What You Overlook When You Like a POTUS

The current cast of Hamilton may be worried about President-elect Trump and Vice-president elect Pence, but where were they when they had a chance to instruct President Obama? Don’t his policies register on the inclusive and tolerant meter?

The near-unrestrained executive power claimed by the Obama administration, and issues left unresolved from the Bush administration, will be handed to the president-elect. Here’s what that means.

Torture

Obama did not prosecute or discipline anyone for torturing people on behalf of the people of the United States.

He did not hold any truth commissions, and ensured almost all of the significant government documents on the torture program remain classified. He did not prosecute the Central Intelligence Agency official who willfully destroyed video tapes of the torture scenes. The president has not specifically outlawed secret prisons and renditions, just suspended their use. . . .

Assassinations

Obama legalized, formalized, and normalized drone assassinations on a global scale, including the killing of American citizens without due process in direct violation of the Fifth Amendment, on the president’s order alone.

The only real restraint he imposed was self-restraint. But when you leave a door open, you never know who will walk in. . . .

Guantanamo

Obama never closed the extra-legal prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as he promised.

He could have, simply by depopulating it regardless of what Congress might have said. In 2014, when Obama needed five Taliban from Gitmo to help free United States Army soldier Bowe Bergdahl from captivity in Afghanistan, Obama simply ordered those Taliban freed. He could do the same with anyone else there. He could have applied the full pressure of the United States on various countries to accept more freed prisoners. He could have ordered the show trials ongoing at Guantanamo to conclude on an expedited basis.

Obama instead normalized indefinite detention as a policy of the United States, and alongside that (as with torture and drone assassinations), the use of often secret and convoluted legal opinions to justify such executive powers. . . .

Espionage Act

Obama prosecuted more federal whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all previous United States presidents combined.

He sent to jail people who exposed torture and people who allegedly leaked information to journalists showing American complicity in dangerous acts abroad. He had Chelsea Manning prosecuted for exposing war crimes in Iraq. He used the Espionage Act to destroy the lives of others who under any definition except his own would be considered political heroes.

Obama and his Justice Department created the playbook for how to use the previously obscure 1917 Espionage Act to do these things. . . .

Freedom of Information Act

The Obama administration set a record (77 percent) for redacting government files or denying access to them in fiscal year 2014 under the Freedom of Information Act.

More than any previous administration, Obama’s took longer to turn over files, said more often it could not locate documents, and refused a record number of times to turn over time-sensitive files quickly, requiring years-long legal actions to be brought to force the government’s hand. In the case of Hillary Clinton, files considered “unclassified” in one context were redacted in whole in another.

Though the backlog of unanswered requests grew by 55 percent, the administration cut the number of full-time Freedom of Information Act employees by 7.5 percent. Despite the critical nature of the documents to the election, the State Department was allowed to do its Freedom of Information Act screening of the Clinton emails largely with an ad hoc crew of retirees. The impact on journalists, and the right of the people to know, was immeasurable. . . .

National Security Agency

Obama never realistically reigned in the National Security Agency after the Bush-era Patriot Act allowed them to turn surveillance tools on the homeland. The president, following his predecessor, kept this spying largely secret until whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed it.

Absent a few cosmetic changes, the National Security Agency continues to gather the full spectrum of Americans’ communications in violation of the Fourth Amendment, abetted by the secret Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Court and vaguely Constitutional tools such as National Security Letters and parallel reconstruction. Information lives forever, and the National Security Agency is building bigger data warehouses to keep storing it. President Trump will have that information at his disposal.

Isn’t America great?

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