Forget about such silly inconsistency as pardoning the January 6th insurrectionists for beating capital police. President Trump doesn’t let such hobgoblins get in the way of pretending that he, convicted felon, is a stalwart defender of police. Now that he’s got nearly a billion dollars worth of pro bono legal representation in his pocket, he’s found a use for it that will cost him nothing while enabling him to be that same guy who told cops that slamming a few heads against the hood of a cruiser wouldn’t bother him.

Safe communities rely on the backbone and heroism of a tough and well-equipped police force.  My Administration is steadfastly committed to empowering State and local law enforcement to firmly police dangerous criminal behavior and protect innocent citizens.

When local leaders demonize law enforcement and impose legal and political handcuffs that make aggressively enforcing the law impossible, crime thrives and innocent citizens and small business owners suffer.  My Administration will therefore:  establish best practices at the State and local level for cities to unleash high-impact local police forces; protect and defend law enforcement officers wrongly accused and abused by State or local officials; and surge resources to officers in need.  My Administration will work to ensure that law enforcement officers across America focus on ending crime, not pursuing harmful, illegal race- and sex-based “equity” policies.

The result will be a law-abiding society in which tenacious law enforcement officers protect the innocent, violations of law are not tolerated, and American communities are safely enjoyed by all their citizens again.

While it’s unclear that police were engaged in “pursuing harmful, illegal race- and sex-based ‘equity’ policies,” there is some merit to the claim that police were being demonized for doing their job lawfully and properly based upon the race of those involved. When a white cop killed a black teenager, Ma’Khia Bryant, who was about to stab another black teenaged girl, he was vilified for saving the victim’s life.

At the same time, there have been no shortage of acts of police misconduct, violence and violations of constitutional rights where cops were acting unlawfully, often criminally, and saved only by the blight of Qualified Immunity. Distinguishing between the two is why they build courthouses.

But the new Executive Order, “Strengthening  and Unleashing (?) America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens,” put the cart way before the horse. After all, whether someone is a criminal is what the legal system exists to decide, and the cops are supposed to protect people even when they’re not quite innocent or citizens. But expecting legal coherence is asking far too much, particularly given the bizarre “surge of resources” verbiage. And why would Trump care about such niceties when he has a cohort to pander to in order to pretend he’s the tough guy who cares about cops except when they’re being beaten by his supporters?

So what’s a guy with billions of dollars worth of biglaw legal representation in his pocket to do?

The Attorney General shall take all appropriate action to create a mechanism to provide legal resources and indemnification to law enforcement officers who unjustly incur expenses and liabilities for actions taken during the performance of their official duties to enforce the law.

Some might point out to our stable genius president that if cops “incur liabilities,” then a court has determined that they deserved the outcome because they engaged in wrongdoing. That’s how the system works, something Trump ought to know a lot about. Of course, whether a police officer’s conduct was unlawful or unconstitutional is the sort of thing best determined after the action has been completed, but this EO presumes that any claim against the police is unjust, and this is where he puts pro bono to use.

This mechanism shall include the use of private-sector pro bono assistance for such law enforcement officers. (Emphasis added.)

While it might appear initially that the federal government would use either its muscle or money to back cops who were held to have engaged in misconduct, violence or violation of constitutional rights, this last sentence reveals Trump’s intention of using “private-sector pro bono” legal representation to defend cops from their own wrongdoing.

Was this what Paul Weiss had in mind when it dropped to its knees before Trump and begged for mercy?

Further, the EO seeks to undo pretty much every reform instituted over the past decade, from providing military equipment to local police to expanding legal protections because QI wasn’t good enough to revising, rescinding and concluding consent decrees for oversight of departments engaged in patterns of unlawful and unconstitutional conduct. Whether the use of hyperbolic language will make cops feel empowered to beat people at their leisure remains to be seen, but it certainly seeks to remove the guardrails that might cause a bad cop to think twice before beating a perp for kicks, pardoned insurrectionists notwithstanding.

Update: Over at Techdirt, Tim Cushing shreds this EO at greater length, dealing with those portions beyond the pro bono representation issue here.