Norm Eisen is a hypocrite. So is Dana Milbank.
The two have lectured Americans about the importance of due process. Their arguments are in defense of the hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members who were sent to an El Salvador prison. President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century law that gives wartime authority to deport non-citizens. Trump has argued that the gang Tren de Aragua is a “hybrid criminal state” that’s at war with the United States.
Eisen and Milbank are outraged that these gang-bangers were sent home, or so they claim, without due process. Eisen and Milbank, and the rest of the left, crucified Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 without giving a toss about due process. In fact, I’m convinced that Milbank knew that Kavanaugh was innocent but didn’t care.
Appearing recently on AC360 on CNN, Eisen, a former ethics lawyer in the Obama White House, was discombobulated about the booted gang bangers. “What have we come to as a country if innocent people are being deported to a dark site in a foreign country without any due process whatsoever?” Eisen wailed in his annoying squeal.
Milbank devoted a massive piece in The Washington Post to the history and importance of due process. Due process “might sound technical, but it was elemental to our founding and remains at the heart of our legal system.” About the judge who’s fighting Trump on the issue and demanding that the president send deported illegal immigrants back to America, Milbank writes: “Judge Boasberg’s actions are squarely within the best tradition of the judiciary, for they are in defense of principle, enshrined in the Bill of Rights, that no person in this country, citizen or alien, may be ‘deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.’ This is precisely what the Trump administration denied to those it deported and imprisoned.”
Eisen and Milbank are furious about the men who were sent to Venezuela. When asked how authorities had been able to determine whether the individuals were in a gang, border czar Tom Homan said that authorities had relied on social media, surveillance, sworn statements from gang members, and wiretaps to determine Tren de Aragua affiliation.
Surveillance. Sworn statements from gang members. Wiretaps. Social media. That’s a hell of a lot more evidence than was ever marshaled against Kavanaugh. Yet Eisen and Milbank were ready to declare him—us—guilty. In 2018 Kavanaugh, then up for a seat on the Supreme Court, was accused of sexual misconduct, including drugging girls and gang rape. Two of his accusers claimed that I was present with Kavanaugh when the crimes allegedly took place in the 1980s when we were in high school.
It was a sham, a political hit job. One accuser couldn’t name the year or place where the misconduct against her allegedly happened. The other claimed she was raped by a marauding band of prep schoolers led by Kavanaugh and me.
The American Stasi, which includes lawyers, paid protestors and the media, defended it all. They didn’t care about our due process. When it was clear the one allegation was false, they simply pivoted to something else.
This was the case with Milbank. “Brett M. Kavanaugh proved himself unfit to serve on the Supreme Court,” he wrote. “It has little to do with his treatment of women.” Milbank knew that we were innocent. He just didn’t care. So he moved away from the alleged sex crimes to drinking. Kavanaugh drank beer in high school and college. Not as much as me, but, as Kathleen Parker noted, a "gustatory" amount. Milbank, who followed Kavanaugh at Yale but never met him, offers this: “I didn't know Kavanaugh at Yale. We overlapped for a year. But I'm chagrined to admit that I am extensively familiar with the Yale drinking scene of the time, and from mutual friends and acquaintances I have a good sense of the 1980s Kavanaugh and his alcohol intake.”
Furthermore, Kavanaugh’s anger at being falsely accused is proof of his guilt. Milbank: “Kavanaugh’s freshman-year roommate at Yale had told The New Yorker that the future Supreme Court nominee could become ‘aggressive’ and ‘belligerent’ when drunk. But, as millions have now seen with their own eyes, he is aggressive and belligerent when stone-cold sober.” There’s no doubt in my mind that if any of the gang bangers Trump launched in South America wind up committing crimes, Milbank will attribute their acts to the “trauma” and “anger” at being "falsely accused."
Milbank's absurdity was echoed by Norm Eisen. From The Hill, September 2018: “Former White House ethics chief Norm Eisen said Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s emotional testimony Thursday is a ‘taste’ of how Kavanaugh must act while drinking. Kavanaugh appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee and presented a forceful opening statement to deny the allegations from multiple women of sexual misconduct. Eisen, who served as the White House ethics chief under President Obama, said Kavanaugh’s testimony showcased his temper. 'Folks, we are all getting a taste of the aggression that emerged when Kavanaugh got drunk, and it ain’t pretty,’ Eisen tweeted. ‘His demeanor is not rebutting the allegations—if anything, it is validating them.’”
What about the demeanor of José Antonio Ibarra? He’s the 26-year-old Venezuelan man who entered the country illegally and murdered Laken Riley. Did Eisen or Milbank have anything to say about his demeanor as he lurked in the shadows waiting to murder Riley?
Of course not.
