England Respects the Rule of Law. Why Don’t We? 

We got our legal system from the British, but we don’t know what to do with it. Consider the prosecution of leaders. 

The Brits have gotten it right. King Charles made clear that “the law must take its course,” even if it meant prosecuting his own brother, Andrew. The king’s expression of the “deepest concern” was not an “am I my brother’s keeper?” It was an acknowledgement that we no longer make: no one is above the law.  

In a statement, Charles said: 

I have learned, with the deepest concern, the news about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and suspicions of misconduct in public office. What follows is the full, fair, and proper process by which this issue is investigated by the appropriate authorities. In this, as I have said before, they have our full and wholehearted support and cooperation. 

Let me state clearly: the law must take its course. As this process continues, it would not be right for me to comment further on this matter. Meanwhile, my family and I will continue in our duty and service to you all. 

It must hurt to say what he did. No member of the English royal family has been arrested since Charles I in 1646. 

As the family of Virginia Giuffre, one of Andrew’s alleged Jeffrey Epstein victims who died by suicide, put it: “Our broken hearts have been lifted at the news that no one is above the law, not even royalty.” 

Andrew, however, was not arrested on morals charges. The suspicion is that, as the British Trade Envoy from 2001 to 2011, he illegally disclosed sensitive economic information to Epstein. 

But in America, we proceed along a different path. The president, even a former president, is essentially immune from criminal prosecution. As Clarence Thomas emphatically stated in Trump v. United States, “the President’s immunity from prosecution for his official acts is the law.” The Supreme Court has permitted Trump to succeed in numerous areas. Its conservative majority has approved many of his requests on the “shadow docket,” temporarily allowing him to dismiss independent agency leaders without cause, ban transgender troops from the military, and eliminate deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of migrants. 

Trump plainly has no respect for the law, no respect for the justices of the Supreme Court, or what they represent. If they side with him, he praises them as “geniuses.” Still, if they oppose him—as they did when he bypassed congressional authority by imposing reciprocal tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)—he lashes out at them as though they were wanton schoolchildren who had misbehaved. Civil discourse has vanished. After a White House press conference about the ruling, he expressed shame for those who ruled against him, calling them a “disgrace to our nation”. 

He derided the three liberal justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—as “Democrats” who were an “automatic no”. 

But he appeared more disappointed in the three conservative justices, Chief Justice John Roberts, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett, who joined the majority, calling them “fools and lapdogs for the Rinos [Republicans in Name Only] and the radical-left Democrats.” 

He would not say if he regretted nominating Gorsuch and Barrett, but added of their decision: “I think it’s an embarrassment to their families, if you want to know the truth.” Embarrassment to their families? No president has used such language about judges. If there is any disgrace, it is the other way round. 

Unseemly language and personal attack are the currency of Trumpville. So is blind loyalty. Trump’s satrap, Attorney General Pam Bondi, delivered a performance before the House Judiciary Committee that was for the ages.  

Bondi subjected members of both parties to schoolyard taunts. She contemptuously called Representative Jamie Raskin, the ranking member of the committee, a “washed-up, loser lawyer.” She derided Thomas Massie—a Kentucky Republican who helped force the release of the Epstein documents after Trump and Bondi had kept them hidden—as a “failed politician.” And at one point, in a bizarre non sequitur, she responded to a question she did not like by boasting that the Dow Jones Industrial Average had surpassed 50,000. 

Bondi came into that hearing last week as a joke, a disgrace, the titular head of a Justice Department whose politically motivated prosecutions of James Comey and Letitia James were dismissed by a federal judge, and its requested indictment of six Democratic lawmakers was rejected by a federal grand jury. Its handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files was exposed as a travesty, and its prosecution of a protester who hurled a sandwich at an ICE agent was laughed out of court by a trial jury. 

Bondi has long had the authority to release the Epstein files, but she spent months stonewalling, yielding only after Congress forced her hand. Her department was then tasked with a mandate: release the information while protecting the victims’ privacy, national security, and active investigations. Instead, in a grotesque failure, the DOJ uploaded dozens of unredacted images to its website, including nude photographs of young women and possibly teenagers. As Annie Farmer, a survivor who testified against Ghislaine Maxwell, Mr. Epstein’s partner and associate, noted, it is “hard to imagine a more egregious way of not protecting victims.” Ms. Bondi’s department compounded the betrayal of women who the legal system had already traduced.  

No wonder. Trump has no respect for the law. He regards justices as politicians in robes whom he can threaten and vilify.  

In the tariff case, Gorsuch wrote a stirring defense of the US legislative process, arguing for Congress’s constitutional authority to impose levies. 

“In all, the legislative process helps ensure each of us has a stake in the laws that govern us and in the nation’s future,” he wrote. 

“For some, the weight of those virtues is apparent. For others, it may not seem so obvious. But if history is any guide, the tables will turn and the day will come when those disappointed by today’s result will appreciate the legislative process for the bulwark of liberty it is.” 

Meanwhile, the Crown Prosecution Service in London is forging ahead with the case against Andrew Mountbatten Windsor for sharing state secrets with Jeffrey Epstein without a peep from the king or the prime minister. Makes one wonder why we don’t have a legal system like that.