Frustrated by Courts, Trump Weighed Suspending a Constitutional Right (Maggie HabermanJonathan Swan, 6/15/26, NY Times)
The man who outlined his concerns in the memo, Mr. Scharf, was no resistance figure. A trim, balding, Harvard-trained lawyer who had run for office in Missouri, he had bemoaned John McCain as too moderate for the 2008 Republican nomination, and believed Mr. Trump had been vindictively prosecuted after his 2020 election loss.
He had helped develop the Trump team’s legal arguments behind the successful effort to get the Mar-a-Lago classified documents indictment thrown out, as well as the arguments behind the presidential immunity case that prevailed at the Supreme Court. He had embraced the most contentious elements of Mr. Trump’s agenda, but was quickly coming up against the limit of what the Constitution, in his reading, could be made to bear.
The Constitution, Mr. Scharf wrote in his memo to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, permits suspension of habeas corpus only in cases of rebellion or invasion. Courts have almost uniformly held that only Congress can do it.
He added: “Even where Congress has explicitly suspended habeas corpus rights, the Supreme Court has held that some alternative process must be provided to defendants, with procedural safeguards akin to a habeas corpus action.
“It prevents, in effect, governmental actors from detaining, imprisoning or executing individuals arbitrarily,” Mr. Scharf wrote.
Always bet on the Deep State.