I & I Editorial BoardNot long after Michelino Sunseri, a professional mountain runner, finished a race across Grand Teton last fall, he found himself on the receiving end of a Justice Department criminal charge. His offense? Running on a closed trail, for which he could end up serving six months in jail.
We are not making this up.
Last Friday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order designed to prevent such gross abuses. It is one of the most important – and underappreciated – actions he’s taken.
The “crime” Sunseri committed wasn’t a federal law passed by Congress. It was a crime invented by the National Park Service – one of some 300,000 federal crimes (although nobody knows exactly how many there are) that unelected bureaucrats have conjured up when writing regulations.
What’s more, many of these regulatory crimes are “strict liability” offenses, which means that you don’t need to have criminal intent to be charged with a crime.
“This status quo is absurd and unjust,” Trump says in his executive order. “It allows the executive branch to write the law, in addition to executing it. That situation can lend itself to abuse and weaponization by providing government officials tools to target unwitting individuals.”
All true. And deeply disturbing to anyone who cares about civil liberties.
In testimony before a House Judiciary subcommittee last week, GianCarlo Canaparo, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, listed some of the absurdist crimes on the books:
- It is a crime to sell a tufted mattress unless you have burned nine cigarettes on the tufted part of it.
- It is a crime to sell a package of bacon unless the packaging includes a transparent window that ‘shall be designed to reveal at least 70% of the length (longest dimension) of the representative slice, and this window shall be at least 11⁄2 inches wide.’
- It is a crime to submit a design to the Federal Duck Stamp contest if your design does not primarily feature ‘eligible waterfowl.’
- It is a crime to sell a toy marble across state lines unless it is marked with a warning that says ‘this toy is a marble.’
Trump’s order “discourages criminal enforcement of regulatory offenses, prioritizing prosecutions only for those who knowingly violate regulations and cause significant harm” and requires each agency to produce “a list of all enforceable criminal regulatory offenses, the range of potential criminal penalties, and applicable state of mind required for liability.”
Critics dismiss the Trump order as just window dressing.
“The reality,” says the National Law Journal’s Dan Novak, “is that the U.S. Department of Justice rarely brings such cases.”
But it does bring such cases, and the mere fact that it can is the problem, as Sunseri can attest.
Despite the fact that the “closed” trail is frequently used by tour guides and other runners, and there were no clear signs prohibiting him from running on it, the Biden Justice Department wanted make an example of Sunseri and said that in exchange for a guilty plea, he’d have to pay a $5,000 fine and accept a five-year ban from Grand Teton National Park.
“It has forever been a bedrock principle of the rule of law that the law be actually knowable, but our law is not,” Canaparo said. “The number of crimes in the federal law is enormous and growing and applies to so many things that no reasonable person would think are crimes.”
This invites the kinds of government abuses that everyone – left and right – should find deeply troubling.
Trump points out another problem with this criminalization overload.
“Overregulation privileges large corporations, which can afford expensive legal teams to navigate complex regulatory schemes, while disadvantaging small businesses and individual Americans and stifling new market entrants.”
Incredibly, we could only find three news outlets that covered this executive order: Reuters, the Daily Signal, and Reason magazine.
Who cares about civil liberties when there’s a Trump tweet to freak out about?
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Ross Marchand
Anarcho-tyranny is the name for the selective lack of enforcement of the law on the friends and family of the ruling party and the hyper-enforcement of the law on citizens disfavored by the ruling party. Hunter Biden was allowed to live a life of complete anarchy and the BLM protestors were allowed to burn, loot, and murder. At the same time, Trump was prosecuted for crimes that were invented out of thin air and the Democrats openly and proudly persecuted the J6 protestors.
If enough crazy laws are created, then everybody will be guilty of breaking some law, no matter how honest and obedient they are, and the government can pick and choose who goes to prison. “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” becomes the de facto standard operating procedure for all ruling political parties, because it’s much easier to simply imprison your strongest opponents than it is to win a fair and square election against them.
For more details on Trump’s legal persecutions when he was out of office, go to ensign.substack.Com, scroll down and click on “How did the Bill of Rights become a hit list of our liberties?”
Well stated!
The problem with the “unelected bureaucrats” theme is that rules and regulations written at the executive department level have to be reviewed and approved by congress.
Another reason why Trump is great. He wants to reign in government excess.
The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
– Ayn Rand
This is a big deal and a good move by Trump. Unfortunately like everything else he’s doing, it won’t be codified into law by Congress, so the next administration can revert to business as usual.
“These laws are only rarely enforced” That’s one reason they must be repealed. These laws are used for lawfare, to intimidate, and for selective prosecution. Only Congress can make laws, not Executive Agencies. They’re un-Constitutional. That’s another reason they must be repealed
Besides writing the law-as the article points out- UN-ELECTED bureaucrats also enforce the law (using their powers of force, eg. a Forest marshal), and by using “strict liability” those un-elected now can use legislative, executive and judicial powers.
Bureaucrats who make laws may be unelected but they can be as tyrannic as tyrants who make bureaucrats.
This country was carefully formed by our Founders to have legislative, executive and judicial powers separate.
Now we know-if we didn’t before-why. We have a beautiful example of the tyranny that can come from an un-elected power.
What frightens me is that there had been no legislator who addressed this problem-so there hadn’t been any legislation before Trumps executive order that would have relieved this.
Also, what scares me is that the Supreme Court never stepped in and said using “strict liability” in cases like this (ie. by un-elected bureaucrats) is an egregious usurpation of power.
It amazes me that Trump (who, according to the Democratic Party and the lame stream media, is a threat to Democracy) is the one who is saving Democracy.
And it also astonishes me that “no one is the wiser.” Why? Because our lame stream media decided to ignore it.
You are spot on. And, you have correctly identified the one person willing to tackle this enormous problem, willing to risk non-stop harassment and subject his entire family to the horrors inflicted on them by the Dems and deep state (guys with guns going through you undies, for example). Trump is brave, exceptionally patriotic even though half the country doesn’t get it, and he’s right….most of the time.
Can we stop with the executive orders? The next dim president coming in will simply write a new EO to rescind the previous EO.
Get congress to but up a proposed law for discussion, debate it, approve it or not for the President to sign.
EOs have been here since the beginning. Their intent was to get an emergency bill though when congress was not in session. When is this do nothing congress not in session?
The kenyan abused the EO process, biteme bragged about signing a record number of them, and President Trump is continuing the process.
Simply reading the Constitution of the United States would prevent ALL of these “laws” from ever seeing the light of day. Article 1, Section 1 begins with the words “All legislative authority herein granted shall be vested in a Congress…” The plethora of Executive level agencies are not “Congress” so none has any authority to enact anything pretending to have the authority of properly enacted legislation.