Copyright The Boston Globe
“That’s exactly why I resigned from the bench,” Wolf told me. “So I could inject my personal opinion about an administration that I feel is endangering and thumbing its nose at the rule of law.” Jackson, who apparently gets paid by the word, added, “The Trump Administration’s policies have been consistently upheld by the Supreme Court as lawful despite an unprecedented number of legal challenges and unlawful lower court rulings.” That’s the point. Wolf resigned so he could say what he really thinks about a Supreme Court, or at least six of its nine justices whom he believes have sold their souls to Trump, becoming his rubber stamp, ruling not by precedent and informed, reasoned interpretation of the Constitution, but by partisan political ideology. For all the nah-nah-nah-nah-nah childishness emanating from the White House, this is my favorite, again, courtesy of Ms. Jackson, who should get a raise for spewing utter nonsense so shamelessly: “Other radical judges that want to complain to the press should at least have the decency to resign before doing so.” Um, Mark Wolf did just that, resigning before he publicly criticized the Trump administration. Wolf just joined the Boston firm of Todd & Weld. Gee, I wonder if Todd & Weld will be the next law firm Trump sues, trying to shake it down down as it has others, some of whom have unconscionably caved. I would pay big money to be in the courtroom to watch Howard Cooper, a founding partner of Todd & Weld and a great champion of civil rights and the First Amendment, go toe-to-toe with some Justice Department flunky from Attorney General Pam Bondi’s clown car. And, one more thing, Ms. Jackson: Calling Mark Wolf a radical judge makes you look silly. Wolf’s life story is an American success story, an immigrant story. His grandfather, Joseph, emigrated from Russia, selling groceries in Dorchester until he was 80. Wolf’s father, Jason, went to Boston Latin School, receiving a public education that opened a whole new world for him. Jason Wolf became a successful accountant whose clients included Red Auerbach, Frank Bellotti, and the actor-comedian Dan Ackroyd. Mark Wolf grew up in Newton and liked nothing better than accompanying his dad to meet with Auerbach, who established the Boston Celtics dynasty, hired the first Black coach in the NBA, put the first all-Black starting five in the NBA, and was a mensch of the highest order. Auerbach’s DEI efforts produced an unmatched number of NBA championships, but the Trumpers would no doubt disapprove. Over deli sandwiches before the games, and Chinese food after, Mark Wolf listened and learned as his dad and Red talked about basketball and life. The White House attempts to portray Wolf as some bomb-tossing radical are laughable. Wolf is as white-shoe, bow-tie establishment as they get. He went to Yale and Harvard Law. He was a federal prosecutor who learned at the elbow of Attorney General Edward Levi, who was appointed by President Gerald Ford to restore credibility and transparency to the Justice Department following the debacle that was Watergate. The irony is Watergate looks like a fraternity prank compared to the Jan. 6 insurrection, which Trump inspired, cheered on, and refused to condemn. As he and his soulless minions try to rewrite the violent insurrection as just a bunch of badly dressed tourists unwittingly and peacefully wandering around the Capitol building, Trump, the law and order president, pardoned all the criminals who rioted and beat up police officers while trying to overturn a democratic election. In the 1980s, Wolf was chief deputy to US Attorney Bill Weld in Boston, and they were hardly “woke.” Wolf was a hard-ass, and would indict a ham sandwich, especially for political corruption. When he got to the bench, some prosecutors complained privately Wolf was a pompous, presumptuous pain in the you-know-what who criticized them for not doing things he would have done as a prosecutor. Some prosecutors even railed against Wolf in public for not recusing himself from some high-profile cases. But, as a judge, Wolf was fearless, holding the Justice Department, a department now presided over by the president’s toadies, to account. A decade after the Globe Spotlight Team revealed that Whitey Bulger, the South Boston gangster whose brother was the president of the Massachusetts state Senate and the most powerful politician in the state, was an informant for the FBI, Wolf put it on the record, ordering Justice Department officials to tell the truth or face contempt charges. Calling Mark Wolf a “Deep State” radical is like calling Pam Bondi a legal giant. It doesn’t fly. Let’s be clear: Mark Wolf, a federal judge who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, not exactly a tool of the radical left, just quit the bench to speak openly about the threat he believes the Trump administration poses to the rule of law that has kept this teetering republic from becoming a banana republic for 249 years. You can criticize him, call him whatever you want, but you can’t deny his credentials, his experience, and his world view. Wolf has been hyper-focused on corruption for much of his career, knowing that at any level, corruption is a rot that eats away at the infrastructure of civil society, weakening and eventually collapsing it. He has long advocated for an international corruption court to target rogue governments and officials as the International Criminal Court has war criminals. His view is that corrupt leaders — Vladimir Putin in Russia, Kim Jong Un in North Korea, or the government of Equatorial Guinea, which stands to reap $7.5 million in taxpayer money to take the people ICE is rounding up — rob their countries of money, sovereignty, and basic freedoms, and should be held to account. Can’t imagine that kind of thinking endears him to the current regime in Washington, for which everything is transactional. And that’s why the people in the White House hate him, why they fear him. Long may he howl, as Duran Duran put it, like the wolf.
