SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The Trump administration has used presidential powers aggressively. This weekend, troops patrol the streets of the nation's capital. The FBI has raided the home of a former national security adviser. There's pressure on the Federal Reserve to fire an official on unproven charges and on Colorado to release a former county clerk who has been found guilty of tampering with electoral machinery. Ankush Khardori is a former federal prosecutor who writes about legal issues for Politico. Joins us now. Thanks so much for being with us.
ANKUSH KHARDORI: Thank you for having me.
SIMON: Federal government, of course, has special authority over the District of Columbia, but not Los Angeles, which also saw a recent troop deployment. And we're waiting for the decision in a lawsuit over the LA deployments. Could that decision deter the president from deploying troops in other cities, which he says he wants to do?
KHARDORI: I think it may. If the judge eventually rules that, you know, that the deployment there was unlawful and that the emergency conditions that the government invoked or were not actually present on the ground, it should deter the administration from doing it elsewhere. That ruling would have limited applicability in D.C., potentially, just because D.C. doesn't have a governor, so the relationship between the National Guard and D.C. sort of law enforcement is different than it is in other jurisdictions.
SIMON: Let me ask you about D.C. because, of course, the order the president signed on August 11 declared a crime emergency. But emergency periods can only last for 30 days without congressional approval. Do you think within a couple of weeks now, troops will just go home and that'll be the end of the D.C. deployment?
KHARDORI: You know, that's a very significant and open question. It's unclear. I mean, Trump may even just try to extend it to another 30 days. I mean, this is an area of law that is untested, as many areas of law appear to be during the second Trump administration. And, you know, there are a lot of swirling questions around here. I mean, I think the biggest one and the most key point here is, as a practical matter, on the ground, there is no crime emergency in Washington, D.C., right now, whatever you make of the appropriateness of the levels as they currently stand.
SIMON: What do you make of the FBI raid of former national security adviser John Bolton's home Friday morning, reportedly over his handling of classified documents?
KHARDORI: You know, I think it's helpful to separate two concepts out. And I tried to sort of remind folks of this as the Trump prosecutions were going on as well. A criminal investigation, a criminal prosecution can have unseemly origins, maybe improper motives behind it. And it can also still be the case that the prosecution is supported by the facts and the evidence and the law. So to my mind, you know, the FBI has said that they've conducted a search. A magistrate judge signed off on it, meaning that they had to find probable cause that there was evidence of crimes in John Bolton's home and the office that was searched.
And that evidence should have had to be fairly recent because there are so-called staleness requirements that prevent the government from using really old information to support a new and current search warrant application. So it is entirely possible that they may have found something. I mean, it's also worth recalling that in 2020, when a judge in D.C. was handling some of the litigation around John Bolton's book, he wrote an opinion, a fairly scathing opinion, saying he believed that Bolton may very well have violated criminal laws at the time.
SIMON: Let me ask you about a case that's gotten a little less attention nationally, but Tina Peters was a Colorado County elections official found guilty in connection with her attempts to find evidence to support President Trump's false claims the 2020 election was stolen. The president is now calling for her release with unspecified consequences if she isn't. Is there anything he can really do, though?
KHARDORI: I mean, with respect to a state prosecution, in particular...
SIMON: Yeah.
KHARDORI: ...The president does not have the authority to pardon state convictions. Although there are, you know, political levers and other mechanisms that he could conceivably pursue to try to have state officials who may have that authority executed on this person's behalf.
SIMON: So he can bluster, but there's nothing he can do?
KHARDORI: Not directly, no.
SIMON: Let me ask you about the words of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who accused the high court this week of what she called Calvinball jurisprudence, referring to that game in the comic strip, "Calvin and Hobbes," and which she said the administration always wins 'cause there are no fixed rules. What do you make of her analysis?
KHARDORI: You know, I hate to say it, but I think it's quite compelling. This Supreme Court this year has handed Trump a series of very significant wins and particularly wins on the so-called shadow docket, which are really just very quickly resolved matters without the normal briefing, without the normal oral argument. And some of the most high-profile and significant moves in the executive branch - things like firings of people, cutting grants, which is what was at issue in the opinion that we're talking about right now - have been blessed effectively by the Supreme Court, which has let those things go forward pending litigation.
And, you know, it is hard to avoid the conclusion, as Justice Jackson noted, that the through line here is that the Trump administration tends to prevail. And I think even if you look closely at the opinion that, you know, Jackson was responding to or dissenting from the various opinions that comprise the majority in that case on the Republican side, the Republican appointees' side, they're more or less incoherent. It's just a mishmash of stuff. It would be hard for me to describe a coherent theory that even emerged from those opinions. So I understand her frustration.
SIMON: Former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori, thanks so much for being with us.
KHARDORI: Thank you for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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