This is not hyperbole.

Never have the stakes been higher, but neither has the choice been so easy to make.

This is a video that I dreaded I would have to make.

I was really looking forward to the possibility that the Republican nominee would be anyone other than Donald Trump.

If it had been Mitt Romney, Nikki Haley, or even Ron DeSantis, this video endorsement would have simply explained that you should vote for whoever you wanted based on your policy preferences, because from a legal perspective, it would have been safe to vote for either candidate.

And it was going to be gloriously clickbaity with probably the same title and thumbnail that I used here.

But unfortunately, this isn't that video because the Republicans nominated Donald Trump, again.

Others will explain the policy differences between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump.

But that's not the point of this video.

I have very strong policy preferences.

And while they do come out from time to time because law is the result of politics, this video's endorsement is not based on those policy preferences.

And when I talk about a policy matter, I'm talking about the laws that a president might sign or the actions they might take, things that they can legitimately do under our system of governance.

And those preferences are partisan, and that's fine.

Reasonable minds can differ about those policies.

But this is not about policy.

This is about the law itself.

This is an endorsement based on the law from a group of lawyers based on their experience and knowledge of the law.

And it's about the preservation of our democracy.

So not to bury the lead, Legal Eagle cannot endorse Donald Trump for president.

For the good of our country, the right vote is for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Donald Trump represents an affront to the law.

Kamala Harris will uphold the law.

This election is a choice between a criminal or a prosecutor.

And I'd like to explain why this distinction is the only one that matters in this election.

Because Donald Trump represents a credible threat to the rule of law, free speech, and free elections.

And without the rule of law, free speech, and free elections, the rest simply doesn't matter.

At that point, your policy preferences are irrelevant.

We believe that if you care about the rule of law, the evenhandedness of our governmental and judicial systems, and want to make sure that your vote counts in the future, you cannot vote for Donald Trump in this election.

And I'd like to make the case that if you do care about the rule of law, Kamala Harris is the only choice.

First, not to state the obvious, but Trump is a criminal who has no respect for the law and seeks to flaunt the law for his personal gain.

Trump is a convicted felon many times over.

Trump paid off an adult film actress to stop her from going public with their relationship, and then falsified business records to hide a violation of election law.

A jury convicted him of all 34 charges related to the incident, which was meant to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.

Sentencing has been delayed because of the election.

Additionally, Trump sexually assaulted E.

Jean Carroll, then repeatedly defamed her.

After Carroll won two lawsuits against Trump, the judge ruled that the jury had found that Trump's actions were considered rape according to the common definition of the word.

Trump's apparent success as a businessman was built on fraud and a total disregard for the law.

Earlier this year, a New York court ruled that Trump fraudulently misrepresented his financial figures to get cheaper loans and other benefits.

This went on for decades.

Trump is now banned from serving as an officer and director of any New York corporation.

He was barred from taking out loans from a New York bank, and now must pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines.

And there are myriad of other cases.

Trump was forced to pay $25 million to students who attended Trump University because the real estate seminars were a scam.

Trump is banned from running a charity in New York because he misused charity funds for his political campaign.

And that list of verdicts, settlements, and convictions is likely to grow substantially.

Trump was indicted for illegally retaining highly classified defense documents and obstruction of justice.

The most serious charge against Trump is that he retained national defense information, which is a violation of the Espionage Act.

Trump kept these secret documents at his private club, a place that has been described as a haven for spies.

Trump was indicted in Washington, DC for conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights, all in an effort to overturn the 2020 election results.

In Georgia, Trump was charged with committing a range of crimes related to the 2020 election in that state, including racketeering, solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer, and false statements.

And Trump has been impeached twice, first related to Ukraine.

Trump's first impeachment occurred following a House inquiry that determined that he solicited foreign interference in his re-election bid.

And Trump obstructed the investigation by instructing his administration officials to disregard subpoenas for documents and testimony.

Trump tried to force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden by withholding military aid.

And Trump also tried to promote a conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was responsible for interfering in the 2016 presidential election.

And his second impeachment was incitement to insurrection.

The House of Representatives impeached Trump for encouraging his supporters to storm the Capitol in an attempt to disregard the certification of the 2020 presidential election.

Now, obviously, both times he escaped conviction in the Senate.

But remember, impeachment is a political remedy, not a legal one.

But the Trump bipartisan impeachments were unprecedented.

And even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suggested that Trump should be convicted in court, regardless of the impeachment in Congress.

There's a disturbing pattern of Trump's crimes.

They are explicitly intended to subvert the democratic process.

Trump has run for president three times in the last decade.

And each time, he's tried to illegally and improperly influence the outcome of the election.

In 2016, Trump engaged in the hush money scheme to prevent news of his affair with Stormy Daniels from going public.

And the Mueller report documents the many contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives, concluding that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election by waging social media disinformation campaigns and by hacking the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.

Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.

The report also details 10 instances where Trump attempted to interfere with the investigation and obstruct justice. 34 individuals and three companies were indicted because of the Mueller report, including Trump allies, Roger Stone, Mike Flynn, and Paul Manafort, who you will recall was Trump's campaign chairman.

If a man is judged by the company that he keeps, Trump has surrounded himself with corruption.

His 2016 campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and vice chairman, Rick Gates, were convicted of conspiracy against the United States.

His advisors, Roger Stone, Peter Navarro, and George Papadopoulos committed obstruction of justice, contempt of Congress, and making false statements.

Trump organization CFO, Alan Weisselberg, was convicted of tax fraud.

Trump's national security advisor, Mike Flynn, lied under oath.

Chief strategist, Steve Bannon, was convicted of contempt of Congress, and that's only the beginning of his troubles.

His former personal attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen, was convicted of campaign finance violations.

His fundraiser, Elliot Broidy, went down for corruption and bribery.

Even his lawyers, Ken Chesebrough, Jenna Ellis, and Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to crimes related to the 2020 election.

And unbelievably, on his way out the door, Trump granted clemency to his corrupt political advisors, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, and George Papadopoulos.

In 2020, Trump did everything he could to overturn the results of that election, even if that meant disenfranchising millions of voters.

He pressured the governor and secretary of state of Georgia to find him votes, just enough to win.

And not for nothing, he encouraged the riot outside and the siege inside of the US Capitol to stop the 2020 election.

For the first time since 1820, the Capitol was laid siege.

He encouraged the rioters to kill Mike Pence.

He sought to delay the results of the election by any means necessary.

And as detailed in the DC prosecution, this was only the most visible part of a larger conspiracy to make sure that the election certification never happened.

As you can see, many of Trump's crimes and conduct strike at the heart of our democracy.

They are both self-serving and anti-democratic.

The hush money payments were meant to keep the information from hurting him in the election.

The Ukrainian blackmail scheme was for the purpose of soliciting a bribe in the form of fabricating dirt on his presumptive political rival, Joe Biden.

And he conspired to bring down Congress.

And here we are in 2024, and Trump is once again waging war on the democratic process.

He's already declaring the election rigged against him.

His running mate denies that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

His handpicked leader in the House of Representatives won't commit to certifying the results.

And he pressured Republicans in swing states to pass legislation and rules preventing the states from counting votes until election night.

He subverted democracy before and is trying to do it again, right in front of our faces.

Which takes me to the next point.

Donald Trump will destroy our core freedoms for his own personal gain.

Trump frequently undermines free speech by attacking the media, individual journalists, social media platforms, and critics.

He retaliated against John Bolton for writing a book, which is the ongoing subject of my lawsuit against the government.

A never sent draft resignation letter by General Mark Milley said Trump was quote, doing great and irreparable harm to the US in 2020 after police used tear gas and batons to clear protesters and journalists out of the then president's way for a photo op in Lafayette Square.

Law enforcement used tear gas because Trump was told he couldn't just shoot the protesters.

He has repeatedly called the press the enemy of the people and weaponized the DOJ against certain reporters.

Trump said he would revoke the broadcast license of CBS, which isn't a thing you can do because they interviewed his opponent, Kamala Harris.

And Trump has a game plan if he's elected again.

It's called Project 2025.

Project 2025 is a bespoke manual for fascism.

It lays out exactly what Trump can do, how he can do it, and who he can staff the government with.

And the worst part is that it includes a whole bunch of things that are arguably legal, but are just old timey fascism.

Trump wants to do one of those one weird tricks, but for ending civil liberties.

For example, the Comstock Act of 1873 is a federal law that regulated the distribution of materials considered to be obscene, lewd, or immoral.

The law primarily targeted materials related to birth control, abortion, pornography, and contraceptives.

The law is still on the books and Trump and his allies want to enforce it once again to ban medical abortions and contraceptive and criminally convict doctors.

And then there's the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, one of the four laws known collectively as the Alien and Sedition Acts, passed by Congress during the presidency of John Adams.

The Alien Enemies Act gave the president the authority to detain, arrest, imprison, or deport non-citizens from nations that were considered to be hostile to the United States.

And Trump has said he wants to use this law to use the military on American soil to inter and deport tens of millions of immigrants.

And he doesn't just want to stop there.

He wants to use the Alien Enemies Act to use the military to deport legal immigrants, including dreamers and Haitian immigrants, who are legally residing in the United States.

And who, I will remind you, despite the blood libel levied by Trump, did not eat any cats or dogs.

That was a complete fabrication.

And under the same auspices, Trump has also vowed to use the military against Democrats, who he claims are the enemies from within.

You don't have to take our word for it.

Many of Trump's key appointees and advisors will absolutely not vote for him in 2024.

The list is vast and growing.

It includes former Vice President Mike Pence, former Chair of the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milley, former National Security Advisor, John Bolton, former White House Chief of Staff, John Kelly, former Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, former Attorney General, Bill Barr, former Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, and former Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson.

And this is merely the tip of the iceberg.

There are hundreds, if not thousands more.

There has never been an administration in history where so many of the people that the President himself appointed have changed their mind and stated that the President is unfit for office.

In part, they recognize that Trump, with full faculties, was a threat to democracy.

General Mark Milley called Trump, quote, a fascist to the core.

But it's clear that Trump is also in mental and physical decline.

His speeches are word salads.

He doesn't live in the same reality that we do, and he just simply makes up facts all day long.

And while losing a step when you're almost 80 is not necessarily incompatible with a successful presidency, here, the lack of mental faculty means he's more likely to be taken advantage of by his advisors and more quickly to jump to authoritarian tactics.

History has shown that Donald Trump will always take the easy road, and in a second term, there won't be anyone to curb those tendencies.

Which brings us to the economy.

Economic policies are usually based in policy preferences.

There are some who welcome Trump's plan to place tariffs on all foreign goods.

In other words, a sales tax of up to 200% on anything made outside the United States, a tax that you, the consumer, would pay, which would cause all Americans to pay thousands more per year.

In one instance, an iPhone might cost as much as $4,000.

And then, of course, other countries would retaliate by levying the same tariffs on US goods, which would kill US exports.

But that's not necessarily illegal.

But those who think that Trump would be better for the economy fail to take into consideration the effect of Trump's lawlessness on this country and the economy.

The only other economic plan that he talks about would be to deport tens of millions of immigrants, many of whom came to this country as children and lived as Americans for decades.

This policy, while likely completely infeasible, would also be a disaster for the economy and do next to nothing for high prices.

But more importantly, Trump's destruction of the rule of law, free speech, and free elections would itself be terrible for the economy.

Individuals and businesses rely on the notion that government will apply the law even-handedly, and they even require the freedom to be critical of the government without fear of government reprisal.

And they need to know that when a politician is voted out of office, they will leave peacefully.

And they need to know that a politician will not use the office for personal gain at the expense of their country, unlike Trump, who steered government and foreign contracts to his own businesses, like the Trump Hotel, and then promptly sold that when he left office.