Oaths are fascinating. When politicians and judicial officers swear to enforce the law “without fear or favour, affection or ill-will”, they are attesting to the goodness of their motives. That they won’t just do the right thing, but will do it for the right reasons.
Consider the ethical car crash taking place in New South Wales around former NSW deputy premier John Barilaro. Currently, we are all on the same page about what senior ministers did wrong, and more critically, why they are being called to account. Namely, because they broke the conventions of impartiality and fairness that should govern all hiring decisions, but particularly for flush government jobs.
But if we were in a failing democracy, no such unanimity would prevail. Rather than accept the validity of the parliamentary inquiry looking into the allegations, or (eventually) set up an internal review to get to the truth, NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet could have slammed the Public Accountability Committee’s probe as a Labor-led witchhunt. He could have backed offending ministers like Stuart Ayres, rather than supporting — in the face of damning evidence and pressure from colleagues — his resignation.
Would such behaviour be despicable and beneath the dignity of the premier’s office? Absolutely. Would it have undermined our faith in the integrity of our leaders, and the impartial conduct of government business according to law? Absolutely. Indeed, we’re watching this in real-time in the United States.
On Tuesday, the FBI searched Trump’s pseudo-presidential office at his south Florida country club Mar-a-Lago to recover documents that the ex-president removed from the White House when he left office. The search warrant was issued by a federal judge only after Trump refused to hand the documents back, despite months of negotiations with his lawyers about flagrantly violating the Presidential Records Act, and the ex-president’s suspected false statements that he’d returned all the classified material he took — a crime for which he wanted Hillary Clinton “locked up”.
In fact, the justification for what is inarguably an unprecedented law enforcement action on the home of a former US president runs considerably deeper than that. Turns out that after negotiations failed to get the material back, Trump had been subpoenaed to produce the documents, but had refused. And that among the documents that had not been returned earlier this year — when fifteen boxes of improperly removed documents were returned to the National Archives — was classified material “so sensitive in nature, and related to national security” that the Justice Department had no choice but to act.
But Republicans don’t see it that way, or at least they’re pretending not to. For them, nothing national — including security — exists. Everyone is either a Democrat or Republican and acts only from political motives. Namely, to help their own side or to screw the other. Facts don’t matter because they reveal nothing about motives, and the other side cherry-picks them at best or simply makes them up.
This is why Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida could describe the FBI search as the federal government acting like “the Gestapo … They just go after people”. And why House Leader Kevin McCarthy claimed it showed that the Department of Justice had “reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization” that warranted — when Republicans won the House in November — immediate congressional oversight. “Attorney-General Garland,” McCarthy said in a statement. “Preserve your documents and clear your calendar.”
What’s terrifying is that facts have no power here. Nor does reason, logic, precedent or indeed any of the tools of civilisation. Because once people believe others have no motive but to harm them, they feel hunted and are impossible to placate. Which is why all the sedate and informed discussions by former DOJ officials, about how the extent of classified material still in Trump’s possession justified the search, have fallen on deaf ears. And on right-wing platforms dominated by the most radical elements of Trump’s base, there’s talk of armed rebellion and civil war.
To say we don’t want to end up here is an understatement. This means not just calling state and federal governments to account for the grey corruption seen in the Barilaro case, but thanking our lucky stars that in Australia we’re having a conversation about the wrongs of such “soft” corruption.
