"You can always find a lawyer."
Special Prosecutor Nadia Rahman began with what she called the "foundational lie" of the crackdown: that legality could be manufactured by memo.
"This case is not about immigration policy," Rahman said. "This case is about state power used as a weapon against the vulnerable, and then turned inward against citizens."
Her opening previewed evidence, including internal White House and DHS emails, draft executive orders, and recorded meetings recovered from personal devices after the war. The documents, she said, show a deliberate progression of attacks, first on immigrants, then on American citizens:
Dehumanizing rhetoric targeting migrants, then protesters, then journalists, then "disloyal state officials."
Administrative punishment; abuse of government powers against American citizens, including illegal wiretapping, travel restrictions, and IRS audits against critics.
Physical coercion, including mass arrests at protests, militarized raids framed as security operations against domestic terrorists, and detentions that blurred into disappearance.
The day's first major exhibit was not a photograph. It was a flowchart: emergency authorities invoked, agencies involved, signature blocks, normal review bypassed. A diagram of how a democracy can be disassembled without ever announcing its own destruction.
I can't help but suspect that all this barking and growling about taking Greenland by forceis really, in the end, about telling Russia and China: Hands Off. Unfortunately, Greenland is stuck in the middle of all this totalitarian posturing. And... Trump clearly is stupid enough to make the situation far more dangerous than it already seems to be.
At least, imo, that is really what is going on here.