366 Comments

Is there any way the American people can sue trump for violating our rights under the Constitution?

Expand full comment

That is exactly my thoughts. Ben, please answer

Expand full comment

Goes to individuals wrongfully harmed. The Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) allows individuals to sue the federal government for damages caused by the negligent or wrongful acts of its employees acting within the scope of their employment, providing a limited waiver of the government's sovereign immunity. https://www.house.gov/doing-business-with-the-house/leases/federal-tort-claims-act

Expand full comment

So than you should be able to sue the department of digital services (DOGE) if he cuts Medicaid, Medicare, and God forbid he touches Social Security. Those all would cause harm. The courts know he’s not a special advisor and that he’s the one running DOGE, which Trump made “The Department of Digital Government Services.”

Expand full comment

Actually, if he alleges he did not have authority, this starute may not apply and victims might have a case against him.

Expand full comment

But he’s saying that he’s just an advisor and that’s bull because the courts were all getting conflicting stories. They know he’s in charge. The courts last week or week before asked for all paperwork related to DOGE and barred him and his little minions from entering SSA and from reporting, his minions are still in there. I couldn’t get onto SS this morning for 5 and a half hours. That’s not Trump rifling around in there. He’s playing golf.

And one other thing, SS has been operating for 89 years without missing a payment and then you have Elon Musk on a Fox interview calling it a Ponzi scheme and that it has to be eliminated but the interview was actually about 10 min he rambled on. So now when checks don’t go out and they claim it’s broken, who broke it? After 89 years?

Expand full comment

actually, in the strict definition of the word, SS is a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme relies on a continued source of new investors putting money into the scheme. As new investors add money, the scheme uses their money to pay the investors that invested first. It relies on continuing to add new investors in order to keep it going.

That's exactly what SS does. We've all put money, and our employers all put money into SS for years but what was put in, isn't enough to pay for most people's retirement payments because of inflation. The amount of money you put in in 1980 was a fraction of what you are getting back now. You weren't making much as a young worker and wages were much lower--again, inflation.

So SS is actually sending you the money that younger workers are putting in currently.

The problem is two fold. #1 There are not as many working young people paying into the system as there are Baby Boomers. That's why they keep saying SS is going to run out of money in 2030 (?? the date changes depending on interest rates etc). #2 when the program was set up, the average time people lived in retirement was 2 years. Now seniors are living 20-25 years in retirement. The system wasn't designed to pay people for that long.

That being said, it's a government funded scheme, created by Congress, that has promised to provide a payment to retirees until they die. Cancelling the program would be breaking that promise, and breaking the law. And no foreign asshole has the right to denigrate a program that has supported seniors for eighty years, a program that prevents old people from working until they drop dead, or from starving to death.

If muskrat thinks it's a ponzi scheme; change it. Remove the cap limit so that people like Muskrat have to pay much more, and don't allow people to retire at 62 when they could live another 30 or so years on SS.

Expand full comment

Makes me so mad! I wish I had the chance to tell him to his hateful face what I think of him

Expand full comment

In civil law "repodeat superior". The employer is stuck with the employees' conduct.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/respondeat_superior#:~:text=Respondeat%20superior%20is%20a%20legal,of%20the%20employment%20or%20agency.

I'vve been writing about this...the retirement and disablity checls do not come from the general finds budgetd by Congress. The retirement fund currently has about $2.6 trillion. Republicans want that money.

From Thom Hartmann this morning:

DOGE plans to re-program Social Security. Social Security runs on an older COBAL programming language and, while it’s a bit creaky, it works just fine. But the DOGE wrecking crew — we learned the day after Musk went on Fox “News” and lied repeatedly to America’s seniors — now plans to replace the entire system with something newer. This is the kind of project, messing with 70 million people’s earned benefits, that should take a year or two with multiple layers of redundancy and safety; instead they say they’ll do it in a few months. What could possibly go wrong? A lot, as WIRED reports a senior Social Security technologist told them: “Of course one of the big risks is not underpayment or overpayment per se but [it’s also] not paying someone at all and not knowing about it. The invisible errors and omissions.” The big concern is that they might end up crashing the entire system. Again, from WIRED’s interview: “This is an environment that is held together with bail wire and duct tape. The leaders need to understand that they’re dealing with a house of cards or Jenga. If they start pulling pieces out, which they’ve already stated they’re doing, things can break.” Which raises another question; why are these guys who are supposed to be looking for “fraud and waste” reprogramming this system? Is it to make it harder for people to get their benefits so seniors will sign off on a “Social Security Advantage” privatized program the way they have with the privatized Medicare Advantage? Is it so they can build back doors into it? What’s the game here? Why the hurry? Something stinks…

From Trump Tyranny Tracker March 28:

We Mapped DOGE’s Silicon Valley and Corporate Connections

What Happened: WIRED has mapped the backgrounds of dozens of operatives working inside unauthorized DOGE, revealing a deep network of ties to Musk, his companies, and his allies. At least 49 DOGE staffers have links to Musk’s empire—SpaceX, Tesla, xAI, Neuralink, and X—as well as to allies like Peter Thiel and firms like Palantir.

Why It Matters: This is cronyism disguised as reform. Musk’s tech allies are being embedded deep inside federal agencies, turning public institutions into tools of a private billionaire’s agenda. It’s not about efficiency—it’s a hostile takeover that blurs the line between government and corporate power.

Source: WIRED

At SS

Expand full comment

Trump's the one who did horrible things. Should be in a jailhouse not the people's house.

Expand full comment

How about organizing to vote his enablers out of office? You don't have to be a lawyer to do that.

Expand full comment

There you go !!!!

Expand full comment

How about Scrotus ? Giving the crown to this jerk of a “president “certainly seems impeachable to me. I know:( probably not but they should have protest rallies at least. They started the mess.

Expand full comment

The SCOTUS didn't start it (ask who appointed the "justices" in the current majority), but I can't stop wondering why they decided to make the presidency more powerful when the president in office was Trump. My best guess is that some of them at least realize that the real power wasn't Trump himself but his puppeteers.

Expand full comment

Or stealing OUR social security.

Expand full comment

I'll gladly chip in lots of money for THAT lawsuit--and I don't have a whole lot of it.....

Expand full comment

I can only think of a class action taken against him, with many people it won't be costly to do it.

Expand full comment

There should be or we the people can impeach and send him to prison?

Expand full comment

Thank you to the lawyers for standing up to the bully!!

Expand full comment

Yes my thoughts too !

Expand full comment

That’s what I been thinking of?

Expand full comment

I wonder if your states AG could answer that. Maybe try calling them.

Expand full comment

Is a citizens arrest legal in all states or was that right stripped from us ?

Expand full comment

I’ve been asking the same question on different platforms. Anyone?

Expand full comment

I sure hope no other law firms give into Trump because that really made me mad, stop kissing the King!!!! Please for the sake of all of us Americans!!!

Expand full comment

Just don’t use those lawyers for ANYTHING!

Expand full comment

Wish they would all suck it up and refuse him

Expand full comment

In my opinion how LOW can you go! Bowing down to The King is REALLY LOW!

Expand full comment

I have a question, one or two law firms have caved and are giving millions to trump. Is this considered quid pro quo?

Expand full comment

It's seems extortion.

Expand full comment

If the case is dismissed, potentially abuse of legal process, intentional interference of contractural relations and maybe even infliction of emotional distress. Trump is dloing this in retaliation and should not be immune in civil court.

Expand full comment

Yep blackmail

Expand full comment

I still think he should have been jailed for 1/6, especially for the death of Officer Sicknick!! If any regular person pulled off a coup like that, they’d be jailed too!!

Expand full comment

Exactly he should be in prison where he belongs NOT POTUS

Expand full comment

And supposedly he was going to apologize to the Sicknick family & HE STILL HAS NEVER met, not spoken to the family!! But he’s out AGAIN ON HIS GOLF COURSE IN MiraCrapo today!! He has HIS OWN tRUMP PLANE! Why isn’t HE USING HIS OWN PLANE for his MiraCrapo weekends! If any of us go on vacation OUR EMPLOYER doesn’t PAY FOR OUR transportation!

Expand full comment

Agree. From what I've read, those golfing weekends cost the American taxpayer at least 3.5 million per weekend. He has no business talking about fraud, waste or abuse. He does them all.

Expand full comment

He is definitely a grifter from the word GO!!How’s that Ukraine solution working out… he was going to have in solved in 24 hrs😡😡

Expand full comment

he's gratuitously indulging in abuse of every single thing and every single body.

Expand full comment

Quote from POT(belly)US, when asked which of the 1/6 insurrectionists he should pardon: "F*** it. Pardon 'em all!"

Expand full comment

And now he wants to pay them “reparations!”

Expand full comment

It’s more like extortion. It’s difficult to explain. Eric Adams was a quid pro quo because the charges against him were not manufactured as a means to extort concessions from him. Trump offered to drop the charges if Adams did certain agreed things to help Trump crack down on immigration. A thing of value for a thing of value, both parties profit. In this situation, the law firms really get nothing. Trump drummed up an attack on them because they had some connection to a past case or investigation against him and declared that therefore he was ordering punishment. They broke no laws, they just made him unhappy, but he is abusing his power to punish them and then demanding they bribe him to get him to lift the illegitimate punishments. Some law firms are fighting in court and winning. It is not a crime to oppose someone in court.

Expand full comment

This is racketeering by the government DOJ, weaponization by Attorney General to do a king’s bidding for wreaking retribution. This is exactly like the mafia is known to do everywhere.

Expand full comment

It's so sickening to listen to trump spew his lies about the previous administration weaponizing the DOJ. Law suits were files because he broke the law! Every accusation is a confession for R's.

Expand full comment

and @ Sanjeev Gandhi, bingo!! and many forms of terrorism is what he&his regime perpetrate.

Expand full comment

I think the quo is stuff like not pulling a firm's lawyers' security clearances, maybe a promise not to tweet mean stuff about them?

Expand full comment

No, because it's not really a quid pro quo. It's like calling slavery a quid pro quo because they gave the slaves water and some kind of food. There's no real "quo" for these lawyers except the right to operate their businesses in peace that they should have anyway. It's much more like blackmail.

Expand full comment

It’s like paying protection money.

Expand full comment

Good analogy.

Expand full comment

Exactly in line with the patrimonial form of regime that DT is forming and that he learned at the knee of the mob bosses in NYC.

Expand full comment

it's a mix of racketeering, sadism, terrorism. all the worst.

Expand full comment

It’s extortion.

Expand full comment

I’m so sick of him & Elon- send Elon with a one way ticket back to South Africa and isn’t it about time for the FAT ORANGE GOLFING CLOWN to either get hit by lightening on the golf course (like on CaddyShack) or have that coronary so Melania can come out of hiding with a BIG

SMILE ON HER FACE, & bury him on the green next to his late wife!

Expand full comment

I've been sick of him already like that in 2015. Can you only try to imagine how I feel now a decade after of him worse each moment......

Expand full comment

Husband & I watched 2 episodes of The Apprentice back when it 1st came on TV yrs ago. 2nd episode he made a very crude disgusting sexual comment to one of the young gals on the show & WE WERE DONE!! Never voted 4 him, NEVER WILL!!

Expand full comment

I wouldn't know one law.firm from another. I heard people talk about Paul Weiss and its noted reputation and why people are shocked a firm with that prestige would cave, , but then I looked into Skadden, the one that settled for $100 million. (Many articles but also their Wikipedia who names some of their big partners and people who I think they repped. Laura Ingraham hit me in the face but that's neither here nor there. Everyone is entitled to legal representation. But I always look at the referenced articles on the bottom.too)) They have a very DIVERSE group of young, talented attorneys who have scruples and ethics. They've donated a lot to Dems. One atty just went to Linkedin to explain why she quit because she couldn't use the interoffice email system to tell her fellow attorneys. But the terms of the $100 million "settlement" and probono work they will do (and from what I understand, all firms with excellent reps do pro bono work. They don't need to be threatened) sound like there's nothing "good" in it. It's all for the DICKTATOR. (especially representing police and military which seems they did not do before...to me it sounds like Trump is lining up for his Proud Boys and other bad dudes) On 3-23-25 Dinesh D'Souza (who Trump pardoned in 1.0 for other sleazy stuff) who did that movie 2000 Mules about the "stolen election" posted on X that Skadden "had an army of 17 lawyers working against me" (probono) and Elon replied "Skadden, this has to stop" and like a miracle...$100 million miracle and a few days later, it did. There's a site called"Above the Law" that said it amounted to payola..They are one of the largest international.firms. n 2019 they had to pay an almost $5 million fine to the DOJ for not registering as "Foreign Agents" Some ties with Ukraine/Manafort They were involved with representing groups tied to Russia to the tune of $90 billion. They are huge and are also known to represent a lot of people with ties to to "Putin regime" .meaning the big winner is Trump's "Vladdy Daddy" and Elon. They'll make the $100 million back ten fold. Very, very disheartening.

Expand full comment

You could do a service for your readers. If you were to out who in the Trump administration is spearheading the charge against the lawyers - and other institutions of civil society, The product managers of this dystopian campaign. Trump is out playing golf. We need to out the actual actors behind the scenes who are pushing the dystopian initiatives. Name names.

Expand full comment

Good idea 💡 I'm betting DOJ and Bondis ilk.

Expand full comment

Don't forget Stephen Miller, Nazi in chief since childhood.

Expand full comment

My guess is Stephen Miller and Russel Vought. If we could get the previous chats from Signal, and I am sure there were many but they've probably been deleted, we'd probably know the answer.

Expand full comment

I vote for Russell Vought's malignant hand behind so many of these executive orders.

Expand full comment

No, these people are too high-level to be involved in the ground level details, though they will sign off on them.

Expand full comment

Bravo! Great to hear that some major law firms are showing courage. Hope others—large and small—take notice and stand up as well.

Expand full comment

Emailed Mr. Peters yesterday thanking him for his firm standing up to Trump's extortion. Hurray for you both! We NEED attorneys willing and able to sue on our behalf and to defend us after we are attacked or impugned by this regime.

Expand full comment

We also need to emails the traitorous firms. I sent an scathing e-mail to Paul Weiss.

Expand full comment

Good move! I had not thought of that.

Expand full comment

Good for them! It's good to see law firms showing some backbone. Aren't good lawyers supposed to be tough?

Expand full comment

They're supposed to uphold the rule of law; I'm writing all the firms who are being bought and paid for by our Nazi dictator to remind them of that.

Expand full comment

Thank you for calling DjtRuMp who he is “Nazi Dictator”!

I wish everyone would stop calling him ‘king’… that simple noun can NOT be who a man charged and found guilty of a multitude of crimes, is. A man who is being allowed by those leaders We The People Elected to represent us, to destroy our a government. A man who is bullying our Neighbour Countries. A man who admires and now has been given the green light to emulate dictators, autocrats, fascist rulers. He is NOT a King. DjtRuMp is NOT our King. He IS a TRAITOR and the Supreme Court should be ashamed not to ask ‘dictator wanna be DjtRuMp’ to step down. Our Elected Leaders (there are a few true servants of The People!), should be ashamed… they are nothing but Spineless mollusks who eat away the innocent creatures who trusted they would be cared for. These men and women are excellent at talking and promising come election time. How quickly they forget after being elected that it is We The People who are paying the $174,000.+ yearly + health insurance for life + paid travel, office, expenses. + their work week is close to two days a week with several vacations each year. + most have their own businesses. DjtRuMp is Not king of the United States of America.

Expand full comment

Excellent distinction. I've sometimes referred to him as King Bone Spurs or the emperor with no brain/heart, not because I see him as a king, but because I'm poking holes in his own deluded image of himself.

If you haven't already seen it, Sam Stein (of the Bulwark) recently posted this missive on the Paul Weiss capitulation and its fallout in the legal world. There are so many parallels to the enablers who paved the way for Hitler's rise to power, about which I've been reminding the law firms who are kowtowing to The Dictator, along with how well it worked out for Hitler and his minions. You can find Sam's article here FYI: https://open.substack.com/pub/thebulwark/p/disgusted-betrayed-paul-weiss-extortion-executive-order-trump-lawyers-firm-karp-perkins-coie-rachel-cohen?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Expand full comment

Thank you. I appreciate your sharing. We can’t know everything. Substack makes life easier for me.

Expand full comment

Me too. I've never subscribed to or posted one thing on "social" media, but I trust the Substack community and their privacy policy.

Expand full comment

Great piece Ben, one of the best yet - great to see those men stand up like that. They have our backs and we, the Meidas Mighty have theirs.

Expand full comment

Those who cave have lost the fundamental faith that right will win in the end, and those who are standing firm will put the country back together when the incompetent regime self-destructs. Those who capitulated will be lost in the rubble.

Expand full comment

I'm a Canadian so I likely don't understand. Are you saying the while Trump/ Musk are running amuck of the constitution and the law, that they are using tax payer money to fight their transgressions in court, and losing most of the time? Then they discredit the very law firms that could beat them so they have to fight only the weakest? This is beyond corrupt. There has to be a way to stop this lunacy. WTF.

Expand full comment

Yes. The entire DOJ budget is funded by the taxpayers. His DOJ lawyers have complained in court (when a judge scolded them for their lack of preparation) that they had so many cases they didn't have time to prepare; and they have so many cases because the Administration is breaking laws right and left. It's a disgrace, all part of their playbook to destroy our Constitution and the rule of law.

We are currently living under a coup and our law firms, corporations, media empires, and big tech Nazis are acquiescing in advance when they should be standing up to a bully, whom your Canadian winner Carney is showing will back down if you just stand up to him. We love what you and your leadership are doing. We love Canada and are horrified at how our dictator is treating our allies. So very sorry!!

Expand full comment

This presidency has highlighted a lot of areas that need attention or revision. Starting with elections and voting, and ending with presidential power.

Expand full comment

There is nothing right about it. I blame our Supreme court. They decreed that as president of USA he could not be held liable by any thing he does, because he presidential immunity. He asked if he could use Seal Team 6 against his personal enemies and the answer was yes. My opinion there is alway a time to change the baby when it has a dirty poopy diaper. Our Supreme Court's diapers are full. Of course it is time for a change. There seems to be a lot of corruption in that court, but with the power it has in hand, it is very hard to change the poopy diaper, when the babes are kicking screaming and bigger than you are and more powerful. The framers of our constitution left out a way for us to change the baby's power. So year 2025 we have a powerful president, backed by a powerful supreme court, both running amuck making enemies of our friends namely Canada and Mexico, Playing Russian roulette with our country. God Bless America and please, God give us some help in changing our country back to clean politicans and clean Supreme Court Judges. The majority of us are still dedicated to God and Country and we ask for your help as quickly as you can. I am an 84 year old great grandmother I want to go back to better days please.\

NOTE:

[anyone has the right to reproduce this to any audience. At my age I've got nothing to lose.]

Expand full comment

Amen, and amen

Expand full comment

Great comments.

Expand full comment

Yes, and no doubt your “commander-in-chief” has a ver poopy diaper, as we speak!

Expand full comment

Excuse mebut his correct title is COMMANDER AND THIEF

Expand full comment

Thank you to this strong, law abiding law firm.

Expand full comment

I hope they keep fighting 🙏 Bring Trump down!

Expand full comment

Thankfully, there are ethical law firms who have the courage to speak out against the Trump administration and take action to protect democracy.

Expand full comment

You would imagine that trying to destroy America would be treason.

Expand full comment

Every time he opens his mouth, he’s lieing!

Expand full comment

Absolutely! Still don’t understand why people don’t see this.

Expand full comment

Trump should be impeached.

Expand full comment