Ex-Watergate prosecutor: Texas gov’s 'unconstitutional' border moves threaten America’s 'existence'

02 February 2024

In the past, former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks has praised the late Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona) and other conservatives for standing up to President Richard Nixon during the 1970s and putting country over party. But Wine-Banks believes that former President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement have taken the U.S. into dangerous territory in recent years, and she is vehemently critical of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's handling of the U.S./Mexico border crisis in an op-ed published by MSNBC's website on February 1.

"I am not an alarmist by nature," Wine-Banks writes. "From my time as a prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal, I have never doubted that justice would prevail or that democracy would survive. I never doubted that our union would last — until now. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's actions at the southern border and his reaction to the Supreme Court's decision in favor of the federal government make me fear for the continued existence of the United States of America."

The former Watergate prosecutor adds, "So does his signing of an expansive new law that gives the state's law enforcement powers over immigration that rightly belong to the federal government, not to Texas or any other state. In fact, should the Supreme Court rule against the Biden Administration's challenge to that law, that would have consequences for every federal policy, not just immigration policy."

Abbott, Wine-Banks argues, made an "unconstitutional move" when he "placed a 1000-foot-long string of buoys, separated by serrated saw blades and supporting a submerged mesh net, in the middle of the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, Texas."

"When federal agents cut that wire last fall," Wine-Banks notes, "Texas sued the U.S. for damage to state property. Last week, the Supreme Court ruled against Abbott and affirmed the Department of Homeland Security's right to remove the wire and to have access to the border to carry out the department's duties."

Defying the High Court, Wine-Banks stresses, is a line that Nixon wouldn't cross.

"Abbott had his chance to convince the Supreme Court that he was right," the former Watergate prosecutor explains, "but he lost, and he must obey that ruling. The High Court has been the final arbiter of disputes like this for hundreds of years. When a unanimous court ordered Nixon to hand over the tapes that ended his presidency, he did so. I hope that is not necessary for President Joe Biden to nationalize the state guard, but it may be all that stands in the way of the end of the United States of America as then-President Barack Obama said we were — and the establishment of the Red States and the Blue States."

Jill Wine-Banks' full MSNBC op-ed is available at this link.

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