David Rivkin, Constitutional Attorney and Media Commentator

Mark Janus Was With Hillary, Whether or Not He Wanted to Be

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Andrew M. Grossman

Feb. 22, 2018, in the Wall Street Journal

Flash back to the Las Vegas Convention Center, July 19, 2016. The floor overflows with people chanting, “We’re with her!” A speaker proclaims, to cheers and applause, that we “will stand with her in every corner of this nation.” Then Hillary Clinton takes the stage as the crowd rises in a standing ovation. She thanks them for supporting her campaign and rallies them to knock on doors and get out the vote.

The event wasn’t organized by the campaign. It was the 2016 convention of the nation’s largest union representing public-sector workers, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The state of Illinois forced Mark Janus —an Illinois employee who refused to join the union—to pay for a portion that pro-Hillary rally.

Across the U.S., more than 500,000 state and local workers have objected to funding union advocacy but are nonetheless required by law to pay “fair share” fees to labor unions they have refused to join. The Supreme Court upheld the practice in a 1977 case, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, reasoning that otherwise workers could “free ride” on the union’s collective bargaining. Prohibiting unions from charging nonmembers directly for political speech, it believed, would protect their First Amendment rights.

On Monday the justices will hear oral arguments in a challenge to that 1977 decision brought by Mr. Janus. They should heed Justice Felix Frankfurter’s observation, in an earlier case on mandatory union fees, that it is “rather naive” to assume “that economic and political concerns are separable.” As Mr. Janus argues, bargaining over wages, pensions and benefits in the public sector involves issues of intense public concern and thus core First Amendment-protected speech. A state law that forces public employees to fund that speech violates their rights, no less than compelling them to speak. ( Janus v. Afscme doesn’t consider these questions for unions in the private sector.) Read more »

February 23, 2018
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The Judicial ‘Resistance’ Is Futile

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey

The U.S. Supreme Court does not act in haste, so the justices raised some eyebrows last month when they took only two weeks to agree to hear the government’s appeal of an immigration case. Normally it would have taken several months, and a ruling might not have come until 2019. Instead the court is expected to issue a decision in Trump v. Hawaii by the end of the current term, in June.

Why the rush? Because lower-court judges have been playing an extraordinary cat-and-mouse game with the Supreme Court over President Trump’s three executive orders limiting immigration from several terror-prone countries. Over the past year, numerous trial and appellate courts have enjoined those orders, only to have the high court stay their decisions.

The lower-court judges have defied precedent by holding that the president has neither constitutional nor statutory authority to issue these orders. They have improperly questioned Mr. Trump’s motives, even analyzing his campaign statements for evidence of bad intent. And they have responded to each reversal from the high court by spinning new theories to strike down the orders. The judges appear to have joined the “resistance,” and it wouldn’t be surprising if the justices concluded enough is enough.

The case the court will now review is the handiwork of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which engaged in an analysis that ignored key precedents and misapplied accepted canons of statutory interpretation. Read more »

February 7, 2018
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The Zero That Makes Mulvaney a Hero

By Democrats’ design, the CFPB director has vast power. He can use it to shrink the bureau.

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Andrew M. Grossman

Richard Cordray asked Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen for $217 million in October—his last such request as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Last week Mr. Cordray’s acting successor, Mick Mulvaney, made his first quarterly funding request: “$0.” What a difference a few months make.

Established in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis according to now-Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s vision, the CFPB ran wild under Mr. Cordray’s leadership—issuing reams of punishing regulations and conducting endless fishing expeditions, sometimes into industries Congress had specifically excluded from its jurisdiction.

This was possible because the bureau was designed to be insulated from accountability. It is led by a single director, whom the president cannot fire except for cause, and funded by the Fed, so that it need not justify its actions and funding needs to Congress.

Whether this arrangement is constitutional is an open question, currently pending in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. But for now, as that court’s Judge Brett Kavanaugh has observed, it renders the CFPB director “the single most powerful official in the entire United States Government” (with the possible exception of the president). Read more »

January 23, 2018
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Now is the time to hit the Iranian regime with lower oil prices

For the sake of the Iranian people and global stability, we need to lead the effort in suppressing oil prices beyond what Tehran can bear.

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Nawaf E. Obaid, January 7 2018 in USA Today

Mass protests are gripping Iran as its people express their discontent with crippling poverty, governmental corruption, and Tehran’s highly expensive sponsorship of terrorist proxies around the Middle East. The protests are geographically widespread, rural and urban, and challenge the very sinews of Iran’s mullahcracy. The United States can and should support Iranian freedom by pressuring the regime at its most vulnerable point, oil revenues. This strategy should have long- and short-term components, both designed to decrease global oil prices.

Iran’s dire economic situation is at the heart of this discontent. As President Rouhani acknowledged, the government cannot meet payroll and is seeking to increase revenue and decrease expenditures. Since 80% of Iran’s budget comes from petroleum exports, the quickest and surest way to bring about regime change in Tehran is a broad campaign to reduce current global oil prices.

In order for Tehran to balance its budget, oil prices need to be around $130 per barrel, over twice what they are today. Several factors — including government-promised subsidies to wheat farmers and debt payment obligations that are headed toward default — are pushing Iran to the financial breaking point. Add to this the rising costs of Tehran’s military establishment, and the mullahs’ expanding commitment to fomenting chaos around the Arab world, and you have a recipe for financial meltdown. The doomsday scenario could only be avoided by a major rise in oil prices that would allow Iran, with 10% of proven global reserves, to rescue itself.

For the sake of the Iranian people and global stability, this cannot be allowed to happen. Washington should lead the effort. Tehran is a major American foe and a successful anti-mullahcracy effort would both improve Middle East security and enhance US global credibility.

There are four ways to suppress further the current low global oil prices. First, the ad hoc understanding between Saudi Arabia and Russia, the world’s first and second largest oil exporters respectively, to curtail oil output would need to be suspended. This would enable the Saudis, who have the highest spare capacity of any nation, to increase exports, driving down prices. Moscow would hate losing its key Middle Eastern ally and wouldn’t countenance such a suspension, but it cannot stop the Saudis, for whom Iran is also a major adversary.

Second, the United States should continue with its long-term efforts to increase both the U.S. oil output — which it has already done by just announcing a major expansion of offshore oil drilling — and increasing U.S. capacity to export oil and petroleum products by building additional pipelines and terminal facilities. While these efforts would exert some downward pressure on prices, they would need to be supplemented by the short-term measures, that are capable of having an immediate pricing impact. The key such measure would be an agreement between the United States and a Saudi-led coalition (along with UAE and Kuwait) to increase output, bringing the price down by at least $10 per barrel. Further, because Tehran suffers from a lack of indigenous capital and technology to increase sustained production capacity and hence oil exports, this same coalition should convince the few oil companies willing to invest in Iran’s upstream industry to put their efforts on hold.

Finally, because Tehran lacks access to foreign financial markets and American banks view investing in Iran as too risky, its only hope is in European, and to a much lesser extent Asian, banks. The Trump administration should send a strong message to European and Asian banks that their access to U.S. capital markets will be endangered, if they float credits to Tehran in any form.

One might ask why Saudi Arabia, a nation that also depends heavily on oil revenues, would support a lower price. The answer is simple cost-benefit analysis. Blocking Iran’s drive for regional hegemony is the kingdom’s highest foreign policy priority. The Saudis are spending tens of billions of dollars attempting to stabilize nations such as Lebanon, Bahrain and Palestine and fighting wars in Yemen and Syria against Iranian destabilization efforts. Not only are the Saudis eager to shrink these expenditures, but with about $500 billion in foreign reserves and one of the cheapest oil extraction costs in the world, they can withstand lower petroleum prices for years if necessary. In short, the regime change that low oil prices would bring in Iran represents a vital foreign policy boon and overall financial savings over the mid to long-term for the kingdom.

Tehran simply cannot survive a sustained $50 per barrel price. All those wishing to bring an end to the decades of widespread terror caused by this so-called Islamic Republic, and support the Iranian people in their own demands for change, should commit to the above-mentioned measures. Only the oil weapon can end this repressive regime.

David B. Rivkin Jr. served in the Departments of Justice and Energy and the White House Counsel’s Office during the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations.  Nawaf E. Obaid, a visiting fellow for intelligence & defence projects at Harvard’s Belfer Center, is a former advisor to the Saudi government.

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/01/07/wielding-oil-weapon-against-iran-best-way-end-its-oppressive-regime-david-rivkin-nawaf-obaid-column/1005225001/

January 8, 2018
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Can a President Obstruct Justice?

Yes, but not by doing any of the things we know Trump to have done.

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey

Dec. 10, 2017, in the Wall Street Journal

Speculation about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has turned toward obstruction of justice—specifically, whether President Trump can be criminally prosecuted for firing James Comey as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or for earlier asking Mr. Comey to go easy on onetime national security adviser Mike Flynn. The answer is no. The Constitution forbids Congress to criminalize such conduct by a president, and applying existing statutes in such a manner would violate the separation of powers.

The Constitution creates three coequal branches of government, and no branch may exercise its authority in a manner that would negate or fundamentally undercut the power of another. The power to appoint and remove high-level executive-branch officers, such as the FBI director, is a core aspect of the president’s executive authority. It is the principal means by which a president disciplines the exercise of the executive power the Constitution vests in him.

The same is true of Mr. Trump’s request, as purported by Mr. Comey: “I hope you can see your way clear . . . to letting Flynn go.” The FBI director wields core presidential powers when conducting an investigation, and the president is entirely within his rights to inquire about, and to direct, such investigations. The director is free to ignore the president’s inquiries or directions and risk dismissal, or to resign if he believes the president is wrong. Such officials serve at the president’s pleasure and have no right to be free of such dilemmas.

A law criminalizing the president’s removal of an officer for a nefarious motive, or the application of a general law in that way, would be unconstitutional even if the president’s action interferes with a criminal investigation. Such a constraint would subject every exercise of presidential discretion to congressional sanction and judicial review. That would vitiate the executive branch’s coequal status and, when combined with Congress’s impeachment power, establish legislative supremacy—a result the Framers particularly feared.

Mr. Trump’s critics claim that subjecting the president’s actions to scrutiny as potential obstructions of justice is simply a matter of asking judges to do what they do every day in other contexts—determine the purpose or intent behind an action. That is also wrong. The president is not only an individual, but head of the executive branch. Separating his motives between public interests and personal ones—partisan, financial or otherwise—would require the courts to delve into matters that are inherently political. Under Supreme Court precedent stretching back to Marbury v. Madison (1803), the judiciary has no power to do so. And lawmakers enjoy an analogous immunity under the Speech and Debate Clause.

The president’s independence from the other branches does not merely support “energy” in the chief executive, as the Framers intended. It also ensures that he, and he alone, is politically accountable for his subordinates’ conduct. If officials as critical to the executive branch’s core functions as the FBI director could determine whom and how to investigate free from presidential supervision, they would wield the most awesome powers of government with no political accountability. History has demonstrated that even when subject to presidential authority, the FBI director can become a power unto himself—as J. Edgar Hoover was for decades, severely damaging civil liberties.

There are limits to presidential power. The Constitution requires the Senate’s consent for appointment of the highest-level executive-branch officers—a critical check on presidential power. The Supreme Court has upheld statutory limits—although never involving criminal sanction—on the removal of certain kinds of officials. But the decision to fire principal executive-branch officers like the FBI director remains within the president’s discretion. A sitting president can also be subjected to civil lawsuits—but only in a carefully circumscribed fashion, to avoid impeding his ability to discharge the powers of his office.

The ultimate check on presidential power is impeachment. Even though Mr. Trump cannot have violated criminal law in dismissing Mr. Comey, if a majority of representatives believe he acted improperly or corruptly, they are free to impeach him. If two-thirds of senators agree, they can remove him from office. Congress would then be politically accountable for its action. Such is the genius of our Constitution’s checks and balances.

None of this is to suggest the president has absolute immunity from criminal obstruction-of-justice laws. He simply cannot be prosecuted for an otherwise lawful exercise of his constitutional powers. The cases of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton —the latter impeached, and the former nearly so, for obstruction of justice—have contributed to today’s confusion. These were not criminal charges but articulations of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the constitutional standard for impeachment.

And in neither case was the accusation based on the president’s exercise of his lawful constitutional powers. If a president authorizes the bribery of a witness to suppress truthful testimony, as Nixon was accused of doing, he can be said to have obstructed justice. Likewise if a president asks a potential witness to commit perjury in a judicial action having nothing to do with the exercise of his office, as Mr. Clinton was accused of doing.

Although neither man could have been prosecuted while in office without his consent, either could have been after leaving office. That’s why President Ford pardoned Nixon—to avoid the spectacle and poisonous political atmosphere of a criminal trial. In Mr. Trump’s case, by contrast, the president exercised the power to fire an executive-branch official whom he may dismiss for any reason, good or bad, or for no reason at all. To construe that as a crime would unravel America’s entire constitutional structure.

Messrs. Rivkin and Casey practice appellate and constitutional law in Washington. They served in the White House Counsel’s office and Justice Department in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-a-president-obstruct-justice-1512938781

December 11, 2017
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Mulvaney Can Undo Cordray’s Legacy

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Andrew M. Grossman

When Richard Cordray attempted to install his chief of staff as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, his evident aim was to buy enough time to cement his legacy—particularly a just-finalized rule that the agency expects will wipe out half or more of the short-term lending industry. On Tuesday a federal judge thwarted Mr. Cordray, holding that President Trump acted within his authority by appointing Mick Mulvaney to moonlight as acting CFPB director while continuing to lead the Office of Management and Budget.

On his first day at the bureau, Mr. Mulvaney put a freeze on new rules and guidance. But that doesn’t solve the problem of the payday-lender rule. Mr. Mulvaney acknowledged that he cannot simply recall rules that have already gone out the door. Repealing a final rule typically requires restarting the rule-making process, which can take years to complete.

But Mr. Mulvaney can stop the payday-lender rule by putting on his OMB hat and invoking the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980. That law is generally thought of as—actually, strike that. Nobody ever thinks about the Paperwork Reduction Act. It has about as much currency in Washington as the Filled Cheese Act of 1896.

The PRA, which was purportedly strengthened in 1995, was an effort to address a real problem. Federal agencies are eager to impose paperwork burdens on citizens and businesses. It costs an agency almost nothing to impose a new record-keeping requirement or reporting mandate. The expense falls on those required to carry it out.

The obvious solution was to put agencies on a paperwork budget and force them to internalize the costs they foist on the public. To ensure that agencies don’t evade that responsibility, the PRA established robust centralized oversight in the Office of Management and Budget, which is part of the White House. Every “information collection request” issued or imposed by a federal agency must be approved by OMB. That includes government forms as well as requirements that private parties collect information. If OMB disapproves a request, the agency cannot enforce it.

In practice, however, the PRA doesn’t have much effect. Disapprovals from OMB are exceedingly rare. In part, that’s because most agencies are subject to presidential control, rendering the act superfluous—if the White House opposes a regulatory proposal, it can simply instruct the agency to drop or amend it. By the time PRA review rolls around, the White House has already had its say.

Then there are the independent agencies insulated from presidential control, such as the Federal Communications Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission and most other financial regulators. The PRA empowers them to overrule a disapproval by majority vote. The CFPB was designed to be an independent agency, but unlike the others it has a single director. The PRA limits the ability to overrule to “an independent regulatory agency which is administered by two or more members.” So OMB can disapprove any action by the bureau that imposes unnecessary or excessive paperwork burdens, without fear of being overruled.

Mr. Mulvaney should exercise that power. Every single provision of the short-term lending rule is structured around information collection requests subject to the PRA. The rule’s central requirement is that lenders determine a borrower’s ability to repay by demanding financial information from the borrower, verifying it, and then recording the result of various calculations. Each step is its own paperwork burden.

Whether or not the agency can ultimately justify its regulatory approach—and we have our doubts—it has to do its homework under the PRA. That includes accurately assessing costs, considering the need for and utility of each individual paperwork requirement, balancing the costs and benefits, and minimizing collection burdens. The bureau’s final rule differs substantially from its initial proposal, but the agency made little attempt to account for changes in paperwork burden, as the PRA requires it to do. Nor did it engage with the detailed criticisms of its analysis of the proposal’s costs. The three-page analysis published with the final rule can only be described as Mr. Cordray—perhaps unaware of the bureau’s unique status under the PRA—thumbing his nose at OMB and the White House.

That is reason enough to disapprove the rule and send the CFPB back to the drawing board. It would also signal that the Trump administration actually intends to enforce the PRA—to the point that it will halt a major regulation to ensure compliance. That should prompt other agencies to pay attention to paperwork burdens.

Messrs. Rivkin and Grossman practice appellate and constitutional law in Washington. Mr. Rivkin served at the Justice Department and the White House Counsel’s Office. Mr. Grossman is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/mulvaney-can-unravel-cordrays-legacy-1512086936

December 1, 2017
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