International Business Development Consultant
How Democracies Die
United States
The Attorney General of the United States is officially the head of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and serves as the federal government’s chief law enforcement officer. Nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, the Attorney General advises the president, represents the U.S. in court, and oversees agencies like the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration).
Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, whom President Trump just nominated to be the next Attorney General, is a former prosecutor who, beginning in 2017, was a partner at the white shoe firm of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, the oldest law firm operating in New York City.
In his personal capacity, he represented several figures associated with president Trump and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, including Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manaforrt along with businessman Igor Fruman and attorney Boris Epshteyn.
In April 2023, prior to his arraignment, Trump hired Blanche to defend him in the District Attorney’s Office of New York County’s prosecution of Trump over concealed hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. Blanche later defended Trump in the federal classified documents and election obstruction cases as well. He also led Trump’s defense in his criminal trial.
No further comment on the inappropriateness of this nomination is necessary. The record of bias speaks for itself. It would, in fact, be difficult to present a more cogent case to disqualify Blanche from ever serving as Attorney General in a Trump led administration, given his obvious implied bias along with his having acted as Trump’s hatchet man against Trumps political enemies during Blanche’s current tenure as Acting Attorney General.
Israel
The Israel State Comptroller is an independent government watchdog elected by the Knesset for a seven-year term, tasked with auditing the finances, administration, and efficiency of state institutions. Since 1971, the Comptroller has also served as the Ombudsman, allowing citizens to file free complaints against public entities.
Adv. Michael Rabello, whom the Knesset this week elected to the position, is an experienced and well-respected practitioner in the field of civil and commercial law, with particular expertise in complicated litigation cases in the civil and labor courts, arbitrations and mediations.
Michael clerked for the then Deputy President of the Supreme Court, Menachem Elon. He served on the editorial board of the Mishpatim, the Hebrew University Law Journal and was a research assistant in law of contracts, law of evidence and constitutional law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Faculty of Law. In all, a very qualified lawyer and a partner in the highly respected Tel Aviv law firm of E.S. Shimron, I. Molho, Persky & Co.
However, as it relates to his election to the post of State Comptroller and Ombudsman, Michael currently also serves as a legal counsel for the Likud political party. Inter alia, he has represented the Likud party in numerous coalition negotiations for the establishment of the government, and he regularly represents the Likud in constitutional and administrative proceedings in the Supreme Court of Israel in precedential constitutional cases including, in the matters of the formation of the government, the legislation of an amendment to Basic Law: The Government, administrative conflict of interests, and proceedings concerning the basic right to be elected to the Knesset.
These facts alone would tend to disqualify him, given what would appear to be an obvious bias in favor of the Likud party. However, in addition to all of the above he is also Prime Minister Netanyahu’s personal attorney during a period where the Prime Minister himself, is under a long-standing investigation of whether some if his actions were illegal under Israeli law.
As such, it would seem that the arguments against his being elected to this position are both logical and cogent yet, they did not sway the majority in the Knesset as he won the election by a majority of one (61 votes out of 120 Knesset members) all along coalition lines.
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt in their book “How Democracies Die” wrote: “We tend to think of democracies dying: at the hands of men with guns. During the Cold War, coups d’état accounted for nearly three out of every four democratic breakdowns. Democracies in Argentina, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Thailand, Turkey, and Uruguay all died this way. More recently, military coups toppled Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi in 2013 and Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra in 2014. In all these cases, democracy dissolved in spectacular fashion, through military power and coercion.”
They continue: “But there is another way to break a democracy. It is less dramatic but equally destructive. Democracies may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders—presidents or prime ministers who subvert the very process that brought them to power. Some of these leaders dismantle democracy quickly, as Hitler did in the wake of the 1933 Reichstag fire in Germany. More often, though, democracies erode slowly, in barely visible steps.”
The U.S. and Israel this week each took one more step on the road to dictatorship. For the most part, albeit with a bit more noise in Israel’s Knesset than among the ranks of the U.S. Senate, the implications of these moves will soon move off the front page and into history, as just one more nail in the coffin of democracy.
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, in his commencement address to the graduates of Yeshiva University on May 28th, recalled the note that his daughter, now the Governor or Arkansas, left in the guest book at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem (Holocaust Museum) when she visited there at the age of 11. With the wisdom of youth, she wrote quite simply, “Why Didn’t Anyone Do Anything?” Indeed, why not? And why not even now?