“J’Accuse”; I Accuse

Like Emil Zola, “J’Accuse”, I Accuse.

On Nov. 21, 1945, Justice Robert Jackson of the United States Supreme Court presented the main prosecution opening in Nuremberg at the trial of 23 of the highest ranking members of the Nazi Party, the Nazi government in Germany from 1933 to 1945 and the Nazi administration of captured and conquered Europe from Poland in 1939 to and through the end of WWII.

Justice Jackson took a leave from the nation’s high court to perform this international service at the request of President Harry S Truman. The trial lasted 8 months. At least one of the defendants I believe was not present and tried in absentia. Even higher ranking Nazis, starting of course with Adolph Hitler and including Heinrich Himmler, had escaped justice by committing suicide. Another, Martin Borman, was never, has never been found. The leading defendant, Reichsmarshal Herman Goering, though convicted, cheated the hangman by killing himself while imprisoned by taking cyanide. At least two were actually acquitted, others got prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life and a dozen were hanged at Spandau Prison in Nuremberg.

Justice Jackson’s opening and closing statements are remarkable documents. I recommend them to you if you want to understand the breadth, depth and extent of German cruelty, perversity and criminality in everything that nation did for 12 years but especially in the six years of the war. None of that needs to be re-litigated. That was done at Nuremberg and has been ever since and ever will be by history and human conscience.

In his opening statement, Justice Jackson set out to establish the basis for the indictments that charged the defendants with criminal planning of a criminal war, with mass murder, conspiracy and with Crimes Against Humanity. Early in his opening, he said this:

“What makes this inquest significant is that these prisoners represent sinister influences that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust. We will show them to be living symbols of racial hatreds, of terrorism and violence, and of the arrogance and cruelty of power.”

On that basis, given the events of the past month in the United States of America including the criminal, heart-wrenching ripping of tiny children from the arms of their mothers and fathers; their imprisonment in Concentration Camps, their dispersal throughout the United States without any record of their names, their parents’ names, their places of birth, their ages — without any means to find their parents (themselves cruelly and unjustly hounded and prosecuted by a criminal regime holding the government of the United States in its grip) — without any means to know who their parents are, where they are or how to reunite the children and the parents — on the basis of all this,

J’Accuse — I accuse entirely and comprehensively within the clear understanding of the definition and meaning given this charge in the charges and findings of the Nuremberg Tribunal — I accuse:

I accuse President Donald Trump of Crimes Against Humanity.

I accuse Vice President Mike Pence of Crimes Against Humanity.

I accuse Secretary of Homeland Security Kristin Nielsen of Crimes Against Humanity.

I accuse Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar of Crimes Against Humanity.

I accuse Presidential Counselor Stephen Miller of Crimes Against Humanity.

I accuse Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions of Crimes Against Humanity.

I accuse  Presidential Advisor Ivanka Trump of Crimes Against Humanity.

I accuse Presidential Advisor Jared Kushner of Crimes Against Humanity.

I accuse Presidential Counselor Kelly Conway of Crimes Against Humanity.

I accuse Presidential Press  Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Crimes Against Humanity.

I accuse Pesidential Chief of Staff John Kelly of Crimes Against Humanity.

I accuse Chief White House Counsel Donald McGahan of Crimes Against Humanity

I accuse all officers of the United States Immigration and Enforcement Agency of Crimes Against Humanity

I accuse all Trump voters and rally-goers of Crimes Against Humanity.

“J’Accuse” wrote Emil Zola.

Now, I accuse.

Join me in making these accusations.