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By Deb Bucknam
On April 3, 2025, a group of 200 Vermont lawyers signed a “Statement in Support of the Rule of Law”. The Statement outlined the signatories’ list of claims demonstrating that President Trump has repeatedly subverted the rule of law.
The Statement is not a lawyerly support of the rule of law; it is a political manifesto.
Yuval Levin, in his new book, “American Covenant”, noted that from the beginning, Americans have had a well-deserved reputation for being “lawyerly”. Levin defines lawyerly as “disputatious, contrarian, and exacting”. This manifesto contains none of those qualities.
The Statement is not disputatious. Its outline of President Trump’s many sins brooks no dissent. It proclaims the President has traitorously violated of his oath of office, and anyone attempting to debate the premises of the manifesto runs the risk of similar moral condemnation.
The Statement is not contrarian. It echoes the catechism the Establishment has repeated about President Trump for years. He is authoritarian. He breaks the law. He is dangerous.
The Statement is not exacting. It contains imprecise verbiage, hyperbole, misleading statements, and even fabrications.
Many of the claims the Statement lists as violations of the rule of law are perfectly legal, such as using constitutional pardon power, deciding which law firms the Administration wants to employ, “proclaiming” that a judge should be impeached, as Democrat leaders proclaimed last year concerning two Supreme Court Justices, changing language on its websites and official documents (the Statement misleadingly claims the Administration “outlawed” such language).
Other actions the Statement claims are “illegal”—where lower court judges have ruled against the Administration– have been overturned by the United States Supreme Court, the Supreme Court essentially finding the lower courts—not the Administration–exceeded their authority. Here are examples in the Statement:
• “Defied orders of federal judges”. Only one judge, Judge Boasberg, ruled the Administration violated his order, but Boasberg’s decision was rebuked by the Supreme Court, who found the Judge had no jurisdiction to rule on the claims. Now Judge Boasberg’s new attempt to find the administration in contempt is an example of judicial overreach about which these lawyers are silent.
• “Illegally impounded funds at federal agencies”. The Supreme Court recently overturned a lower court holding that funds withheld by the Education Department must be reinstated, finding that the lower court had no jurisdiction over the plaintiffs’ claims.
• “Illegally fired thousands of federal employees”. The Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s ruling ordering reinstatement of thousands of probationary employees, finding the plaintiffs had no standing.
Additional listed items in the Statements are either misleading or fabrications:
• “[The Trump administration] has arrested, detained and deported individuals without due process of law.” “Due process of law” misleadingly implies that the full panoply of legal rights is required for “individuals” being deported. As every lawyer knows, sufficient due process is different depending on the circumstances. President Obama deported 5.3 million illegals during his eight years in office. In 2013, when Obama deported nearly 440,000 people, 83% of those deportees were deported by expedited removal processes. No one claimed President Obama violated due process.
• “Threatening Americans’ Social Security benefits.” This an outright fabrication. The United States has a 37 trillion-dollar federal debt. If our enormous debt is not addressed, social security benefits will have to be reduced or eliminated. The Trump administration is trying to save social security by rooting out fraud and abuse, and by downsizing government, not “threatening” social security benefits.
• “Has used the IRS to gain access to millions of Americans’ personal financial information.” This is another fabrication. This apparently concerns a claim that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) gained access to personal financial information. DOGE did not. The United States Treasury has not allowed DOGE to access personal information, and two months ago Treasury assured a DC court that it would not allow such access.
Finally, the Statement fails as a political document. Its hyperbole, lack of supporting evidence, and its smugness are not politically persuasive. It is only effective as self-indulgence. The signatories congratulate themselves as better than the ignorant masses who voted for President Trump. This does nothing to foster compromise or even discussion. It only reinforces the divide between political factions in this country.
In 1787, in a period of heightened controversy and national peril, our forebears met at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, facing an existential threat to the new Republic. Out of the 55 delegates to the Convention, 35 were lawyers. In that group, there were personal hatreds and suspicions, and profound political differences. Yet the delegates were able to reach agreement and compromise to create a timeless document that we still live under nearly 240 years later. How did they do it? George Washington gave the answer: “The Constitution is the result of a spirit of amity and of that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable.”
The attorneys who signed this Statement have much to offer our political discourse. I know and respect many of them. President Trump’s policies opposing anti-Semitism and government waste and corruption; supporting Free Speech, school choice, secure borders, and tariffs were all once championed by political allies of the signatories here. Surely there is common ground on which we can debate, discuss and compromise. It takes courage and integrity to set aside personal differences for the good of the country. The Constitutional Convention lawyers were able to do so. It is time for Vermont lawyers to follow their lead. Let us return to “amity” and “mutual deference”. It is as indispensable today as it was in 1787.
The author has been practicing law in Vermont since graduating from Vermont Law School, cum laude, in 1979. She is a member of the Vermont Bar Association, the New Hampshire Bar Association, and the Federalist Society. She is a member of the Board of the Thaddeus Stevens School. She has been a GOP candidate for Vermont Attorney General.
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Categories: Commentary
Voltaire, knew what to do with lawyer like these……look it up. D Morrisseau
Finally, a breath of fresh air and sanity. Thank you for this Deb Bucknam.
The art of confusion can become a danger to the peasants. Looks like Vermonters had better clean up their own mess in Vermont and let Trump deal with the federal mess.
The task of weaning various people and groups from the national nipple will not be easy. The sound of whines, bawls, screams and invective will fill the air as the agony of withdrawal pangs finds voice.
–Linda Bowles
They are doing lawfare, nothing more, nothing less.
It is very difficult to get justice, more so in Vermont. Sociopaths, Psychopaths and Narcissists are overrepresented in the C-Suite, Sales, Politics and Law.
So, no more masks and no more illegal entry into the United States?
Will they work on removing officials who are sworn to defend the constitution and do the opposite?
Here’s a video…..not the one I was looking for, but should bring people to perhaps think a bit differently.
These would be wonderful videos to have on the VTGOP website. Really it would be good to have in Montpelier and our school systems, but we have to start somewhere.
Saw KrisAnne speak at Ignite Church in Williston a few years ago. She’s great! 🇺🇸
This is the best….it’s really worth a watch…….she does such a wonderful job. This is a wonderful gem, about 15 minutes in…..she is just telling us history and it’s happening again in Vermont today….love, love, love this video
Are we a state? Are we free?
Or are we a colony of the United Nations? Agenda 21?
Neil, You’ll appear this!:
“The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable…”
-Alan Bloom
So true, so true….it’s good to keep discourse open, others may see….
Sun Tzu…..
1. Sun Tzu said: In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to recapture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire than to destroy them.
2. Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.
This is subversion, or the colonization of an entire country, without them knowing it. The primary objective is to educate entire generations in your cultures values, not the country you are taking over, in our case, we are being colonized by the United Nations with their You will own nothing and be happy, Marxist dogma….
And why this video fits perfectly our situation today…..yet it was done decades ago.
Thank you Deb. I sure wish that you were our AG, as you know. You tried.
Thank you Deb. I went to a legislature breakfast the other day and was shocked by the amount of misinformation being stated by the public.
The media and some Vermont beurocrats are intentionally emotionally charging people into a frenzy.
200 Lawyers!!! Can we see that document? I am shocked so many can see so little and are blinded by distain or hatred toward this administration. Where were these so-called lawyers when millions of people and drugs were pouring across our border for 4 scary and exhausting years? I think Vermont has more lawyers per capita than any other state (yeah another slot Vt comes first in). I hope not to engage any of those on that list for any purpose for fear that they may put personal feelings rather than the law first. Thank you Deb Bucknam! Now let’s see that list.
I agree as I couldn’t find a lawyer to represent me when Fletcher Allen sent incorrect COVID-19 testing results to my mom. I had seen her and she stated that she was tested and she didn’t have COVID-19. I then went to see my father and four weeks later he died of COVID. I couldn’t find a lawyer to prosecute Fletcher Allen for sending the wrong test results to over 100 people. She received notification from the hospital after I had seen my father
Christine there is much good ole boy system at work in the Vermont court system, truly.
I want the list of Lawyers who signed because I have two of them , but I will only have one because I know one didn’t sign!
Good, now that their signatures are set upon a letter of political grandstanding BS – let their career suicides commence in haste. Release the letter and release the names! Violation of ethics and bar rules. No licensed attorney should be utilized for representation when their political bias is written in stone. They disclose they are not neutral and they disclose they are not capable of unbiased representation. “Lawyers have an ethical obligation to address and combat bias and discrimination within their practice and the broader legal system. Upholding principles of equality and justice is essential for maintaining public trust in legal rules and ensuring fair treatment for all clients.”
Let’s review what happened when another letter was signed by political “intelligence” operatives worked out:
June 25, 2024 US House.gov: “Today, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the House Committee on the Judiciary, and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released a joint interim staff report titled, “The Intelligence Community 51: How CIA Contractors Colluded with The Biden Campaign to Mislead American Voters.”
The report reveals new information detailing how the highest levels of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), up to and including then-CIA Director Gina Haspel, were made aware of the “Public Statement on the Hunter Biden Emails” by 51 former intelligence officials prior to its approval and publication. The report reveals important new facts, such as how some of the statement’s signatories, including former Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell, were on active contract with the CIA at the time they issued the Hunter Biden statement to discredit damaging allegations about Biden family influence peddling just weeks before the 2020 presidential election.”
https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/the_intelligence_community_51-_how_cia_contractors_colluded_with_the_biden_campaign_to_mislead_american_voters.pdf
January 2025 White House.gov: Sec. 3. Implementation. (a) Effective immediately, the Director of National Intelligence, in consultation with the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, shall revoke any current or active clearances held by the following individuals: (51 names of the signers listed)
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/holding-former-government-officials-accountablefor-election-interference-and-improper-disclosure-of-sensitive-governmental-information/
I warn professional, licensed, installed political operatives to cease and desist their coup and lawfare warfare against the People of the United States. You know not what you are doing when you throw your sworn ethics and morals aside for greed. Shame on you all! Shame on your profession for allowing such debauchery to go on with impunity. An embarrassment and a stain on the our, so called, justice system.