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Is Our President a National Security Threat?
Yale University Press ^ | June 17, 2024 | Harold Hongju Koh

Posted on 05/30/2025 11:30:44 PM PDT by ransomnote

The following is an excerpt of the book description written for The National Security Constitution in the 21st Century which Professor Harold Hongju Koh published on June 25, 2024.

If re-elected, could President Trump, by a single tweet, withdraw America from the United Nations, NATO, and every treaty and international organization to which the U.S. belongs? Or if re-elected, could President Biden gradually take us to war throughout the Mideast—Gaza, Yemen, Iran, the Red Sea—by supplying weapons and ordering drone strikes, cybercommands and Special Forces without congressional approval?

SNIP

This increasing imbalance of foreign affairs power has intensified across recent administrations of both parties. Some presidents like Trump and George W. Bush proactively grabbed unilateral power, while others (Clinton, Obama, Biden) reactively asserted unilateral authority when they could not win congressional support. This shift towards extreme imbalance spiked sharply during Donald Trump’s tumultuous presidency. Trump ordered a discriminatory “Muslim Ban,” unilateral exits from treaties and agreements, defied Congress’ power of the purse by building a border wall over its objection, lethally targeted an Iranian general on Iraqi soil, and politicized the Justice Department to punish political “enemies.” His two impeachments illustrated how far he had diverted foreign policy to partisan political ends. The Mueller Report documented how he welcomed Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and strongarmed Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy to get dirt on his 2020 political rival. Even after Trump was defeated at the polls, he encouraged mob violence to overturn the 2020 election results.

Through it all, Trump frustrated congressional oversight by asserting executive privilege and immunity and fighting subpoenas endlessly through the courts. He obstructed investigations, covered up offenses and attacked investigators and the media. And when his administration’s abuses triggered criminal investigations for violating national security laws, Trump pardoned the suspects or granted them clemency, even before trial. Even after leaving office, he endangered national security by continuing to hoard highly classified information at his private home.

Trump showed no remorse, instead claiming that all of his actions were authorized, justified by, and immunized from inter-branch interference by his plenary constitutional authorities. Under his extreme constitutional theory, any restraints coming from within the executive branch could be ignored under a theory of “unitary executive,” while any restraints coming from outside the executive could be treated as unconstitutional intrusions upon the President’s plenary national security powers. And candid interviews Trump has given during the 2024 presidential campaign vividly expose his intent to launch an even more monolithic imperial presidency on Day One that would nullify the rule of law for his second administration.

This constitutional challenge will not evaporate even if Joe Biden is re-elected. In the 21st century, new unprecedented threats—Ukraine, the Mideast, climate change, pandemics, cyberwarfare, and artificial intelligencehave provided even greater institutional incentives for Presidents both weak and strong to monopolize the foreign policy response; for Congress to acquiesce; and for courts to defer or rubber stamp, intensifying the interactive institutional dysfunction and disrupting the constitutional norm that national security policymaking should be a power shared.

Historically, Americans have asked the President to protect us from national security threats. But what should we now do if and when the President himself becomes a national security threat?

MORE AT THE LINK: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/2024/06/17/is-our-president-a-national-security-threat/ 



TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: 00000001bsgarbage; 2004; 2007; 2016; 202405; 202406; arrestharoldkoh; communist; defundyale; demagogicparty; desertstorm; dnctalkingpoint; dnctalkingpoints; executivebranch; foreignpolicy; fsln; haroldhongjukoh; haroldkoh; hongjukoh; icc; incitingassassins; insurrectionist; internationalist; internationallaw; iraq; ivyleague; marxistsubversive; mediawingofthednc; nakasec; nicaragua; obama; partisanmediashill; partisanmediashills; poisonivyleague; presidentialpower; reconstitution; saddamhussein; sandinistas; seditionist; taco; tds; threat2deepstate; transnationalism; usaid; usconstitution; yale; yalesedition
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To: SaveFerris

Looks more like a well fed Maoist to me!


21 posted on 05/31/2025 4:17:45 AM PDT by Gay State Conservative (Import The Third World,Become The Third World)
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To: ransomnote

“Historically, Americans have asked the President to protect us from national security threats. But what should we now do if and when the President himself becomes a national security threat?”

This rotten Korean son of a bit@h. This is nothing but a dog whistle for assassins. This is literally the kind of crap rhetoric that went around about JFK the year before his murder. I hope people are keeping a list of the ones who stoked the fire if god forbid, someone succeeds.


22 posted on 05/31/2025 4:22:32 AM PDT by DesertRhino (2016 Star Wars, 2020 The Empire Strikes Back, 2025... RETURN OF THE JEDI….)
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To: ransomnote

This guy is arguing that the president exercising his normal power interferes with something he calls the “national security constitution”.

“The National Security Constitution in the 21st Century argues that since the beginning of the Republic, a “National Security Constitution” has evolved within our constitutional law. That body of law promotes shared powers and balanced institutional participation in foreign policymaking. Today it is under attack from a competing claim of executive unilateralism generated by recurrent patterns of presidential activism,”


23 posted on 05/31/2025 4:28:30 AM PDT by DesertRhino (2016 Star Wars, 2020 The Empire Strikes Back, 2025... RETURN OF THE JEDI….)
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To: ransomnote

Okay, so how about a war on all federally funded private universities in the Northeast? Harvard is a good start, but the rest need to come under hellfire as well.


24 posted on 05/31/2025 4:29:29 AM PDT by AndyJackson
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To: ransomnote

Harold Hongju Koh is Sterling Professor of International Law at Yale Law School. He returned to Yale Law School in January 2013 after serving for nearly four years as the 22nd Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State. https://law.yale.edu/harold-hongju-koh

Worked for the dumbest SOS in the history of the US. Imagine going from Blinken to Rubio. We have a vision of hell and heaven.


25 posted on 05/31/2025 4:33:07 AM PDT by AndyJackson
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To: Fedora

Great work on exposing Harold Hongju Koh.


26 posted on 05/31/2025 4:41:09 AM PDT by marktwain
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To: ransomnote
Here is the intro to his book The National Security Constitution.

AS JOE BIDEN FINISHES FOUR YEARS as the forty-sixth president of the United States, memories of Donald Trump’s tumultuous presidency have started to fade. But before those memories recede, it is worth asking whether the excesses of the Trump administration were an aberration, attributable to a single man, or the revelation of a deeper disorder in our constitutional system. This book suggests the latter: that the past several decades have witnessed the steady erosion of what I called more than thirty years ago the “National Security Constitution,” the substructure of U.S. constitutional norms that protects the operation of checks and balances in national security policy. Koh, Harold Hongju (2024-06-24T23:58:59.000). The National Security Constitution in the Twenty-First Century . Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

And in the acknowledgements he proves he is a worthy servant of the deepstate

Starting in the late 1990s, I took leave from Yale to serve under three more presidents and secretaries of state: as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor under the late Madeleine Albright in the Clinton administration (1998–2001), as Legal Adviser of the State Department under Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Obama administration (2009–2013), and as senior adviser (the only political appointee) in the same Legal Adviser’s Office under Antony Blinken during 2021, the first year of the Biden administration.

Like I said, WAR on New England publicly funded private universities - all of them.

27 posted on 05/31/2025 4:45:27 AM PDT by AndyJackson
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To: Ken H
If re-elected, could President Trump, by a single tweet, withdraw America from the United Nations, NATO, and every treaty and international organization to which the U.S. belongs?

Amazing watching the growing struggle in Europe to reassert national sovereignty and withdraw from the EU. They will need to withdraw from the US global deepstate directed NATO run by twits like this idiot as well.

28 posted on 05/31/2025 4:49:10 AM PDT by AndyJackson
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To: ransomnote

Yale U says it all. BS coming from a rectum u.


29 posted on 05/31/2025 5:18:05 AM PDT by Mlheureux
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To: ransomnote

I agree with the title, they just left out Yale..

Is Our President of Yale a National Security Threat?


30 posted on 05/31/2025 5:24:40 AM PDT by maddog55 (The only thing systemic in America is the left's hatred of it!)
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To: DesertRhino

He made up his own Constitution and Trump is violating it. He should make up his own military and arrest Trump then. This fat clown belongs in a padded cell.


31 posted on 05/31/2025 5:45:49 AM PDT by HYPOCRACY (Long live The Great MAGA Kangz!)
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To: ransomnote

No, Trump is not a national security risk. You idiots at Yale on the other hand are.


32 posted on 05/31/2025 6:20:33 AM PDT by piytar (Remember Ashli Babbitt, Rosanne Boyland, and Corey Comperatore!)
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To: ransomnote

If re-elected. Stopped reading there. These idiots don’t know the constitution. With a pedigree education m they are totally ignorant.


33 posted on 05/31/2025 6:27:26 AM PDT by DownInFlames (P)
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To: piasa

“Leftists always think the U.S. constitution is just a suggestion.”

Rather than using constitutionally sound law the Marxists always go for the workaround.


34 posted on 05/31/2025 6:34:44 AM PDT by Clutch Martin ("The dawn cracks hard like a bull whip and it ain't taking no lip from the night before" Tom Waits)
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To: ransomnote

The people pushing war and the seizing of other countries assets are a danger to national security.

The people pushing wars and talking tough are never the ones dying for the consequences of their big stupid mouths.


35 posted on 05/31/2025 6:42:53 AM PDT by dforest
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To: ransomnote

“Is Our President a National Security Threat?”

Is Our Congre$$ and Supreme Clowns of the US National Security Threats?

There, fixed it


36 posted on 05/31/2025 6:47:42 AM PDT by antidemoncrat (In a way ge is right as)
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To: ransomnote
But what should we now do if and when the President himself becomes a national security threat?

Depends on your definition of national security threat! That in a nut shell is the problem you do not understand the meaning of threat. You think telling a man they cannot compete in a woman's sport is a threat. A threat to the man, when allowing the man to compete against women is a threat to woman. Sir, bottom line, "you need to get your mind straight!"

37 posted on 05/31/2025 6:56:45 AM PDT by Lockbox (politicians, they all seemed like game show host to me.... Sting)
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To: ransomnote

A better question might be, is Yale font of insurrection and treason?


38 posted on 05/31/2025 7:16:27 AM PDT by Cincinnatus.45-70 (What do DemocRats enjoy more than a truckload of dead babies? Unloading them with a pitchfork!)
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To: ransomnote

Biden (or whoever was running things) certainly was a threat to national security, but Trump is doing things quite differently, so what do you think?


39 posted on 05/31/2025 7:27:27 AM PDT by oldtech
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To: SaveFerris

Haha, great bit by John Pinette. Left us too soon.


40 posted on 05/31/2025 7:27:30 AM PDT by Frank Drebin (And don't ever let me catch you guys in America!)
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