Milei Suffers Self-Inflicted Wounds
First he endorsed a meme coin that spiked and collapsed. Now a shady judge.
By Mary Anastasia O’Grady
Why did Argentine President Javier Milei put a federal judge with a weak résumé and a reputation for assisting corrupt politicians on the country’s Supreme Court last week?
Even the president’s supporters are having a hard time explaining a move that goes against Argentina’s pressing need for the rule of law.
Mr. Milei’s nomination of Judge Ariel Lijo to the high court last year met a barrage of objections from legal scholars.
I described some of those objections in a May Americas column, “Milei’s Supreme Court Misstep.”
They included a complaint against Judge Lijo filed by the Buenos Aires City Bar Association and two nongovernmental organizations after an audit by Argentina’s Council of Magistrates of excessive delays of corruption investigations.
The Senate didn’t take up the nomination, but Mr. Milei stuck with his pick.
Earlier this month, in an extraordinary session, the Lijo nomination failed to make it out of a Senate committee.
Shortly thereafter, with the Senate in recess, the president used an executive decree to designate Judge Lijo and Manuel García-Mansilla, a well-respected law professor, to fill two empty Supreme Court seats.
The Buenos Aires City Bar Association called the recess appointment of Judge Lijo “particularly reprehensible” and a “sad day” for Argentina.
In reference to the Senate’s refusal to confirm the nomination, the association said: “The overwhelming rejection of Lijo has no precedents; his notorious lack of qualifications for such a high office, both technically and morally, was made evident over the course of a year.”
Judge Lijo denies any impropriety.
Opposition to the nomination from the Argentine right and institutionalists is strong.
Many who support the Milei agenda begged the president to choose a candidate who could be confirmed by the Senate.
Mr. Milei’s decision to plow ahead suggests that Judge Lijo is somehow important to his reforms.
Yet it also contradicts his commitment to cleaning out the crooked political elite that has done so much damage to Argentina as a destination for capital.
Through the end of January, Mr. Milei’s approval rating hovered in the mid 40% range.
That’s below the 56% of the vote he won in October 2023.
But it’s higher than his most recent predecessors enjoyed at the same time in their administrations.
Mr. Milei’s political capital has been largely preserved because he has delivered on the most immediate voter expectations.
While annualized inflation is expected to finish the year around 25%, that’s down sharply from 211% in 2023.
Spending cuts, deregulation and greater optimism generated by his pro-market rhetoric have led the economy out of recession.
The nation may pay later for an overvalued peso, but for now the strong currency is giving the middle class the opportunity to travel abroad.
The Milei brand also has international cachet.
He wowed the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington last month when he presented an outsize chain saw to Elon Musk onstage.
The head of President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency declared it “the chain saw for bureaucracy!”
The trip included a brief meeting with Mr. Trump, who now seems to tell Mr. Milei what to do in global matters.
The Argentine once backed Ukraine against Russia, but his government abstained last month when it had a chance to denounce Vladimir Putin’s invasion at the United Nations.
Mr. Milei’s self-confidence may have increased when he dodged a Senate investigation for his role in the boom and bust of a meme coin called $Libra.
On the evening of Feb. 14 he endorsed vivalalibertadproject.com, which, he wrote on X, aimed to raise money by launching the coin.
His X post included the identification number necessary to buy $Libra.
According to TRM Labs, a website that monitors and investigates fraud and financial crime in the crypto space, “$LIBRA market capitalization reached about $4.5 billion.
“However, within three hours of the initial post by President Milei,” its “value plunged by about 89 percent.”
Around 12:30 a.m. on Feb. 15, Mr. Milei unendorsed $Libra on X: “I was not aware of the details of the project and after having become aware of it I decided not to continue spreading the word (that is why I have deleted the tweet).”
The rout had all the hallmarks of a scam in which developers provoke a buying frenzy and then cash out before an unsuspecting public figures out it’s been had.
A criminal investigation is under way.
Nevertheless, by the time the president returned to Argentina from the U.S. on Feb. 23, a Senate investigation of “cryptogate” had been blocked by one vote.
Judge Lijo must resign as a federal judge before he can move to the high court.
His recess appointment will end next year without Senate confirmation, which seems unlikely.
So he’s trying to get an unprecedented leave of absence.
More rule bending.
The Senate is back in session this week and can still revoke the Lijo designation.
But the question remains: Why is his appointment so crucial to Mr. Milei’s government?
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