Donald Trump's assertion that, as president, he could make up charges to prosecute political opponents runs contrary to 40-plus years of U.S. policy on justice

Donald Trump takes questions from the press

 

Polls indicate Americans are concerned that President Joe Biden, at age 80, is too old and has shaky mental acuity that might not allow him to serve a full second term if re-elected. Garbled attempts at public speaking involving Biden's likely opponent, Republican Donald Trump, suggest Americans are worried about the wrong candidate. That is particularly true when you consider the content of Trump's speeches -- on those occasions when you can make out what he is trying to say.

Consider a speech Trump gave at a campaign rally in South Dakota on Sept. 8. Trump was relatively coherent, but what he said -- not the way he said it -- should scare the bejeebers out of anyone who cares about the rule of law and America's democracy. Trump stated that, if elected in 2024, he would have the capacity to prosecute his political opponents, even suggesting he could make up criminal charges against them. This is from a report at meidastouch.com on the event:

Trump mused about the possibility of indicting opponents even when they did nothing wrong, claiming that he would ask his attorney general to "indict him on income tax evasion" and that the Attorney General will just "figure it out."

This is from a report on the event at CNN:

In his remarks in South Dakota – where he accepted the endorsement of Gov. Kristi Noem, a potential vice presidential pick if he is the GOP nominee – Trump complained that he was the victim of “corrupt and blatant” victimization and “election interference.” He said the cases filed against him would “allow” him, if elected president, to call up his attorney general and demand an investigation into his political adversaries. “Indict my opponent, he’s doing well,” Trump said, implying that was exactly what Biden had done. The ex-president used a sarcastic tone in the raucous atmosphere of a campaign rally, so context is important. But given his history of following through on threats, his comments may end up being predictive if he wins in 2024. 

Anyone with a third-grade education should know that's not how our government works -- not even close. But recent reports indicate Trump is not concerned about how government in the U.S. is supposed to work -- in fact, he shows signs of not being interested in governance at all.

Rather he intends to become "president for life," turning his administration into a dictatorship. In fact, Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic, says Trump is running for president only because he hopes it will help him stay out of prison. Should that alarm the American electorate? Absolutely, according to the CNN report: 

[Trump] frequently argued as president that he had all but unfettered constitutional power, which is an attitude that is clearly in evidence in three of his indictments – over attempts to overthrow the 2020 election and over his hoarding of classified documents after leaving the White House.

So, when Trump issues threats on the campaign trail, it’s worth listening.

How wildly unlawful is Trump's vision of being able to prosecute his political opponents, even concocting bogus charges against perceived foes who had not violated the law in any way? Here is the short answer: Since the late 1970s, during the post-Watergate era when our country still was reeling from Richard Nixon's scandal-riddled administration, U.S. policy has been that the Department of Justice (DOJ) will operate independently of the White House -- that the president will have no say in the DOJ's charging or non-charging decisions. The Jimmy Carter administration produced the first memorandum spelling out this policy -- and it has been followed by almost every president (of both political parties). From Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, every president has signed off on the idea that the White House should not influence DOJ decision-making. The only exception might be Donald Trump; it is unclear if the Trump White House followed the law on DOJ independence during his first term -- and he clearly has no intention of following the law during a second term. Here is a memorandum on the subject from the current attorney general, Merrick Garland.  

A 2017 report from protectdemocracy.org spells out the history of DOJ independence from the White House and also addresses reports that the Trump administration might have violated the law:

The promise that every American will be treated equally under the law and that none is above the law is a bedrock principle of American democracy. The freedom from political influence — real or perceived — on law enforcement underpins all of our other freedoms. By contrast, political influence or interference in law enforcement has been a clear hallmark distinguishing authoritarian regimes from true democracies around the globe.¹

For decades, to prevent even the appearance of political meddling in federal law enforcement, Republican and Democratic administrations alike have had written policies governing White House contacts with agencies and offices within the executive branch that have investigatory and enforcement responsibilities. To ensure the impartial application of the laws, these policies have extended to White House contacts with any executive branch agency or office regarding investigations, enforcement actions, regulatory decisions, grants and contracts involving specific parties.

To date, the Trump Administration has not articulated publicly a White House policy on agency contacts. Further, multiple reported contacts between senior political staff at the White House and enforcement officers at the Department of Justice (DOJ) appear to have violated 40 years of accepted, bipartisan policy. In light of the questions that its actions have raised, and in order to demonstrate its commitment to upholding the rule of law, the Trump White House must release and abide by an agency contacts policy that is consistent with accepted, bipartisan norms.

In recent weeks, a number of reports have raised questions regarding whether the White House has in place and is abiding by an agency-contacts policy like ones that have governed White House agency contacts for the past 40 years in both Democratic and Republican administrations. This past weekend, The New York Times reported that White House Counsel Donald McGahn “was working to secure access to what Mr. McGahn believed to be an order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorizing some form of surveillance related to Mr. Trump and his associates.”² (The White House later attempted to walk back claims of such an effort). Last month, multiple publications reported that the White House asked the FBI to refute reports that Trump campaign advisors had contacts with Russia during the presidential campaign.³ A week prior to that, the New York Daily News reported that White House senior Adviser Stephen Miller, who is not a lawyer, called the home of Robert Capers, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, to dictate how he should defend the Administration’s travel ban.⁴

There is a long-standing and bipartisan belief that the laws of the United States should be administered and enforced in an impartial manner and, accordingly, that there should not be an appearance that politics plays any part in the Department of Justice’s investigative and enforcement operations.⁵ This is because the effectiveness of the Department of Justice rests on the public’s confidence — and the reality — that DOJ is above ideology and partisanship in its enforcement of the law.⁶

The need for the Department of Justice to be insulated from the reality and the appearance of politics is reinforced in federal law. The Hatch Act places restrictions on the political participation of government employees in certain agencies where it is particularly important that there is no appearance of politicization, like the military and intelligence agencies.⁷ These restrictions apply to career and political appointees in the Department of Justice and FBI.⁸

Stemming from this basic principle that the investigative and prosecutorial powers of the DOJ should be free of partisan influence, it has been consistent policy for 40 years to limit communications between the White House and the DOJ, including the FBI.

As for details about the Trump administration's possible violation of U.S. policy, they can be found at this Time magazine article, under the headline "The FBI Talked to the White House About Its Russia Probe. That Was Probably Against the Rules":

FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe may have violated multiple existing Justice Department rules controlling contacts between the bureau and White House officials when they spoke earlier this month with White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus about their ongoing investigation into Russia’s influence operation against the 2016 U.S. presidential election, according to several former senior Justice Department officials. 

The first questionable contact came when McCabe spoke with Priebus for five minutes after a 7:30 a.m. meeting at the White House on Feb. 15 on an unrelated intelligence issue. The day before, the New York Times had reported that Trump’s campaign and other Trump associates had multiple contacts with known agents of Russian intelligence in the year before the election.

At the White House meeting, McCabe told Priebus, ‘I want you to know story in NYT is BS,” according to senior Administration officials who briefed reporters on Feb. 24.

Priebus asked McCabe what could be done to push back, saying the White House was “getting crushed” on the story. McCabe demurred, and then later called back to say, “We’d love to help but we can’t get into the position of making statements on every story.”

FBI Director James Comey later called Priebus himself and repeated McCabe’s statements about The New York Times story. Comey also said he was unwilling to speak publicly about the piece but agreed to let Priebus cite senior intelligence officials in his pushback, the officials said.

The back-and-forth may have broken internal rules in place for decades, according to former officials.

While serious, the Comey-Priebus interactions appear to be relatively minor compared to Trump's notion of making up charges to prosecute political opponents.

For one thing, US. policy has been clear for roughly four decades: The president is just that -- the president, and he is not a prosecutor. He is not to play any role in DOJ prosecutions or operations. His staff members are not to play any role.

Trump clearly does not grasp this, and his public statements indicate he has no intention of learning about it. 

Does this suggest a second Trump administration would be even more lawless than the first? The answer almost certainly is yes.

Donald Trump tries to convince U.S. judges he had absolute immunity but winds up adding to the deluge of evidence that he is unfit to serve as president

Donald Trump leaves Washington hotel after court hearing

 

While his lawyers tried to convince a panel of federal judges yesterday that he, while president, enjoyed absolute immunity, Donald Trump instead provided more evidence -- on top of evidence that we already had -- that he is unfit to serve as president.

How did that happen, in a New York courtroom where arguments on the election-interference criminal case against Trump were being heard? As many of us have suspected for some time -- and you can include me in that crowd -- Trump is utterly clueless about the workings of government in the United States. A reasonably sentient being might ask, "If this guy wants to lead our government, shouldn't he have at least some idea of how it operates?" The answer is yes, but Trump proved yesterday that he is out to lunch on fairly important matters --including the justice system and the electoral process.

Let's first examine Trump's view of the justice system. He has stated on multiple occasions that, as president, he would have the authority to prosecute political opponents -- to even make up bogus cases against them. . .  Raise your hand if you think that's how the U.S. justice system is supposed to work. I don't see many hands, not even in the hard-core MAGA section, so let's move into the real world, as we did in a post from September 2023. This is from a report about a Trump campaign speech in South Dakota:

Trump mused about the possibility of indicting opponents even when they did nothing wrong, claiming that he would ask his attorney general to "indict him on income tax evasion" and that the Attorney General will just "figure it out. . . . "

He said the cases filed against him would “allow” him, if elected president, to call up his attorney general and demand an investigation into his political adversaries. “Indict my opponent, he’s doing well,” Trump said, implying that was exactly what Biden had done.

Would you want to live in a nation where the president actually thinks he could get away with such actions? If so, you are living in the wrong country. Let's introduce some reality to this equation, some insight on how the U.S. system actually works. From our post of last September:

How wildly unlawful is Trump's vision of being able to prosecute his political opponents, even concocting bogus charges against perceived foes who had not violated the law in any way? Here is the short answer: Since the late 1970s, during the post-Watergate era when our country still was reeling from Richard Nixon's scandal-riddled administration, U.S. policy has been that the Department of Justice (DOJ) will operate independently of the White House -- that the president will have no say in the DOJ's charging or non-charging decisions. The Jimmy Carter administration produced the first memorandum spelling out this policy -- and it has been followed by almost every president (of both political parties). From Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, every president has signed off on the idea that the White House should not influence DOJ decision-making. The only exception might be Donald Trump; it is unclear if the Trump White House followed the law on DOJ independence during his first term -- and he clearly has no intention of following the law during a second term. Here is a memorandum on the subject from the current attorney general, Merrick Garland.  

A 2017 report from protectdemocracy.org spells out the history of DOJ independence from the White House and also addresses reports that the Trump administration might have violated the law:

The promise that every American will be treated equally under the law and that none is above the law is a bedrock principle of American democracy. The freedom from political influence — real or perceived — on law enforcement underpins all of our other freedoms. By contrast, political influence or interference in law enforcement has been a clear hallmark distinguishing authoritarian regimes from true democracies around the globe.

For decades, to prevent even the appearance of political meddling in federal law enforcement, Republican and Democratic administrations alike have had written policies governing White House contacts with agencies and offices within the executive branch that have investigatory and enforcement responsibilities. To ensure the impartial application of the laws, these policies have extended to White House contacts with any executive branch agency or office regarding investigations, enforcement actions, regulatory decisions, grants and contracts involving specific parties.

To date, the Trump Administration has not articulated publicly a White House policy on agency contacts. Further, multiple reported contacts between senior political staff at the White House and enforcement officers at the Department of Justice (DOJ) appear to have violated 40 years of accepted, bipartisan policy. In light of the questions that its actions have raised, and in order to demonstrate its commitment to upholding the rule of law, the Trump White House must release and abide by an agency contacts policy that is consistent with accepted, bipartisan norms.

Part of the problem is that Trump seems to think he could be both president and prosecutor. But the section above shows that is not the case. Further, Trump seems to think he could do that because President Joe Biden had him prosecuted. But I've yet to find a published report that supplies the slightest evidence Biden is behind any of Trump's four criminal indictments. 

Joyce White Vance, former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama and current legal analyst for MSNBC, stated in a tweet last month: "Joe Biden didn't indict Trump. Prosecutors must go before a grand jury, made up of citizens, including Republicans & Democrats. These citizens hear evidence & vote on whether a defendant should be charged. Different grand juries have now done that with Trump 91 times."

Trump must have missed that tweet because he started down the "Biden did it to me" path yesterday, stating to the press:

It's very unfair when a political opponent is prosecuted by the Biden DOJ. I think that's how they are going to try to win, and that's not the way it works. I think there will be bedlam in our country. 

Earth to Donald: Check in with Joyce White Vance, who knows a thing or two about such matters, and you will learn that Biden did not, and could not, have you prosecuted.

As for what happened at the Jan. 6 insurrection, Trump now has a novel explanation for that -- more or less claiming he was just doing his job, a statement apparently designed to enhance his immunity argument with judges:

I worked on voter fraud; you have to have strong borders and free elections, above almost everything else. I worked very hard for the country and we found voter fraud. We worked on that, that's what I was doing. We found tremendous voter fraud, determinative voter fraud. we have a list of it, We have some findings.

How did Trump get the idea that issues related to voter fraud are for the president to investigate? Who knows, but he is wrong -- and the statement above likely is false. The truth? Such matters generally come under the authority of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Given that Trump was a candidate for the election in question, it's absurd to think he also could be in charge of investigating alleged fraud. Could even the most avid MAGAphile believe this stuff? I guess most anything is possible in the politics of postmodern America.

Trump trashes U.S. democracy by quoting Putin, while borrowing from Hitler's "Mein Kampf" to denigrate immigrants for "poisoning the blood of our country"

Adolph Hitler and Donald Trump (The Times of Israel)

 

A number of articles have appeared in the press recently, essentially stating that Donald Trump is not serious about becoming a dictator if elected to a second term, or that even if Trump is serious, our system of checks and balances would not allow him to turn the U.S. democracy into an authoritarian government. (Here is an example from the conservative National Review magazine -- "A Reality Check on the Trump-as-Dictator Prophecies," by
Jim Geraghty. 

Trump did not do much to advance Geraghty's line of thinking during a campaign speech on Saturday in Durham, New Hampshire. The Washington Post covered the event under this primary headline: "Trump quotes Putin condemning American democracy, praises autocrat Orban." For good measure, here is the secondary headline on the piece: "Trump also called Jan. 6 defendants ‘hostages’ and again demonized immigrants as ‘poisoning the blood of our country’" The Post's Isaac Arnsdorf reports:

Republican polling leader Donald Trump approvingly quoted autocrats Vladimir Putin of Russia and Viktor Orban of Hungary, part of an ongoing effort to deflect from his criminal prosecutions and spin alarms about eroding democracy against President Biden.

His speech at a presidential campaign rally in Durham on Saturday also reprised dehumanizing language targeting immigrants that historians have likened to past authoritarians, including a reference that some civil-rights advocates and experts in extremism have compared to Adolf Hitler’s fixation on blood purity.

And he used the term “hostages” to describe people charged with violent crimes in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol.

The comments came as experts, historians and political opponents have voiced growing alarm about Trump’s rhetoric, ideas and emerging plans for a second term, pointing to parallels to past and present authoritarian leaders.

Here is how one expert viewed Trump's statements:

“Donald Trump sees American democracy as a sham and he wants to convince his followers to see it that way too,” said Jennifer Mercieca, a professor at Texas A&M University who researches democracy and rhetoric. “Putin hates western values like democracy and the rule of law, so does Trump.”

Trump proceeded to prove Professor Mercieca was on target, raising this question: Why would any American support a man who shares Vladimir Putin's hatred of democracy and the rule of law, which suggests Trump also despises the U.S. Constitution, from which those ideas spring? If anyone is such a hard-core MAGA believer that he supports a man who openly hates the principles of American democracy, would it be best for that would-be voter to find a cozy authoritarian country -- and move there in the next year or so? Why stay here and help bring down the world's strongest form of government for the rest of us?

The Post's Arnsdorf makes clear the extreme nature of Trump's language:

Trump quoted Putin, the dictatorial Russia president who invaded neighboring Ukraine, criticizing the criminal charges against Trump, who is accused in four separate cases of falsifying business records in a hush-money scheme, mishandling classified documents, and trying to overturn the 2020 election results. In the quotation, Putin agreed with Trump’s own attempts to portray the prosecutions as politically motivated.

“It shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy,” Trump quoted Putin saying in the speech. Trump added: “They’re all laughing at us.”

The notion that Trump could teach anyone about democracy, of course, is laughable -- given his announced plans to prosecute political opponents and members of the media, while supporting the execution of at least one U.S. military leader, and 'terminating" the constitution. Trump seems to think the presidency is designed for the position to act as an all-powerful prosecutor, based on his whims about perceived enemies and entities that displease him. It's unlikely that Richard Nixon, or any other president, even thought of these ideas, much less dreamed of carrying them out. How far outside the mainstream is Trump? Anyone who can top Richard Nixon in the area of criminality is off-the-charts radical. Unlike Trump, Nixon was an accomplished statesman and even helped move the nation forward on issues such as the environment.

Trump hardly sounds like a statesman in his speech Saturday as Arnsdorf reports:

He went on to align himself with Orban, the Hungarian prime minister who has amassed functionally autocratic power through controlling the media and changing the country’s constitution. Orban has presented his leadership as a model of an “illiberal” state and has opposed immigration for leading to “mixed race” Europeans. Democratic world leaders have sought to isolate Orban for eroding civil liberties and bolstering ties with Putin.

But Trump called him “highly respected” and welcomed his praise as “the man who can save the Western world.”

In the speech, Trump also repeated his own inflammatory language against undocumented immigrants, by accusing them of “poisoning the blood of our country” — a phrase that immigrant groups and civil-rights advocates have condemned as reminiscent of Hitler in his book Mein Kampf, in which he told Germans to “care for the purity of their own blood” by eliminating Jews.

The crowd of thousands in a college arena cheered Trump’s recitation of an anti-immigrant poem called “The Snake” that he has repeated on the campaign trail and popularized since the 2016 campaign.

And approaching the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, Trump came to the defense of alleged violent offenders who have been detained awaiting trial on the order of judges.

“I don’t call them prisoners, I call them hostages,” he said. “They’re hostages.”

If an individual participates in a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, in an effort to overturn the results of a lawful election, Trump considers them a "hostage." That tells us all we need to know about Trump's lack of respect for the rule of law, befitting a  man who faces four criminal indictments. Trump's words drip with malignant narcissism and sociopathy, conditions that a number of mental-health experts say make him particularly dangerous. 

How did Democrats react to Trump's speech? Not well, Arnsdorf writes:

The speech drew renewed criticism from Democrats. “Donald Trump is campaigning on an extreme MAGA agenda that would rip away hard-won freedoms from Americans — it’s as simple as that,” Democratic National Committee press secretary Sarafina Chitika said in a statement. “If he takes power, Trump will waste no time implementing his dangerous vision for America.”

Trump’s speech began with an economic focus, with a new tagline of “Better off with Trump” and a recitation of statistics comparing affordability under his presidency to now. But Trump became more animated as he returned to his material on immigration and the charges against him.

In a move that experts said could have the effect of confusing voters about the true dangers to democracy, Trump has begun deflecting from reports that he would seek revenge on his critics in a second term, accusing Biden of acting like a dictator because of the prosecutions against Trump. Two of the cases were brought by local prosecutors, and the two federal cases are being handled by a special counsel acting independently of the White House in accordance with Justice Department rules

Without evidence, Trump has portrayed all four cases as a coordinated persecution against him because of his lead in primary and general-election polls. As he pushed that theme on Saturday, the slogan “BIDEN ATTACKS DEMOCRACY” flashed across the screen above him.

The speech ended with an instrumental track that Trump has continued using at rallies despite becoming associated with the QAnon online extremist movement.

 

Trump's overwhelming victory in Iowa suggests Americans actually "thirst for authoritarianism," which means our democracy could be "hanging by a thread"

Trump does a victory dance in Iowa

 

What did we learn from Donald Trump's overwhelming victory in last night's Iowa caucuses? I don't know about you, but I learned this: Charles Blow, of The New York Times (NYT), was right when he wrote a column last month under the headline "America’s Thirst for Authoritarianism."

Trump has made it clear that, if re-elected in 2024, he intends to act way outside the norms of American democracy -- as we spelled out in a September 2023 post under the title "Donald Trump's assertion that, as president, he could make up charges to prosecute political opponents runs contrary to 40-plus years of U.S. policy on justice." Did Trump resort to mushy language; were his words open to various interpretations? Nope, at a campaign rally in South Dakota, he was right up front about his intentions. From our post on the matter:

Trump stated that, if elected in 2024, he would have the capacity to prosecute his political opponents, even suggesting he could make up criminal charges against them. This is from a report at meidastouch.com on the event:

Trump mused about the possibility of indicting opponents even when they did nothing wrong, claiming that he would ask his attorney general to "indict him on income tax evasion" and that the Attorney General will just "figure it out."

This is from a report on the event at CNN:

Trump complained that he was the victim of “corrupt and blatant” victimization and “election interference.” He said the cases filed against him would “allow” him, if elected president, to call up his attorney general and demand an investigation into his political adversaries. “Indict my opponent, he’s doing well,” Trump said, implying that was exactly what Biden had done.

Ordering investigations of perceived enemies for nothing but pure retribution? Demanding that his attorney general bring bogus indictments that are so weak the actual charges are something they will "figure it out" later?

That is wildly contrary to any notion of democracy that has served America well for almost 250 years. In fact, it is authoritarianism. And last night's results in Iowa indicate large chunks of the American electorate want to toss democracy aside so they can live under a "wannabe dictator" named Donald Trump. Are there any alternative explanations, other than this: Quite a few Americans have developed a distaste for democracy and yearn to live at the whims of an autocrat. I can think of a few alternate explanations -- (1) Last night's brutal winter weather froze a few synapses in Iowa; (2)  Many Iowans are too busy or too distracted to spend time understanding the issues, but they voted anyway; (3) Many Iowans have no idea what it would be like to live under an autocrat, but they don't have time to worry about it being a threat to democracy -- besides, they've got to shovel snow; (4) Many Iowans don't take Trump's words seriously, essentially thinking of him as a liar, and yet, they like the idea of supporting someone they consider a liar; (5) Many Iowans are tired of the peace, sanity, and competence that tends to come with democracy. So they figure, "Let's give a dictator a chance. What could go wrong?" (6) This one comes from a dark place: Many Iowans appreciate the fact Trump has made it cool to be racist again -- or to openly express what I call race-based fears -- just as Ronald Reagan did when he gave a campaign speech on states' rights (code language for "keep your thumb on the Black man -- and the Brown man, too, while you're at it.) in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

Sad to say, but No. 6 gets my vote for the real reason Trump is so popular in Iowa and beyond. After all, we have four years of evidence that Trump is a terrible president (see here and here), wildly unfit -- intellectually and temperamentally -- for the most demanding job in the world. People really want to relive Trump's first term -- when his inattention and negligence allowed a relatively minor coronavirus outbreak, which U.S. scientists knew was likely to come, specifically in China, and previous administrations had developed a playbook for dealing with such an event - but Trump apparently ignored it, allowing a viral outbreak to turn into a global COVID pandemic, producing 1.2 million deaths in the U.S., with 16 million to 28.2 million worldwide? Americans really enjoy the thought of seeing refrigerated trucks used to store dead bodies? 

If Americans really give it some thought, I don't think they want to go back to the horrors of Trump's first term. Rather, I suspect Trump brings out something visceral in many Americans -- just as Reagan did in 1980 -- and it probably does not speak well for Trump or his followers. 

By using the term  "America’s Thirst for Authoritarianism," Charles Blow seemed to be warning that some Americans were willing to head down a dangerous path. Blow writes:

Around the world, authoritarianism is ascendant and democracy is in decline.

A 2022 report from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance found that “over the past six years, the number of countries moving toward authoritarianism is more than double the number moving toward democracy” and that nearly half of the 173 countries assessed were “experiencing declines” in at least one metric of democracy.

The United States wasn’t impervious to this trend. The report found that America was “moderately backsliding” on its democracy.

But I fear that we’re now on the precipice of fully turning away from democracy and toward a full embrace of authoritarianism. The country seems thirsty for it; many Americans appear to be inviting it. (last night's results from Iowa suggest Blow is right on target.)

Confidence in many of our major institutions — including schools, big business, the news media — is at or near its lowest point in the past half-century, in part because of the Donald Trump-led right-wing project to depress it. Indeed, according to a July Gallup report, Republicans’ confidence in 10 of the 16 institutions measured was lower than Democrats’. Three institutions in which Republicans’ confidence exceeded Democrats’ were the Supreme Court, organized religion, and the police.

And as people lose faith in these institutions — many being central to maintaining the social contract that democracies offer — they can lose faith in democracy itself. People then lose their fear of a candidate like Trump — who tried to overturn the previous presidential election and recently said that if he’s elected next time, he won’t be a dictator, “except for Day 1” — when they believe democracy is already broken.

Blow sees signs that some Americans just want to try something different, whether it is an improvement on our current system or not. Has democracy been such a success that many Americans are bored with it? Are such "adults" just overgrown adolescents? If it's boredom they want to avoid, maybe Trump should be their logical choice. After all, a second Trump term might be a lot of things, but boring is not one of them. Writes Blow:

In fact, some welcome the prospect of breaking it completely and starting anew with something different, possibly a version of our political system from a time when it was less democratic — before we expanded the pool of participants.

In Tim Alberta’s new book, The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory,he explains that many evangelical Christians have developed, in the words of the rightist Southern Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress, an “under siege” mentality that has allowed them to embrace Trump, whose decadent curriculum vitae runs counter to many of their stated values. It allows them to employ Trump as muscle in their battle against a changing America.

This kind of thinking gives license — or turns a blind eye — to Trump’s authoritarian impulses.

And while these authoritarian inklings may be more visible on the political right, they can also sneak in on the left.

Where does Joe Biden fit in this picture? Blow takes a look at that question:

You could also argue that President Biden, whose approval numbers are languishing, is being punished by some because he isn’t an authoritarian and therefore isn’t able to govern by fiat: Many of his initiatives — voter protections, police reform, student-loan forgiveness — were blocked by conservatives. Could he have fought harder in some of these cases? I believe so. But in the end, legislation is the province of Congress; presidents are bound by constitutional constraints.

Blow suspects many of our citizens are looking for a simple answer:

Trump surely appeals to those who want a president who’ll simply bulldoze through that bureaucracy, or at least expresses contempt for it and is willing to threaten it.

Furthermore, Trump’s chances will probably be helped by the portion of the electorate misjudging the very utility of voting. There are still too many citizens who think of a vote, particularly for president, as something to throw to a person they like rather than being cast for the candidate and party more likely to advance the policies they need.

And there are too many who think that a vote should be withheld from a more preferable candidate as punishment for not delivering every single thing on their wish lists — that choosing not to vote at all is a sensible act of political protest rather than a relinquishing of control to others. Abstinence doesn’t empower; it neuters.

Blow seems to be describing a rudderless, almost infantile society, like a concert-goer who can't decide what kind of music he really likes. "Should I try hard rock, gospel, folk, classical? I'm so confused!)

Blow is not one to dish out easy answers, but he seems to think we are a nation in trouble -- and the Iowa vote totals last night suggest he is right:

If you want a democracy to thrive, the idea that voting is a choice is itself an illusion. Voting is about survival, and survival isn’t a choice. It’s an imperative. It’s an instinct.

It’s a tool one uses for self-advancement and self-preservation. It’s an instrument you use to decrease chances of harm and increase chances of betterment. It is naïve to use it solely to cosign an individual’s character; not to say that character doesn’t count — it does — but rather that its primacy is a fallacy.

Voting isn’t just an expression of your worldview but also a manifestation of your insistence on safety and security.

And to top it off, as Democratic Representative Ro Khanna of California told me recently, the Obama coalition that Biden will rely on in 2024 is “under a lot of stress” with the issue of the Israel-Hamas war, and that coalition can be mended by “a foreign policy that is rooted in the recognition of human rights,” which includes “taking seriously the calls for a neutral cease-fire and the end to violence.”

Biden has warned that Israel risks losing international support because of “indiscriminate bombing,” but he has yet to endorse a cease-fire.

With Republicans becoming authoritarian, and without an intact Obama coalition to thwart it, our democracy hangs by a thread.

Trump's first term as president was a "rehearsal for fascism," so if elected to a second term, his efforts to seek retribution likely will be even more extreme

(The New Fascism Syllabus)

Donald Trump's first term as president was a test run for an American form of fascism. If Trump is elected to a second term on Tuesday, you can expect Trump to make heightened use of what he calls "extreme power" against an "enemy from within," according to an article at the Guardian from former Bill and Hillary Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal.

Under the headline "We are witnessing the making of a fascist president in real time; Trump used his presidency to harass and prosecute ‘enemies within’. If re-elected, he will act with even less restraint," Blumenthal writes:

"But stupidity is not enough,” wrote George Orwell in 1984. The facts must be eliminated. “Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts.” Followers must “forget that one has ever believed the contrary”. Memory must be erased. “This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink.” The past, like the facts, must be reinvented. “For when it has been recreated in whatever shape is needed at the moment, then this new version is the past, and no different past can ever have existed.”

Donald Trump keeps saying that if he is elected to a second term he will prosecute his political opponents, “the enemies within”. On 22 October he stated, once again, that as president he would use “extreme power … We can’t play games with these people. These are people that are dangerous people … an enemy from within.”

At the very moment Trump delivered his remarks highlighting his campaign for a dictatorship, the Atlantic published an article by Jeffrey Goldberg confirming his motive. He reported that Trump, as president, had rebuked the US military command, stating: “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had. People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.”

Then, Trump’s former chief of staff, the former general John Kelly, stepped from behind the curtain in an interview with The New York Times. “Certainly,” he said, “the former president is in the far-right area, he’s an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators – he has said that. So he falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure. He certainly prefers the dictator approach to government.” Kelly added, The Times wrote, that “in his opinion, Mr Trump met the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law.”

Will Americans actually elect such a man as president -- for a second time? Blumenthal seems to see it as a distinct possibility, even though warnings about the dangers Trump presents did not end with John Kelly. Fellow generals Mark Milley and James Mattis quickly backed him up. That leads to this question: If three distinguished and highly respected military leaders warn that Trump essentially is a dictator-in-waiting, why do polls tell us that his race with Kamala Harris remains close. Harris -- a former Los Angeles district attorney, a former U.S. attorney in California, a former U.S. Senator, and a vice president -- has the kind of solid record that suggests she would be at least a competent president, perhaps a very good one. That puts her several steps up on Trump. Remember, Kelly said Trump "had no understanding of the Constitution . . . or the rule of law. Do Americans really want a president who has no idea how to govern? They think that's a good thing? If so, they had better come to their senses quickly. Blumenthal writes:

The warning of the generals against Trump’s fascism is unanimous among those who have served most closely with him. The former chair of the joint chiefs, the retired general Mark Milley, told Bob Woodward, in his new book War, that Trump was “fascist to the core”. Trump’s secretary of defense, the former general James Mattis, emailed Woodward to express his agreement with Milley that Trump was “the most dangerous person ever”, and “Let’s make sure we don’t try to downplay the threat, because the threat is high.” It’s Defcon 1.

In a case of exquisitely poor timing, two days before the latest revelations of Trump’s despotic intent and his own insistent bellicose demands for absolute power to use against his “enemies”, the Wall Street Journal editorial board assured its readers that Trump doesn’t mean it. There is no reason to take him seriously. In any case “the public isn’t buying this Democratic claim about Trump”. The “fascist meme” is just partisan propaganda. “The answer is that most Americans simply don’t believe the fascist meme, and for good reasons. The first is the evidence of Mr Trump’s first term. Whatever his intentions, the former President was hemmed in by American checks and balances.” Not satisfied with absurdly dismissing Trump’s unapologetic statement, the Wall Street Journal felt compelled to airbrush the present and the past in the Orwellian tradition of “doublethink”. Within 48 hours, however, its dismissal of the supposedly “Democratic claim” about “the fascist meme” was swept away by Kelly. Having discarded Milley’s and Mattis’s earlier statements, the Journal must have figured it could deposit Kelly’s as well in the burn bag for facts in order to be able to embroider its sophistry. But, at least for the moment, creating doublethink is a demanding job. An essential element in the normalization of Trump and his fascism is the erasure of his crimes and transgressions when he was president – his “first term”, as the Journal disingenuously describes it, as though he’s already elected to his second. Conjuring up an air of inevitability is another demoralizing Newspeak tactic. Trump’s threats, when they are not dismissed as mere rhetoric, are too generally reported as if they are something new, that they exist solely in the vacuum of this campaign, and that he has no past. Trump’s history is consigned to the memory hole.

Trump, of course, does have a history, and much of it is troubling. Blumenthal provides convincing evidence that Trump's history largely was a "rehearsal for fascism." He writes:

Trump’s presidency was a rehearsal for fascism. Quite apart from his record of kleptocracy, allegedly pervasive corruption and obstructions of justice, pardons of criminal associates and dangling of pardons to insure their silence, contempt for the law, maniacal obsession with Hitler, who “did some good things”, scorn for military service (“suckers” and “losers”), worship of foreign tyrants, congenital lying, paranoid conspiracy mongering, disdain for climate science, willful neglect of public health, ignoring warnings and spreading falsehoods in the Covid-19 pandemic resulting in the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands, the organization and incitement of the January 6 insurrection, and indifference to the near-assassination of his vice-president by a mob he had unleashed (“So what?”), Trump systematically abused the Department of Justice to investigate, harass and prosecute his “enemies within”. Trump’s current rage is hardly a new threat. In a second term he intends to smash through the constraints that inhibited him in his first.

The Just Security website of the New York University School of Law reports: “The cascade of election coverage, commentary and speculation about how Donald Trump might use the power of the presidency to retaliate against his perceived political enemies has overlooked important context: Trump has done just that, while he was president.” Just Security distilled “A Dozen Times Trump Pushed to Prosecute His Perceived Enemies”, but there were many more.

“The saddest thing is that because I’m the president of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved with the justice department,” Trump said on 2 November 2017. “I am not supposed to be doing the kind of things that I would love to be doing. And I am very frustrated.” How did Trump function within the constraints of the presidency. Blementhal compares his behavior to that of a burglar. Trump’s years in office showed him on a learning curve of fascism. He saw democracy as a plot against him that he had to break down. Like a hotel burglar jimmying door locks, through trial and error he discovered how to turn the keys. He pushed and prodded looking for weaknesses and loopholes. He located the places where he encountered resistance. He felt for the limits and how to go beyond them. He found out who would deter him and who would enable him. He calculated the price of everyone. He discovered those whose craven ambition would serve him. He realized that ideology was a tool he could use like a crowbar. He absorbed the lessons of crime and punishment in order to commit greater crimes without punishment. His administration was a school for the making of a fascist.

Trump was frustrated that his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, recused himself so that he could not kill the former FBI director Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Trump campaign connections to the Russians. The Mueller report stated: “According to Sessions, the President asked him to reverse his recusal so that Sessions could direct the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute Hillary Clinton …”

After publicly attacking the justice department for not investigating “Crooked Hillary”, Trump succeeded in intimidating Sessions into naming a special counsel to investigate the already debunked conspiracy theory that Uranium One, a Canadian company, made a deal with the Russians in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation. A grand jury was empaneled, issued subpoenas and prosecutors concluded there was no “there” there. But it was not until two years later that the case was closed without any charges on 15 January 2021, five days before Trump left office.

Trump's paranoia was so powerful that he seemed to be looking for enemies behind every office plant. Blumenthal writes:

On 8 November, he forced Sessions to resign. The new attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, a compliant mid-level right-wing operative from Iowa, was a stand-in until William Barr took over in February 2019.

Barr, who had been attorney general under George HW Bush, was advertised as a conservative Republican institutionalist. He knew how to game the system in the interest of his own game. The cultural reactionary, on the board of the reactionary Opus Dei organization’s Washington DC front, the Catholic Information Center, believed he was using the depraved Trump in a crusade for the restoration of traditional morality. More importantly, Trump was the useful idiot to stock the federal bench with Federalist Society-stamped judges. Leonard Leo, chair of the Federalist Society, served on the Opus Dei group’s board with Barr.

Barr wound up filling many roles in the Trump years, with several of them seeming to involve dubious activities. The term "cover-up" will forever be attached to his name. Blumenthal writes:

Barr was the adult in the room who became Trump’s enabler, enforcer and teacher. On 24 March 2019, Barr issued a letter pre-empting the release of the full Mueller report so that he could to distort its conclusions and present those distortions as truthful. He wrote that Trump’s campaign had not “conspired or coordinated” with the Russians, that Trump had fully cooperated with the investigation and that Trump had not committed obstruction of justice. He redacted and withheld from the public key sections of the report. “Mueller’s core premise – that the President acts ‘corruptly’ if he attempts to influence a proceeding in which his own conduct is being scrutinized – is untenable,” Barr wrote to justify his cover-up.

The US House of Representatives held Barr in contempt for withholding the full report. It revealed that Trump had committed 10 indictable obstructions of justice to keep evidence and witnesses from investigators, which neither Barr nor his Biden-appointed successor, Merrick Garland, ever prosecuted. The report identified 272 contacts between Trump agents and Russian operatives, not one of which Trump reported to the FBI. Judge Walton ruled that Barr had “distorted” and been “misleading” about the contents of the report. On 30 September 2020, he decided Barr had violated federal law and that the redacted sections should be released, which they were, only days before the 2020 election. But Barr was not about to open a prosecution of himself.

The bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, released on 18 August 2020, disclosed literally hundreds of instances of Trump campaign involvement with Russian operations. Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, regularly shared “sensitive internal polling data or Campaign strategy” with a Russian intelligence officer, Konstantin Kilimnik, with whom he had a long relationship on behalf of Russian interests in Ukraine.

One of Trump’s obstructions, cited by Mueller, was his dangling of pardons for Manafort, who was convicted of numerous tax and financial frauds, and for Mike Flynn, the former national security adviser convicted for lying to the FBI and not registering as a foreign agent. Trump was enticing them not to testify. Both stonewalled, and both received pardons.

After Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime dirty trickster, was convicted of lying to the Congress and obstructing justice about acting as a conduit for Russian intelligence through WikiLeaks on hacked Clinton campaign documents, among other murky things, and sentenced to nine years in prison, Trump expressed outrage: “The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them.” Barr instantly intervened to reduce the sentence. The four prosecutors on the case resigned in protest.

For two years, Barr waged a war against Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, a Republican, who indicted Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen on campaign finance charges for paying hush money to the adult film star Stormy Daniels to silence her about a sexual relationship with Trump. Trump clearly appeared in the indictment as Unindicted Co-Conspirator No 1. Barr pressured Berman to reopen the case in order to toss it out. Berman refused.

Barr then tried to strong-arm Berman at Trump’s instigation into indicting the former secretary of state John Kerry for trying to keep alive the Iran nuclear deal he negotiated during the Obama administration. Berman refused. Barr pushed Berman to indict Greg Craig, Obama’s former legal counsel, on flimsy charges of not registering as a foreign agent, in order to have a prominent Democrat’s scalp. Barr sent a deputy to tell Berman he should prosecute Craig to “even things out” before the election. Again, Berman refused.

Barr moved the Craig case to the District of Columbia, where he leveraged an indictment. On 4 September 2019, the jury acquitted Craig in less than five hours. “Throughout my tenure as US attorney,” Berman wrote in a memoir, “Trump’s Justice Department kept demanding that I use my office to aid them politically, and I kept declining – in ways just tactful enough to keep me from being fired. I walked this tightrope for two and a half years. Eventually, the rope snapped.”

After Trump lost the election of 2020, Barr was on board with Trump’s claim it was stolen, sending a memo to DoJ prosecutors to investigate “vote tabulation irregularities”. Sixteen assistant US attorneys resigned in protest. Later, Barr acknowledged, of Trump’s assertion that the election was fixed: “It was all bullshit.” On 14 December 2020, Trump attempted to get Barr’s involvement in the fake electors scheme. Barr declined to be ensnared in an obviously illegal act in a losing cause. He saved himself from becoming incriminated and resigned.

Trump had already got whatever he wanted from Barr up to the last minute, when Barr’s instinct for personal self-preservation asserted itself. On the eve of 6 January, Barr relinquished the Tom Hagen role for his godfather. Trump was done with the disloyal consigliere. He turned to other helpers.

After the January 6 insurrection, Barr accused Trump of a “betrayal of his office”. “All of a sudden, Bill Barr changed. You hadn’t noticed,” Trump remarked. Yet this past April, Barr endorsed Trump for re-election, explaining that “the threat to freedom and democracy has always been on the left.” Trump sneered: “Wow! Former AG Bill Barr, who let a lot of great people down by not investigating Voter Fraud in our Country, has just Endorsed me for President despite the fact that I called him ‘Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy’. Based on the fact that I greatly appreciate his wholehearted Endorsement, I am removing the word ‘Lethargic’ from my statement. Thank you, Bill.

The conservative majority on the US supreme court, three of whose members Trump appointed, rescued him from facing trial for January 6 before the 2024 election. Taking up Trump’s appeal, the court languidly spent months to render an opinion bestowing on him and future presidents absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts”. In its ruling, with a sharp understanding of Trump’s methods, the court stated that a president could order a sham investigation of his political enemies, if he wished, without any restraint or accountability.

The decision was explicit in granting free license to political prosecutions: “The indictment’s allegations that the requested investigations were shams or proposed for an improper purpose do not divest the President of exclusive authority over the investigative and prosecutorial functions of the Justice Department and its officials. Because the President cannot be prosecuted for conduct within his exclusive constitutional authority, Trump is absolutely immune from prosecution for the alleged conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials.” The court has ruled: Trump’s past efforts to stage “sham” show trials of his “enemies” and launch a coup involving the DoJ are above the law. His future dictatorship in which he could exact retribution from his “enemies within”, deploying the DoJ, has received advance approval.

The supreme court’s immunity decision justifying Trump despotism, presented by Chief Justice John Roberts, was better explained in the twisted language of an apparatchik from the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984:

“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?”

On 24 October of this month, Trump boasted about the unlimited power that he would possess once he is back in the White House. Speaking to the right-wing radio talk-show host Hugh Hewitt, he declared that he would at the start fire the special prosecutor Jack Smith, who has indicted him for his crimes of January 6 and stealing national security secrets. “We got immunity at the supreme court,” Trump said. “It’s so easy. I would fire him within two seconds.” Trump would then have 86,398 seconds left to be a dictator on “day one”.

Clueless about the law and hungry for revenge, Donald Trump drives the DOJ toward a cliff we haven't seen since the days of Richard Nixon and Watergate

Donald Trump and Pam Bondi (Getty)

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) might be heading into its deepest period of crisis since the days of Richard Nixon, according to a report at Associated Press (AP). Under the "direction" of Donald Trump, who lacks the intellectual heft and the sturdy spine needed to oversee the justice apparatus of the world's foremost democracy, the DOJ appears to be spiraling into chaos -- and Trump has not even been in office for one month.

The department has been awash in controversy since Trump apparently pressured top officials last week to dismiss a criminal case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. The Adams case is emitting the stench of an unlawful quid pro quo, a term that became well known around the country when Karl Rove reportedly launched a baseless criminal case against Alabama's Democratic Governor Don Siegelman during the George W. Bush administration -- mainly, it seems, because Republicans could not figure out how to beat Siegelman at the ballot box. Perhaps figuring Siegelman would be less of a headache if he and codefendant Richard Scrushy were behind bars, the Bushies arranged for that to happen, with the assistance of former federal judge Mark Fuller (a Bush appointee,  who had ties to Bush-era criminals Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon, plus slimy GOP Governor Bob Riley, who was Siegelman's chief political rival.  and wound up being forced off the bench after pleading guilty to beating his wife in an Atlanta hotel room.) How low did Rove go? He even acted like a jackass toward Siegelman's daughter, Dana, when the two ran into each other at the Democratic National Convention.

As for Donald Trump, his cluelessness about matters of law is driving the DOJ around some dangerous curves. The Eric Adams matter has been the source of heavy and unflattering news coverage in recent days. But Trump's struggles with justice issues go way beyond the Adams case. Here are two persistent problems that seem to be digging a hole for the president:

1. Criminal prosecutions must be based on a finding of probable cause, that an offense has been committed, and the accused committed it. Any attempt to prosecute a defendant based on Donald Trump's yearnings for revenge, and not probable cause, is unlawful. Let's consider our post dated 4/9/24 under the headline "Donald Trump's plot to prosecute Joe Biden without probable cause is based on a lie and ignorance, as MSNBC analyst Joyce White Vance makes clear":

Donald Trump and his allies are plotting to prosecute President Joe Biden if Trump wins the November election, according to a report from Axios. After months of Congressional inquiries, no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden has surfaced, so it is unclear what would form the basis of a Trump-fueled prosecution. But this much appears to be clear: Trump apparently wants to prosecute Biden because he believes Biden had him prosecuted -- even though Trump has offered no evidence to support that claim. One prominent legal analyst has stated that Biden did not have Trump prosecuted and could not have done so. Those matters come down to grand jurors.

Also, the Axios report suggests Trump has no problem violating roughly 40 years of U.S. policy that holds the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is to operate independently of the White House -- that presidents are not prosecutors, and they are to be excluded from decisions to charge or not charge suspected wrongdoers. . . . 

Almost every issue raised in the Axios article grows from the idea that Joe Biden is having Trump prosecuted. In Trump's brain, that has to be true because Trump cannot be responsible for anything that goes wrong. But this is a lie, one Trump apparently is convinced his MAGA followers are gullible enough to believe. But here is the truth, as stated by MSNBC legal analyst and former Alabama U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance, who wrote in a recent tweet:

"Joe Biden didn't indict Trump. Prosecutors must go before a grand jury, made up of citizens, including Republicans & Democrats. These citizens hear evidence & vote on whether a defendant should be charged. Different grand juries have now done that with Trump 91 times."

2. Trump can't resist exerting demands on the DOJ, mainly because he is desperate to extract revenge on his perceived political opponents. But that runs contrary to longstanding U.S. policy, as spelled out in the DOJ's Justice Manual. This is from Section 1-8.600 - Communication with the White House:

In order to promote and protect the norms of Departmental independence and integrity in making decisions regarding criminal and civil law enforcement, while at the same time preserving the President’s ability to perform his constitutional obligation to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” the Justice Department will not advise the White House concerning pending or contemplated criminal or civil law enforcement investigations or cases unless doing so is important for the performance of the President’s duties and appropriate from a law enforcement perspective.

Is that how the White House and the DOJ are operating in the Trump administration? The answer appears to be no, as the AP's Eric Tucker and Alanna Durkin Richer report:

Pam Bondi had insisted at her Senate confirmation hearing that as attorney general, her Justice Department would not “play politics.”

Yet in the month since the Trump administration took over the building, a succession of actions has raised concerns the department is doing exactly that.

Top officials have demanded the names of thousands of FBI agents who investigated the Capitol riot, sued a state attorney general who had won a massive fraud verdict against Donald Trump before the 2024 election, and ordered the dismissal of a criminal case against New York Mayor Eric Adams by saying the charges had handicapped the Democrat’s ability to partner in the Republican administration’s fight against illegal immigration.

Even for a department that has endured its share of scandals, the moves have produced upheaval not seen in decades, tested its independence and rattled the foundations of an institution that has long prided itself on being driven solely by facts, evidence and the law. As firings and resignations mount, the unrest raises the question of whether a president who raged against his own Justice Department during his first term can succeed in bending it to his will in his second.

“We have seen now a punishing ruthlessness that acting department leadership and the attorney general are bringing to essentially subjugate the workforce to the wishes and demands of the administration, even when it’s obvious” that some of the decisions have all the signs “of corrupting the criminal justice system,” said retired federal prosecutor David Laufman, a senior department official across Democratic and Republican administrations.

He spoke not long after Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor, Danielle Sassoon, resigned in protest following a directive from Emil Bove, the Justice Department’s acting No. 2 official, to dismiss the case against Adams.

In a letter foreshadowing her decision, Sassoon accused the department of acceding to a “quid pro quo” — dropping the case to ensure Adams’ help with Trump’s immigration agenda. Though a Democrat, Adams had for months positioned himself as eager to aid the administration’s effort in America’s largest city, even meeting privately with Trump at Trump’s Florida estate just days before the Republican took office. 

Multiple high-ranking officials who oversaw the Justice Department’s public integrity section, which prosecutes corruption cases, joined Sassoon in resigning.  

For those of us who lived through the '70s, all of that sounds positively Nixonian. But count me as one who is convinced Trump is capable of birthing a scandal that would make Watergate pale in scope and depravity. In fact, I would not be surprised if we already are in the early stages of such a scandal. Tucker and Richer write:

On Friday, a prosecutor involved in the Adams case, Hagan Scotten, became at least the seventh person to quit in the standoff, telling Bove in a letter that it would take a “fool” or a “coward” to meet his demand to drop the charges. (Bove and department lawyers in Washington ultimately filed paperwork Friday night to end the case).

“Even though there may not be more resignations, a clear message has been sent about the objectives and the expectations of the department,” said Alberto Gonzales, who served as attorney general under Republican President George W. Bush until his 2007 resignation in the wake of the dismissal of several U.S. attorneys.

“The purpose of the department is to ensure that our laws are carried out, that those who engage in criminal wrongdoing are prosecuted and punished,” Gonzales said. And to some it may appear “that if you have some kind of relationship with the White House, there may not be consequences for doing something that ordinary Americans engaged in similar conduct would be punished.” 

Bove, a former New York federal prosecutor himself who represented Trump in his criminal cases, pointedly made no assessment about the legal merits of the case against Adams. Bove cited political reasons, including the timing of the charges months before Adams’ presumed re-election campaign and the restrictions the case had placed on the mayor’s ability to fight illegal immigration and violent crime.

In a letter to Sassoon, Bove said case prosecutors would be subject to internal investigations.

Bondi defended the decision to drop the case, asserting in a Fox News interview Friday that Adams was targeted after he criticized the Biden administration’s immigration policies.

Do news reports support the assertions of Bondi and Bove regarding the Biden administration? If so, they are well hidden. This is from an account NPR: 

The Justice Department memo calling for charges against Adams to be dropped doesn't question the facts or merits of the case.

Instead it lays out two political reasons for the corruption case to be dropped. First, it echoes an unsubstantiated claim that former President Joe Biden and his administration may have used the prosecution to punish Adams, a fellow Democrat, for publicly criticizing Biden's immigration policies.

"It cannot be ignored that Mayor Adams criticized the prior administration's immigration policies before the charges were filed, and the former U.S. Attorney's public actions created appearances of impropriety," the memo said.

No evidence of the Biden team interfering in DOJ prosecutorial decisions was offered to support that assertion. In the memo, DOJ officials also said the case, if allowed to move forward, would hinder Adams from devoting his full attention to one of Trump's top policy initiatives: curbing "illegal immigration and violent crime" in New York City.

Adams has signaled growing openness to partnering with Trump administration officials on immigration enforcement in the city and has reportedly ordered NYC officials to avoid criticizing Trump or his policies.

Some critics, including city and state officials running against Adams in the mayor's race, condemned the DOJ move to drop charges and voiced alarm at growing ties between Adams and the Trump team.

Posting on social media, New York City comptroller Brad Lander blasted what he called "Adams' effort to get a pardon for his pay-to-play charges."

"Eric Adams sold out New Yorkers to buy his own freedom," wrote New York state Sen. Jessica Ramos on X. "Donald Trump may think this buys him access to terrorize our communities, but New Yorkers always stand up for one another."

It's unclear how this move by the DOJ will affect investigations and criminal cases against a wide array of Adams' political allies, donors and former members of his administrations.