When the Lawyers are Lawless

Summary

Amicus with Dahlia Lithwick | Episode: "When the Lawyers are Lawless"

Release Date: March 1, 2025
Host: Dahlia Lithwick
Guest: Asha Rangappa, Assistant Dean at Yale University's Jackson School of Global Affairs, former FBI Special Agent, and legal contributor for ABC News.

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1. Introduction: A Clash of Powers

Dahlia Lithwick opens the episode by highlighting the escalating tensions between the Trump administration and the U.S. Supreme Court. She draws parallels to a "monarchic" battle, suggesting that Chief Justice John Roberts is positioning himself as a stabilizing force against what she describes as President Trump's authoritarian maneuvers.

Notable Quote:
“At midnight Wednesday, John Roberts issued an administrative stay to give the Court a few days to review written arguments...” (02:10)

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2. Deconstruction of the Administrative State

Lithwick details the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to dismantle key federal agencies, including USAID, the CFPB, and the Department of Education. She underscores the administration's strategy of firing thousands of federal workers without clear cause, disrupting the functionality of these institutions.

Key Points:

• Efforts to weaken the administrative state by targeting essential agencies.
• The chaotic nature of the administration's directives, exemplified by the confusing emails sent to federal workers.
• The promotion of Amy Gleason within the Department of Governmental Operations (Doge), raising concerns about transparency and corruption.

Notable Quote:
“This violates fundamental constitutional separation of powers principles and has thrown Washington D.C. into trauma as intended.” (04:15)

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3. Transformation of Security Forces and National Security

The conversation shifts to discuss the disturbing trend where law enforcement and national security officials are increasingly acting outside legal constraints. Lithwick highlights key appointments and actions that signify a shift towards authoritarianism within these institutions.

Subsections:

• FBI Overhaul with Dan Bongino:

  • Appointment of Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent and podcaster, as deputy director of the FBI.
  • Concerns over Bongino’s lack of traditional FBI experience and his controversial statements regarding FBI corruption.

  Notable Quote:
  “Any lawyers who try to slow you down is what you do when you're planning to break the law.” (06:08)

• John Roberts and Supreme Court Involvement:

  • Supreme Court's intervention in cases challenging the administration’s policies, indicating a judicial pushback against executive overreach.

  Notable Quote:
  “This case may well be the first collision between a monarchic President and a monarchic court.” (05:20)

• Ed Martin and the DOJ’s Alignment with Trump:

  • Appointment of Ed Martin as acting U.S. Attorney in D.C., who openly aligns his office with Trump’s agenda.
  • The use of DOJ to target and threaten public figures critical of the administration.

  Notable Quote:
  “He is leveling threats all over the place at public figures who criticize the administration.” (10:46)

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4. Erosion of Legal Safeguards in the Military

Lithwick and Rangappa delve into the Pentagon’s recent purge of top military leaders and Judge Advocate General (JAG) officers, highlighting the implications for military legality and accountability.

Key Points:

• Firings of Top Military Leaders:

  • Dismissal of Joint Chiefs Chairman General Charles Q. Brown and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti.
  • Undermining DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) efforts, which historically have been crucial in maintaining a diverse and professional military force.

• Removal of JAG Officers:

  • JAG officers play a critical role in ensuring military orders comply with the Constitution and international law.
  • Their removal signals a weakening of legal oversight, potentially paving the way for unlawful military actions.

Notable Quote:
“The JAG officers will be prosecuting and defending service members, ensuring orders are legal...” (29:59)

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5. Local Implications: The Coeur d'Alene Incident

The discussion moves to a local incident in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, where unidentified security forces violently confronted Dr. Teresa Boropol during a town hall meeting. This event exemplifies the broader theme of law enforcement operating without accountability.

Key Points:

• Unidentified Security Forces:

  • Attack on Dr. Boropol by private security agents affiliated with Lear Asset Management, who refused to identify themselves.
  • The lack of uniform markings creates confusion and fear among the public, undermining trust in law enforcement.

• Chilling Effect on Free Speech:

  • Such incidents deter individuals from exercising their First Amendment rights due to fear of arbitrary violence and lack of accountability.

Notable Quote:
“It's like you could be either arrested or kidnapped and you might not know, undermining foundational notions of how we can be safe in public spaces.” (40:08)

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6. The Role of the Military as a Bulwark Against Authoritarianism

Rangappa emphasizes the importance of the military's traditional role in upholding democratic principles. She discusses how diversity, professionalization, and loyalty to the Constitution have historically prevented autocratic control within the armed forces.

Key Points:

• Diversity:
  "41% of its members identify as a minority, making the military one of the most diverse organizations in the country." (25:18)

• Professionalization and Constitutional Loyalty:
  The military's ingrained culture and size act as natural safeguards against swift subversion, despite high-level firings attempting to erode these protections.

Notable Quote:
“The military is one of the most diverse organizations, one of the most diverse employers in the country. This is a natural prophylactic against divisive measures.” (35:23)

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7. Strategies for Countering Authoritarian Tendencies

In the concluding segment, Rangappa advocates for coalition building across ideological divides as a vital strategy to resist authoritarianism. She draws inspiration from historical examples, such as Chile’s resistance against dictatorship, emphasizing unity and transcendent civic virtues.

Key Points:

• Coalition Building:
  Forming alliances across different political and social groups to create a united front against authoritarian threats.

• Transcendent Civic Virtues:
  Emphasizing shared democratic principles and civic responsibilities to maintain societal cohesion.

Notable Quote:
“One of the things that does seem to be a good strategy is coalition building across differences... if these people could get rid of that dictator after 17 years, then we can definitely stop this tide.” (43:45)

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8. Conclusion: Vigilance and Collective Action

Lithwick wraps up the episode by reiterating the importance of understanding the multifaceted threats to the rule of law and democratic institutions. She underscores the necessity of collective awareness and action to safeguard constitutional principles.

Notable Quote:
“We need to stop this tide. We are still very early, and we still have a lot of power. We need to remember that we are many, they are few.” (45:57)

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Final Thoughts

This episode of Amicus provides a comprehensive examination of the current threats to the U.S. legal and constitutional framework, particularly under the Trump administration. Through insightful analysis and expert commentary, Dahlia Lithwick and Asha Rangappa illuminate the intricate ways in which legal institutions and norms are being undermined, calling for heightened vigilance and unified resistance to preserve democratic values.

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Additional Resources:

• Asha Rangappa’s Substack: The Freedom Academy with Asha Rangappa
• Join Slate Plus: Access exclusive legal analysis and bonus episodes at slate.com/amicusplus

Transcript

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[Dahlia Lithwick]

This podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail], progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states hi, I'm Dahlia Lithwick. Welcome back to Amicus. This is Slate's podcast about the courts and the law and the Supreme Court. We are yet again in one of those Trump administration weekend not weekend modes in which what was once a sleepy Friday night to Saturday morning suddenly reverts to emergency bat phone calls to the U.S. supreme Court and midnight stays. All of which suggests over and over that John Roberts is going to play Alfred to Donald Trump's Batman. On Tuesday, U.S. district Judge Amir Ali ordered the Trump administration to by midnight Wednesday Release more than 1 1/2 billion dollars in funds for already completed foreign aid work. That's money that has been held up for Trump ordered it halted. The Trump Justice Department went right to the D.C. circuit, then on up to the Supreme Court to challenge this order, claiming it would take, quote, multiple weeks to meet the judge's request. And on Wednesday night, John Roberts issued an administrative stay in order to give the Court a few days to review written arguments in the case, ordering that all briefing was due Friday at noon. This case may well be the first collision between a monarchic President and a monarchic court. As of this taping, no news. But by the time you're listening to this fast moving story that may have all changed, we will of course as ever bring you the analysis you need if and when they reach the merits. I assure you that we are watching. And now on with the show. In recent weeks a lot of focus, ours included, has been trained on the deconstruction of the administrative state, eviscerating USC Aid and CFPB and the Department of Education, firing thousands of probationary workers without cause and ensuring that infants abroad will lose access to life saving HIV treatment Also in the mix, an incoherent and chaotic what did you do last week? Email that went out last Saturday continues to torture federal workers. The non agency and not an actual department. At the helm of all this is of course Doge, whose acting head we learned this week is one Amy Gleason appears to have herself learned of her promotion while on vacation in Mexico. Doge's corrupt and opaque dealings have occupied us in no small part because it violates fundamental constitutional separation of powers principles and has thrown Washington D.C. into trauma as intended. But there's an equally important and I think really sinister turn happening right now that also deserves a close look. A turn in terms of security forces and national security. A turn in which government actors, almost always under color of law, are doing away with legal constraints on the military, the Justice Department and other law enforcement actors. The people who are charged with protecting and enforcing the law are being chosen for their stated desire to carry out unlawful acts. This is a really chilling reversal, using the law to enforce illegal action. It's happening on so many fronts in ways that can start to seem random. Last weekend saw a series of purges at the Pentagon that, as Georgetown law professor Rosa Brooks warned on X, amounted to the following firing quote, any lawyers who try to slow you down is what you do when you're planning to break the law. Sunday saw the appointment of Dan Bongino as number two to FBI Director Kash Patel, meaning that the numbers one and two positions at the FBI have never served as FBI agents. Meanwhile, Eagle Ed Martin, who is the acting U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia, claimed in a tweet that his office serves as, quote, trump's lawyers and is leveling threats all over the place at public figures who criticize the administration. The list goes on and on, but it reflects a really very frightening new turn in terms of authoritarian creep. And the question I have to ask my guest this week is what happens when the defenders of the law become the enemies of the rule of law? Asha Rangapa is assistant Dean and a senior lecturer at Yale University's Jackson School of Global affairs and a former Associate Dean at Yale Law School. Before joining the Academy, Asha served as a special agent in the New York division of the FBI, specializing in counterintelligence investigations. Her work involved assessing threats to national security, conducting classified investigations on suspected foreign agents, and performing undercover work. She is currently a legal contributor for ABC News. She's on the board of Editors of Just Security and a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. Please subscribe to her substack the Freedom Academy with Asha Rangapa. Asha, welcome to Amicus. It has been quite a week. It's good to have you here.

[Asha Rangappa]

Thank you, Dalia. And I have to tell you, I can't go any further in this interview until you tell me the five things that you did last week.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

Does weeping, texting you having a tantrum, worrying about you in D.C. and weeping count as five? I don't know. I want to say the thing everybody's been saying, which is defend the Constitution, respect the separation of powers. Do you want to tell us the five bullet points you did last week?

[Asha Rangappa]

A lot of what you just said, but yeah, defending the Constitution, explaining the legal situation right now, as you are doing, because I think that is really the most important thing right now is that people understand what guardrails we have and what guardrails we don't have. And I think in the context that talking about the military and our security forces, it's critical.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

Asha I thought maybe we could start with the installation of former Secret Service agent longtime podcaster Dan Bongino as second in command at the FBI. According to the New York Times, the FBI Agents association told its members on Sunday that Kash Patel had privately acknowledged that the next deputy director should be a career FBI agent. But then Bongino's appointment was announced an hour later. So even in this maelstrom, Asha of law enforcement horrors, this appointment raises real red flags for me, maybe because of the stuff Bongino has said on his show, like saying that the bureau is lost and broken and irredeemably corrupt. After the FBI searched for and found classified documents at Mar A Lago, he told Fox News, quote, every person involved in this has to be fired immediately. And, quote, there is no fixing this, only rebuilding it. And I wonder, can you help us pick through what is trolling to to see what this all really means? The plan here is to impose, quote, unquote, radical reform at the FBI. And I'm not sure we have begun to understand what that really looks like.

[Asha Rangappa]

I don't think I fully appreciate what that looks like. So the deputy director is typically somebody is a career agent. I think the FBI Agents association letter that went to everyone said somebody with at least 17 years of Bureau experience, because this is somebody who's going to effectively step into the shoes of the director if they need to, and really needs to have a bird's eye understanding of the bureau, which does a lot of different things. It does criminal investigations. It does counterterrorism. It does counterintelligence. You know, it has a intelligence function within the intelligence community. So someone who has enough experience to understand all of these things, who's developed relationships as they've come up. When you come up in the FBI to get into those senior levels, you have to do tours through FBI headquarters and go out to different field offices. So these are people who typically would have extensive networks and contacts in addition to all the different supervisory experience and management experience that they've had. So to have someone come in who has none of that is itself crazy. Then I think we get to also temperament, right? So any career agent, and probably any director who until now has typically worked at senior levels of the Justice Department or has been a judge or both or whatever, will have at some point been through a background check with getting clearances. And I wrote recently on my substack and for Cafe Insider about the criteria that the FBI checks for when they do a background check and when they determine whether somebody is suitable for a position of public trust. The adjudicatory Desk References Lists 3 things that correlate with trustworthiness, reliability, and not presenting a security risk. Number one is a strong sense of social responsibility. Number two is self control, or the ability to exercise responsible and rational control over one's impulses. And number three is the ability to maintain personal or job commitments over time. Now, this leadership, to me, I'm not sure are really meeting those criteria. We're not seeing people who have a lot of self control or calm and deliberate dispassionate evaluation of things. And I think that should really worry us when we are looking at people at that level of power, I guess.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

Under this rubric of temperament and self control. Look, I'm not surprised Kash Patel is a January 6th denialist, so of course his deputy will be too. But Bongino kind of went further, right? He asserted that pipe bombs found near the Capitol on January 6th were an inside job and that the FBI knew who it was and he wants to shut down the FISA court. That's the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court. As I mentioned before, he's talked about firing every single FBI agent involved in the search of Donald Trump's home in Mar a Lago. And I guess what's interesting to me is that while he flies in the face of what I think we all thought were core FBI values. The trick this week, and I want to highlight this, is that he defends himself from all of that he has said before by saying, oh, we all play a role. Like I was just playing the lunatic podcaster when I scoffed that checks and balances are for suckers. And it seems to me like it's just another version of the proud boy Oathkeeper play that you say all this stuff and you do all this lawless stuff, and then you say, oh, I was just kidding.

[Asha Rangappa]

Yeah, we've seen this ploy before with Trump. Right. My colleague and friend Jennifer Mercika, who's a scholar of rhetoric, taught me a word, a rhetorical trick that she says demagogues use. And I think the people in Trump's orbit have learned it. And it's called paralypsis. Paralypsis is, I'm saying, but I'm not really saying. And so it's like saying things, but then creating certain plausible deniability around it so that you can claim that you weren't really saying it. Kash Patel is not really deploying this very well. I mean, because he did actually say it. Now he's now after the fact, he's saying that he's joking. Trump is much better at this out of sort of talking out of both sides of his mouth, but it is a way of avoiding accountability. Now, interestingly, what I have seen come out of the FBI since Kash Patel was confirmed, the first letter that went out to all the agents sounded shockingly normal. It sounded like the kind of letter that a director would send out to agents. Like, I value the work that you do. You all are the warriors that defend the rule of law. I have your backs. So I don't know, for a moment, I was like, okay, maybe we're just turning a corner. Like, maybe, you know, the weightiness of this mantle is, you know, he's understanding this. But then I understand that he literally, on his first day, ordered 1,000 agents to be transferred to other field offices and, you know, 500 non agents to be transferred to Huntsville, Alabama. So that's not a thoughtful, deliberate kind of decision when you look at what headquarters does and what that kind of hollowing out would do to our law enforcement capability. So I really don't know where this is going.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

Was the purpose of sending all those agents way far afield just to get them to quit? Asha?

[Asha Rangappa]

That was my first thought, because these are people who ostensibly have families in the D.C. area. Maybe they have spouses who are working, they have kids in school. And to go, you know, suddenly be ordered. I don't know what the turnaround time is, but if it's like next week, you need to report to Boise, Idaho, or whatever is a huge disruption. And I can imagine that an effect of that will be that a large number of those people quit. I have heard from retired agents that this is also a part of his philosophy, that he believes that agents should be not at headquarters and, you know, in field offices working cases. I don't know exactly what he thinks that they should be doing in field offices, but, you know, he's had this disdain for FBI headquarters for a while. He's talked about turning it into a museum. So I don't know that it's completely surprising that he wanted everybody out of there.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

I want to talk for a minute about Ed Martin. I think this gets batted around for laughs sometimes. He is the acting U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. i guess the plan is to make him the actual U.S. attorney in D.C. issuing statements saying that his office is gonna serve as President Trump's lawyers. You know, the community note under his tweet points out, actually, no, DOJ does not actually act as the president's personal law firm. You know, you can get blinded by the social media stuff, right? The bootlicking of Elon Musk and the threats to go after not just lawyers who he thinks are lawless, but who are unethical, whatever that means. But, I mean, this guy wields actual, real significant power in the District, which, by the way, is not a state. This guy wields tremendous power. And I feel like maybe this week we started to see what that's going to look like.

[Asha Rangappa]

We did. Time is all blending together. But I know that the one event that really stood out to me and that I think wasn't covered as much in the wake of the resignations of Danielle Sassoon and Hagan Scotten and some of these attorneys at Main justice, was the resignation of an attorney from the Criminal division in the D.C. u.S. Attorney's office, Denise Chung, where she was basically asked to send a freeze letter to a bank. And when she looked into it, she said, I don't have the proper predication to open this kind of investigation and pursue this kind of action, which is, you know, a pretty serious action that needs to be based on probable cause. And he basically told her she needed to resign. And what stood out to me in that, because she then wrote a resignation letter where she laid out all of her reasons and what she had done and what she had found was that she had conferred with FBI agents in the Washington field office, that they found that there was not sufficient evidence to essentially open a predicated investigation. And this is a big red flag, because predication is basically the only guardrail on the FBI and the Department of Justice. It's a standard that is set forth by the attorney general that needs to be met before you can open an investigation and then take certain kinds of investigative techniques and measures. And what that signaled to me is these people are not concerned about that. And if they're not concerned about enforcing these guidelines of meeting the thresholds that they need to meet internally before they take the kinds of serious actions that Ed Martin was asking this prosecutor to take, then I think that's a harbinger of what's to come of baseless investigations, perhaps, I guess maybe misrepresenting facts in order to actually execute certain kinds of techniques that could have serious repercussions. Now that was some kind of account related to some initiative that Biden had started. But imagine them doing that to an individual, freezing your bank account. You know, I mean, that's the kind of power that this person has. And what's the only thing right now that is standing in his way or that these prosecutors or these agents are unwilling to go along with it?

[Dahlia Lithwick]

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[Dahlia Lithwick]

Let's return now to my conversation with Asha Rangappa. So next, I think in this chamber of horrors is Mack Warner. He said the FBI helped the CIA steal the 2020 election. Wow. It's like every bingo card is exactly the same. Now, I guess he leads the civil rights division at the Justice Department, where he's keeping the seat warm until Harmeet Dhillon, another election denier, can win Senate confirmation. Again, none of this surpr surprising. The Washington Post reported on February 9 that people who were interviewing for jobs in intelligence and law enforcement were being asked to answer as a yes or no question. Was January 6th an inside job? And was the 2020 presidential election stolen? These questions are being asked, having been definitively answered by the United States justice system in trial after trial, case after case, year after year. The answer to those questions is always no. And yet here we are, weeding out anybody who agrees that the answer is no. Up is down. The January 6th freedom fighters who were imprisoned are now hostages. This is a flipping of everything. January 6th has come to mean at the most foundational institutional level in ways that I think even the insurrectionists themselves could never have dreamed of.

[Asha Rangappa]

The idea that the FBI and the CIA, you know, that it was an inside job, the 2020 election, the problem with this narrative that no one ever explains, if they could rig that election, why didn't they rig it last November? Why didn't they rig it in 2016? Like, it's. It's weird, you know, that suddenly they let, I guess, you know, this hotbed of liberal radicals in the FBI and CIA, you know, they just got tired. They just got super tired. Yeah. Every four years, let's say something, they.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

Just took the year off.

[Asha Rangappa]

Yeah. So the vast majority of these people who are answering this loyalty test in the way that Trump wants them to, they know exactly what they're doing, and, you know, they're selling their souls. And I guess. I guess they're just that ambitious enough to want to do it. You know, I think with the January 6th with the insurrectionists. Yes. I mean, now they've been pardoned, you know, including people who were convicted of seditious conspiracy, you know, who now, I think, feel some impunity to be able to troll others. I mean, this conference that I was at this last weekend, the principal's first conference, Enrique Tarrio showed up at the.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

Hotel, and that's Enrique Tarrio of the Proud boys, sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2023 for seditious conspiracy and other charges related to January 6th. The guy that Donald Trump pardoned.

[Asha Rangappa]

Yes. You know, was harassing the January 6th officers that were there to speak and to be honored, presumably because I think he feels like, what's anybody gonna do to me? My fear, Dalia, is that these people, after some number of FBI agents get fired or quit, will get hired into the FBI. And we are going to see essentially oath keepers and proud boys with a badge and a gun and FBI credentials. That's basically my nightmare fuel right now.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

Wow. I was hoping we'd get to that at minute 47, but here we are. Thank you. Good for you. Beat the rush. I wanna turn to the thing you think about really purposefully and clearly, which is the Pentagon and President Trump opened the weekend, last weekend by firing top military leaders, including Joint Chiefs Chairman General Char Charles Q. Brown and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti, escapes nobody's attention that he's sidelining a black man and a woman under some DEI theory of all unifying firings. But when they dismiss DEI in the military, and I know this is one of Pete Hegseth's sort of cardinal articles of faith, you've made the point in your writing, and I think it's really important that DEI in the military, and one uses that word advisedly at this point, has actually played a really essential role in de Radicalizing the military. You noted in a piece that you wrote last year that about 15% of the people arrested for participating in January 6th were veterans or active duty military. And that when people decry wokeness in the armed forces, what they're attacking actually is an institution that is one of the most. Most diverse organizations, one of the most diverse employers in the country. 41% of its members identify as a minority. So I think your point is, and it's really, really important, you have a military that has been radicalized. We know that. We also have a military that has de. Radicalized by virtue of exactly the thing that's now being undermined.

[Asha Rangappa]

Yeah. I think that for January 6th, a lot of them were veterans. I'm not sure they were active duty or any significant number of them were. But radicalization within the active duty armed forces has been a major concern. And this was something that Biden's national security strategy addressed as a part of their efforts to combat racial violence extremism and their anti government violent extremism. They had kind of two different categories. And so Lloyd Austin initially was going to really move forward and he was roadblocked on this. My impression And I had been saying this throughout the first Trump term, and you saw this with Stephen Miller, really trying to prevent people who helped the military from getting paths to citizenship. And he's also been against, you know, foreign nationals using military service as a pathway to citizenship and things like that. That the diversity of the military is a big problem if you are a wannabe autocrat, because autocrats thrive on us versus them. And us versus them in the United States largely becomes a division along racial lines. You know, in other countries, they can be religious like they are in India, but here, or it's racial lines. And so a very integrated armed forces kind of is what I would call a natural prophylactic against those kinds of divisive measures. Not that they can't actually take effect, but it's harder to, because you are serving alongside these people and you're socialized into a culture where you are bound to your fellow soldiers based on higher principles. Right. Serving your country, the Constitution, you have a mission. The enemy for you is something external. And I think Trump learned his lesson on January 6, that the loyalty to these higher principles is a big problem. So I really think that this is all about dismantling those kind of cultural guardrails, I would call them, within this one institution that is highly resistant to autocratic control, as we saw on January 6th. And as you point out, the firing of these people, the piece that jumped out to me, which you didn't mention, was the firing of the JAG officers. These are the top lawyers in the military. And I think a number of people made the observation, you only fire the top lawyers if what you're planning to do is give illegal orders. And we know that Trump tried to do that in his first administration. He wanted to shoot people, people crossing the border. He wanted the military to shoot them. He wanted to shoot protesters in the knees. And he had generals around him saying, we don't do that, sir. But now you have a war crime apologist as the Secretary of defense. You're removing the lawyers who would say, no, that's an illegal order. And at that point, I think you are opening the door to some really dark things.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

You're making me think about the ways in which, and this is sort of obvious, but the armed forces has always been a kind of harbinger of where we are on integration. Right. In terms of not just the civil rights movement, but I'm thinking about even the carve out for military academies. Right. And the affirmative action decision. So it really is, I think, an article of faith that this has A profoundly important role to play in keeping the armed forces reflective of American values. So I think you're right to point out that the kind of going after that is a very important piece of signaling. And my next question, believe it or not, was about the firing of the jags, because I think I agree with you that that was almost worse and it got almost no attention. Pete Hegseth's message on Fox News on Sunday, just straight up saying that the T. Jags were removed so that they wouldn't be, quote, roadblocks to anything that happens. I wonder if you could just tell us what these judge advocates, General, actually do and why it is so very ominous when they are either being fired or their superiors are. And I would just note here our friend Steve Vladic flagged in his newsletter, unlike other positions, they're actually commanded by statute to be independent from political control.

[Asha Rangappa]

Yeah. So the jags aren't judges, they're lawyers. They are there to be lawyers for the military. If you're, you know, arrested, even violating the Uniform Code of Military justice, the JAG officers will be prosecuting. You'll get somebody defending you, et cetera. So here's an interesting little fun fact. After the Civil War, the oath that's taken by officers in the military was changed. So the enlisted oath oath is that I will obey the orders of my superiors and the Constitution, but they're taking an oath to basically follow orders. The officer oath was changed to say their only duty is to obey the Constitution of the United States. Now, JAG officers are there to assess the legality of something, right? So the top ones, et cetera. So one imagines that, you know, some order comes down, it goes up the chain of command, it reaches this JAG person, and they say, that's an illegal order. That gives guidance to the officers to then convey that order to the enlisted people whose only duty is to obey them. Not only they also have to obey the Constitution, but who are guided by their superiors knowing whether something is a legal order. And, you know, and so you can't put the onus on these people at the very bottom. I mean, there will be obviously things that are so obviously illegal. I mean, we look think about like My Lai massacre and things like that. But there could be things that, you know, and somebody that's on the ground is not going to know. They're really relying ultimately on this lawyer at the top to be independent, as you noted, Dalia, to understand the law, to understand international law, to be able to make an assessment on whether this is something that is within the bounds. So when you take out that guardrail, you're creating confusion among the officer ranks, and then you're basically, you know, corrupting the kind of orders that come down to the people who are relying on the people above them to be able to make these kinds of judgments largely.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

And we've been talking about sort of theoretical orders, but I just. I think it's really important to note for listeners. We know the military is already playing a larger role along the U.S. mexico border. We know that there's talk of using military bases. Right. To detain non citizens who are facing removal. There's the possibility that keeps being floated of using the Insurrection act to call out troops for domestic law enforcement. We're hearing about using the Alien Enemies Act. These are not, not theoretical ideas.

[Asha Rangappa]

They're not. And I think we need to step back also and look at what's happening on the world stage. We now have the back of a dictator who violated international law and who has engaged in war crimes. So our official foreign policy is sort of pro war crimes right now. Okay. And we have a war crime apologist as Secretary of Defense. We've taken out the people who offer the legal judgment. I assume they're going to be repl. I. I don't know. I can't imagine that if, even if they replace them with other Jags, maybe if they find Jags who are willing to do this loyalty test or something. But, I mean, Dalia, you know, lawyers are often much more rigid about this kind of stuff, the Department of Justice notwithstanding. But, you know, I don't know. I don't know that. To me, this does seem like it's all of a piece. And they are also exporting some of the military framework into the migrant setting.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

Right.

[Asha Rangappa]

So they want to declare the drug cartels in Mexico as foreign terrorist organizations. What does that allow them to do? It allows us to treat the illegal migration as a terrorist threat, which then triggers all kinds of standby authorities, potentially also military authorities for the president, certainly more expansive national security authorities under Article 2 that the President can utilize. So. So we need to look at all of these things together as kind of one big picture.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

Asha, there was a really interesting piece in the Atlantic this week that makes the point that those of us who are sitting around saying, the judges will save us, the judges will save us don't understand how authoritarianism is fought. And there are things that work in other authoritarian regimes, principle among them, massive popular movements and, you know, a legislature that kind of pulls it together and acts as a check. But the third thing is the military. And you wrote, I think, a really prescient piece in 2023 about ways in which the military was a bulwark against Trump's most sort of autocratic aspirations in 2020 and sort of how it could continue to be that. And you laid out in that piece the three key characteristics of the modern US Military that prevented kind of the dreams of autocracy for coming true. Diversity, professionalization, loyalty to the Constitution. How are those three bulwarks holding up?

[Asha Rangappa]

I think they're holding up still very well because I mean, we've seen these kind of very high level firings and stuff. But the military is a huge organization and it has a strong ingrained culture. I mean, I grew up, my dad was in the military. He was an army doctor down in Virginia and I grew up around a lot of military people. I am hopeful that it will be very, very hard to subvert easily. I'm not saying that our military can never be subverted, but it is going to require some people really taking it upon themselves to look at it, be able to stand up and follow their oaths to the Constitution, to not follow illegal orders, to be able to convey that to the people under them. I'm hopeful that that's gonna happen. I mean, at the end of the day, Pete Hegseth, I mean he's hanging out in an office in the Pentagon. He's not your typical secretary of Defense, I'll just put it that way. I wouldn't say he's it's going to be super effective, you know what I mean? So I think that combined with the culture and the size of the military is going to make it really hard for these things to trickle down quickly in the way that say Elon Musk has done with some of these other kinds of things.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

We are going to take a short break.

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[Dahlia Lithwick]

And we are back with Asha Rangappa. Okay, because your blood pressure and mine just dropped a couple points, I thought we'd just jack it up for the home stretch. Asha and I want to move from this big national security frame to focus in on like a very local story, but I think is actually really telling because it ties in so many of the themes that have come through in this conversation about unaccountability and lawbreaking and acting under color of law. And I wonder if we could talk for a minute about what happened in the city of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Members of some unidentified security force tackled and dragged Dr. Teresa Boropol. She's expressing First Amendment protected ideas at a legislative town hall meeting. And this all happens, by the way, these guys who we don't know who they belong to under the eye of the county sheriff who actually filmed the whole thing. And then there was this amazing well, they don't actually answer to anyone. Kind of like doge structural answer. Like I don't know who they are. And it turns out they were with Lear Asset Management refused to identify themselves while they were being filmed. And I guess I really look at this as and I think about it a little bit through the frame of, you know, in Charlottesville, I was there and the white supremacists and the Nazis marched. You literally couldn't tell with all the militia members who was who. You couldn't tell who was law enforcement, couldn't tell what was going on. You'd have to get right up close to see who were in fact actual security forces and that this happened. And again, it gets kind of shrugged off as. Like, it was just private security agents whose uniforms were not marked. Is that where this all goes?

[Asha Rangappa]

I think what we're seeing, and we saw this, as you mentioned, during George Floyd protests, these, you know, cosplaying military people, we see it with Elon Musk. We see it in this incident that you just mentioned. This is all about not having accountability. Two fundamental principles of democracy, transparency and accountability. You know, who's in charge, they are accountable for what they do. And by obscuring accountability, by kind of not being clear about who is actually wielding the force of the state, it. It disorients the citizenry because you're not sure how you're supposed to respond. Right. I mean, even these federal workers, they get this email from Doge, like, are they legally required to respond to it? Are they not? I mean, it's all very, like, you know, cloudy and murky. And what it reminds me of when you were telling me about this incident, again, to kind of zoom back. I teach a class on hybrid warfare. Hybrid warfare is about really operating outside of the rules in a way that you then end up with an asymmetrical advantage over your adversary, either because it buys you time or, you know, they don't have the same kind of tools to respond to you. And one example here is Putin's invasion of Crimea with the little green men. These were unidentified soldiers. They were not wearing insignia. This is, you know, in violation of international law. So they go in there and, you know, people are like, wait, what is happening? And by the time anyone can catch up to what's happening, he's already occupied the territory. And so we need to be very vigilant about these things. I mean, you know, this thing in, like, Idaho might seem unrelated, but these are all techniques to avoid accountability and essentially remove the power of people to be able to assert their rights. Right. Because what could this woman do if she didn't know exactly who this was and what authority does he have? Like, there's nothing that's clearly being transmitted. And then there's a chilling effect as other people are watching this. So it's a control mechanism. It avoids accountability, lacks transparency. And we're seeing it across a number of different contexts.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

Yeah, it was interesting. I. I read an interview with her where she said, as she was being, you know, bound up with zip ties, I didn't know if I was being arrested or kidnapped. And to me, that's exactly the thing. You know, it's what your answer to the last question really raises is, you don't know who these people belong to. And as a consequence, I think the idea that you could be either arrested or kidnapped and you might not know seems like it's sort of undermines foundational notions of how we can be safe in public spaces. I want to end by tying together these. We've got sort of data chart here with a lot of pieces that we've been talking about, and I'd love if you can help us kind of tie all these strands together. And I think I want to circle back to where we started, which is what happens when the defenders of law become the enemies of the law. Are we there yet? What will the markers be that we've fully kind of lost our way in terms of who is enforcing the law and how? And I guess I would love to know what we can do about it.

[Asha Rangappa]

Oh, my gosh. So I guess what I would say is one thing that we need to move away from is the question of, is this legal, or are we in a constitutional crisis? These are bad frames for us to look at because there is a huge Runway of things that are legal but are still really, really bad. And so we should be paying attention. Right? So pardoning all the January 6th defendants if Kash Patel wants to hire them all as FBI agents, you know, allying with Putin. I mean, all of these are legal. They're constitutional. There's nothing actually that stops it. You know, I think that we can take a lesson from what I talked about with the culture of the military, which I think really represents the best of what the fabric of American society can be, which is to be able to unite around transcendent civic virtues and democratic principles. I'm definitely not the expert on countering authoritarian regimes. I defer to our friends and colleagues like Ruth Benguia. But one of the things that does seem to be a good strategy is coalition building across differences. You know, in Germany, we can see that, you know, the ability to create coalitions is going to be able to potentially mar, you know, push to the side a far right movement in the government. So I think that that is going to be the key. That is what they did in Chile to remove a dictator. And I always think of the Chilean example because I'm like, if these people could get rid of that dictator after 17 years, then we can definitely stop this tide. We are still very early, and we still have a lot of power. And I think about the Percy Bysshe Shelley poem, the Mask of Anarchy, and the last two lines is, we are many, they are few. And I think we need to remember that.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

And maybe the other point you made right at the beginning, which is some of this just requires explanation because it's hard, I think, to think of it in sort of any kind of unified schema when it's all coming at you out of the fire hose. Right?

[Asha Rangappa]

Yes.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

Asha, thank you very, very much. I feel maybe slightly more panicky, but definitely better informed. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Asha Rangappa is assistant dean and a senior lecturer at Yale University's Jackson School of Global affairs and a former associate associate dean at Yale Law School. Before joining the Academy, Asha served as a special agent in the New York division of the FBI, specializing in counterintelligence investigations. She is currently a legal contributor for ABC News, is on the board of Editors of Just Security, and is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. Her substack is amazing. It's the Freedom Academy with Asha Rangapa, and you should check it out. And that is all for this episode of Amicus. Thank you so much for listening in. Thank you so much for your letters and your questions and your comments. You are seriously straight into the veins helping us put the show together every week. You can always keep in [e-mail] or you can find [e-mail] AMICUSpodcast don't miss our bonus episode of Amicus Plus. I'm joined there by Jay Willis, editor in chief of Balls and Strikes. And we're going to be talking about the lawyers and the law firms and even the law professors who are digging down and finding real courage and standing up against the Trump regime. And we're also going to figure out who isn't doing that and why. You can subscribe to Slate plus directly from the Amicus show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or you can visit visit slate.comamicusplus to get access wherever you listen. That episode is available for you to listen to right now, and we'll see you there. Sarah Burningham is Amicus senior producer. Our producer is Patrick Fort. Hilary Frey is Slate's editor in chief. Susan Matthews is executive editor, and Ben Richmond is our senior director of operations. We'll be back with another episode of Amicus next week.

[Asha Rangappa]

SA.

[Leon Nayfak]

I'm Leon Nayfak and I'm the host of Slow Burn Watergate. Before I started working on this show, everything I knew about Watergate came from the movie all the President's Men. Do you remember how it ends? Woodward and Bernstein are sitting at their typewriters, clacking away, and then there's this rapid montage of newspaper stories about campaign aides and White House officials getting convicted of crimes, about audio tapes coming out that proved Nixon's involvement in the COVID The last story we see is Nixon resigns. It takes a little over a minute in the movie. In real life, it took about two years.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

Five men were arrested early Saturday while trying to install eavesdropping equipment. It's known as the Watergate Incident.

[Leon Nayfak]

What was it like to experience those two years in real time? What were people thinking and feeling as the break in at Democratic Party headquarters went from a weird little caper to a constitutional crisis that brought down the President? The downfall of Richard Nixon was stranger, wilder, and more exciting than you can imagine. Over the course of eight episodes, this show is going to capture what it was like to live through the greatest political scandal of the 20th century. With today's headlines once again full of corruption, collusion and dirty tricks, it's time for another look at the gate that started it all. Subscribe to Slow Burn Now. Wherever you get your podcasts.