Side Note

Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow is in a legal pissing match with a Satanist

If you’re seen the recent news that in January, Donald Trump’s lawyers sent a memo to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office arguing essentially that Donald Trump can do whatever he wants because he’s the President, you might have wondered who in good hell would have thought such an argument might fly. Well, the answer is John Dowd and Jay Sekulow, two extremely conservative legal minds who have some, erm, peculiar priorities.

Shortly after signing onto Team Trump, Dowd forwarded an email around that espoused pro-Confederacy views, and refused to provide an explanation to The New York Times when they called him out on it. Dowd, who left Trump’s legal team in March, does not seem like a very nice person.

As for Jay Sekulow, when he’s not doing Trump stuff, he serves as Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, a right-wing legal advocacy group that’s basically the evangelical conservative answer to the ACLU. The organization has fought to criminalize homosexuality in Africa, defund Planned Parenthood, and has petitions on their site denouncing “Big Abortion” and the “Rogue Leftist State,” both of which are not real things.

Jay Sekulow’s least favorite song, probably

Recently, Sekulow and the ALCJ filed an amicus brief in response to a lawsuit filed by Ken Mayle, a self-described non-theistic Satanist who was suing the government to get “In God We Trust” removed from U.S. currency. On the surface, this sounds like an extremely silly lawsuit, and it would be, if the lawyer filing on Mayle’s behalf were not Michael Newdow, a secular legal activist who only nearly got the words “under God” removed from the Pledge of Allegiance. Newdow’s had “In God We Trust” in his sights since 2005, so naturally, he is one of the ACLJ’s favorite punching bags. In October, Mayle’s initial suit was tossed out of court, so he and Newdow began the process of appealing the ruling. The ALCJ was amped to argue with a Satanist, and so they filed the aforementioned brief.

Last week, a judge dismissed Mayle the Satanist’s appeal on the grounds that he had “not plausibly alleged that the motto’s placement on currency increases the burden on practicing Satanism.” The ALCJ was amped yet again, as was Sekulow himself, who took a break from going down with the Trump ship to tweet, “Our #NationalMotto will remain on US currency, where it belongs. #ACLJVictory.”

We can only hope that Michael Newdow files yet another appeal and takes Mayle’s Satanic cause all the way to the Supreme Court.

It goes without saying that we’re Team Satan on this one.