Law & Disorder
Donald Trump is treating the presidency as his own personal domain, not as a public trust.
This is not new, of course. We saw strong evidence of this throughout his first term, culminating in the violence of his Jan. 6 coup attempt.
But now, just four months into his second term, Trump is out of control, using chaos, harassment, and intimidation as a weapon and attempting, in essence, to convert our three branches of government into just one – a government by and for Trump.
He and his Administration are building on a fully compliant Republican-controlled Congress, while trying to neutralize the judiciary by attacking judges and evading or ignoring their decisions. (But federal judges are holding strong; as of June 5, at least 191 rulings have at least temporarily paused Administration actions.)
Trump is attempting to take complete control over our nation’s law enforcement system. No one, as of yet, has been able to contain him.
Ending DOJ Independence
Trump broke a 50-year-old, unwritten rule that the Justice Department is independent from the President and White House when it comes to investigating and prosecuting potential crimes.
Instead, he has appointed loyalists as Attorney General and FBI Director who appear to have no real agenda other than to further Trump’s desires. Trump has gone so far as to issue an Executive Order calling for criminal investigations of two individuals, apparently because they criticized him during his first term.
This week he ordered the Justice Department to investigate former President Joe Biden and his aides, which appears to be pure harassment.
In 2023, Trump was found by a federal judge to be a litigant “repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries.” Today, that reads as an understatement as Trump abuses the powers of the presidency to seek revenge against his perceived adversaries.
Gutting Government Oversight
Trump has also restricted and undermined the oversight entities responsible for holding him, his Administration, and his allies accountable for corruption, abuses of office, and ethics violations.
A few examples:
>> The Trump Administration has gutted the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section that is tasked with the “investigation and prosecution of all federal crimes affecting government integrity.” Only five of the 30 lawyers that had been in the Section remain.
>> A key FBI Unit responsible for investigating public corruption has been shut down.
>> A Trump Executive Order paused all future investigations and enforcement actions dealing with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
>> In his first week, Trump fired 17 Inspectors General who are tasked with conducting independent investigations to prevent and detect internal wrongdoing in their government agencies. This mass firing has allowed Trump to fill the positions with loyalists.
>> Trump fired the head of the Office of Government Ethics and the head of the federal agency dedicated to protecting whistleblowers.
These actions have dismantled critical protections and cleared the way for corruption at the highest levels of government.
Exploiting Pardon Powers
Legal expert Lee Kovarsky dubbed the Trump approach to presidential pardon power “patronage pardoning.”
It works like this. Want a get-out-of-jail-free card? Well, first off, it won’t exactly be free. You’ll need to be a vocal Trump ally. Or be one of the 1,500 convicted of crimes in the Jan. 6 insurrection. Or be a tax cheat with a mother willing to attend a $1 million Trump dinner at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump’s pardons and commutations have included a former Virginia sheriff guilty of bribery; a Las Vegas woman convicted of stealing $70,000 from a memorial to a fallen police officer; a Florida man sentenced to 50 years for defrauding $87 million from Medicare; the founder of a Chicago gang, convicted of murder and 40 additional counts, and sentenced to life in prison; and a former Republican Member of Congress convicted of tax fraud.
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Trump has grabbed the powers of the Justice Department and FBI to carry out a vengeance-and-retribution campaign. He is tearing down the agencies meant to provide oversight and hold his Administration accountable. And he is freeing his supporters from prison and threatening to jail those he deems his enemies.
Trump is trying to systematically dismantle the guardrails that protect our democracy and our citizens.
Americans across the country, however, are standing up and pushing back. From our nation’s founding, citizens have shown that they are stronger than any effort to destroy our country and our democracy.
The road ahead is not an easy one.
But do not bet against the American people. We will prevail and we will survive Trump.
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Fred’s Weekly Note appears on Thursdays in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a Democracy 21 newsletter. Read this week’s and other recent newsletters here. And, subscribe for free here and receive your copy each week via email.
