“Under Connecticut General Statute 3-125,” The Connecticut Law Tribune tells us, “the Attorney General has the duty to
appear for all constitutional officers and all heads of departments and State
boards…in all suits and other civil proceedings…in which the official acts or
doings of said officers are called in question.” In short, the office is
supposed to represent the governor and state agencies in legal matters.
Attorney General George Jepsen is still, to deploy a euphemism, the king’s
lawyer – plus.
It is the plus that is disconcerting. The authorizing
statute mentions nothing about suing Presidents.
“Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen” a recent
Hartford Courant story advises, “has filed or joined a growing number of
lawsuits against the Trump Administration. In just seven months, Connecticut
has filed twice as many legal actions challenging federal agencies under
President Donald Trump as it did during the previous three years
combined under the Obama administration.”
It comes as no surprise to learn that U.S. Senator Dick
Blumenthal, for two decades Connecticut’s Attorney General, is pulling at the
same oar. Recently, Blumenthal filed a suit against President Donald Trump for
having overstepped constitutional boundaries. Blumenthal’s nuisance suit claims
that Trump has recklessly overleapt the emolument clause of the U.S.
Constitution.
As Attorney General, Blumenthal, some would argue,
overstepped his own statutory obligations by turning his office into a consumer
protection operation outrigged with subpoena powers. Authorized by statute to
represent the state in suits brought against it, Blumenthal earned political
chits – and rave reviews from Connecticut’s media – by flipping the statute.
Under Blumenthal’s regime, suing or threatening to sue businesses on behalf of
consumers became the prime directive of the office, a far cry from representing
the governor and state agencies in legal actions brought against the state.
Naturally, difficulties arose along the way. When he assumed
office following Blumenthal’s lengthy career as the state’s premier consumer
protection lawyer, Jepsen quickly dismissed hundreds of cases left on his plate
by Blumenthal, who had hit upon a novel method of jurisprudence. Blumenthal quickly learned that low asset
targets could be forced to make plea bargains favorable to the state by tying
up their business assets and holding them by the toe until they had become
amenable to plea bargains. The legal bullying was remunerative. Money “earned”
by Blumenthal made its way into the state treasury; Blumenthal was able to
burnish his growing reputation as Connecticut’s white-hatted consumer
protector; and the only losers were some small time business thugs- at least,
that is how they were represented by Blumenthal in his sometimes daily media
releases.
Martha Dean made an issue of Blumenthal’s overreach during her campaign for Attorney General. Jepsen, once Connecticut’s Democratic
Party Chairman, vowed to keep a lower profile and sop-up Blumenthal’s spilled
milk once he achieved office. And he did so, dismissing hundreds of so called
“whistle blower” cases without stopping to explain how his office was supposed
to represent both whistleblowers and the agencies against which they were
blowing their whistles; a prosecutor would have to twist himself into a pretzel
to be able justly to represent both the accuser and the accused in a fair
trial, a posture neither Blumenthal nor Jepsen found ridiculous.
The urge to overflow statutory and constitutional bounds
within the Attorney General’s office will be irresistible for men and women
motivated by political ambition.
“If men were angels,” said Alexander Hamilton, Broadway’s
newest star, “no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men,
neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In
framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great
difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the
governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
There’s the rub. How do you oblige presidents and governors
and legislators and judges and attorneys general to control themselves when
statutes and constitutional boundaries are so easily surmounted by political
ambition and politicians on the hunt for status, public acclaim and votes?
You do it, always and everywhere, by insisting that
constitutional and statutory boundaries defining offices are not violated
with impunity, however beneficial the violation might be to politicians who have become media stars.
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