legal Troubles Just Got a Lot Smaller

The last is Elie’s “celebration” of Trump v. United States, which, I am confident, will in the future be put in the Supreme Court’s Supreme Hall of Shame, along with the Dred Scott Decision, Plessey v. Ferguson, Korematsu v. United States (allowing the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II without trial), and Bush v. Gore. Elie does make a few pro-forma remarks regarding Trump’s guilt— “Trump’s effort to deploy DOJ to find nonexistent proof of voter fraud, the pressure campaign toward Mike Pence, the January 6 “fight like hell” Ellipse speech”—but if Elie is the least bit, you know, upset by all of this, and/or the notion that this moral monster could easily become our president again—well, he hides it well. After all, Elie blandly explains

And while there are plenty of valid criticisms of the Supreme Court’s immunity decision — I join in some of them²— they’re academic now. This is the law; it’s binding on every court in the nation. And the Court has made clear that it will aggressively police application of its ruling. The Supreme Court has spoken, and everything has changed.

Yes, “This is the law”, just like the Dred Scott decision was the law; and Plessey v. Ferguson was the law; and Korematsu v. United States was the law; and Bush v. Gore is the law. And if you think Elie is going to share any of his views regarding the “valid criticisms” of Chief Justice Roberts pile o’ feces for the ages any time soon, well, don’t hold your breath.

Afterwords

Hatchet Man breathed contempt and disgust for Donald Trump and all his actions while president of the United States. All that has vanished now. Elie isn’t quite arguing that Trump ought to be re-elected. Instead, he’s arguing that if Trump walks, it isn’t a travesty of justice—even though, back in the day, he was arguing that it was a travesty of justice that Trump hadn’t been locked up long before January 6. What happened?

I can only guess. For whatever reason, Honig has become convinced that we need a liar, and a hypocrite, and a sociopath in the White House, a “strongman”, if you will, to protect us, from, well, whatever it is that Elie is afraid of. The law, Elie has decided, won’t save us. Only lawlessness will save us, only a man who will do anything, who will act entirely without scruple or honor or compassion can be “trusted” to protect us.

But Elie, of course, hasn’t the guts to say this, hasn’t got the guts to say “I used to believe in the rule of law. I was wrong. Now I believe in the Rule of Trump, the rule of Mein Führer.”³

Elie does not even attempt to “normalize” Trump, “explaining”, in the manner of Ross Douthat and other hypocrites, that Trump isn’t that bad. No, he’s trying to normalize the Supreme Court’s shameless destruction of the U.S. Constitution in the name of Trump— “okay, maybe they went over the line a couple of times—I’m not saying they didn’t. But, hey, the law’s the law. Let’s not make mountains out of molehills here. If you want to get along, go along, amirite? Anyway, what’s done is done, so let’s all just get along with our lives, and do what the Donald says.”

I have described the consequences of Trump v. United States in the article “How the Federalist Society Destroyed the U. S. Constitution”.

1. This piece is particularly “interesting” because it pushes the “unified executive” trope (aka “the president can do no wrong”) pushed by the Federalist Society, which Honig relentlessly villified in his book on William Barr.

2. If there are “plenty of valid criticisms” of the Court’s decision, why does Elie only join in “some” of them? Shouldn’t he join in all of the “valid criticisms”? Or is that just too much honesty to ask for?

3. Yes, I know Elie is Jewish. This is an insult.