Is Trump Laying the Groundwork for Expanded Powers?

Jack Goldsmith, a former senior Bush Justice Department official who helped design the post-9/11 anti-terror legal architecture, told the New Yorker that President Trump might be laying the groundwork for expanded powers in the wake of a major terrorist attack.

Said Goldsmith: “If it is a large and grim attack, he might ask for more surveillance powers inside the U.S. (including fewer restrictions on data mingling and storage and queries), more immigration control power at the border, an exception to Posse Comitatus (which prohibits the military from law enforcement in the homeland), and perhaps more immigration-related detention powers. In the extreme scenario Trump could ask Congress to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, which would cut off the kind of access to courts you are seeing right now for everyone (or for every class of persons for which the writ is suspended).”

He added: “The point of the example is that the only question is not what powers Trump might ‘ask for,’ powers he might assert or assume or grab, and what he can get away with.”