‘Lawfare’ reaches new levels, as Trump goes after his persecutors
On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “End the Weaponization of the Federal Government.”
Among its provisions, order He instructed both the US Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence to review their agencies’ activities and recommend “appropriate remedial actions.”
Since then, President Trump has used the enormous power at his disposal to go after people and institutions that he says have wronged him. Not since Richard Nixon’s infamous “enemies list” more than half a century ago has any U.S. chief executive carried out a campaign of retaliation with such force.
Why did we write this?
Thursday’s indictment against former national security adviser John Bolton is the latest example of Trump’s Justice Department going after people who President Donald Trump says wronged him.
The president himself has made clear that Thursday’s indictment against John Bolton, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, along with the recent indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and current New York Attorney General Letitia James, is just the beginning.
Mr. Trump has taken unprecedented steps to weaponize the federal government in the name of addressing what, in the view of him and many Republicans, has been the weaponization of the justice system against him during the last two Democratic administrations. This includes the end of Obama’s presidency, when Trump emerged on the political scene and the FBI investigated possible ties between his campaign and the Russian government.
Whether or not Democrats are actually engaging in “weaponization” is largely open to interpretation. The president’s supporters say the federal and state investigations into Mr. Trump’s actions were overblown and oppressive. Mr. Trump has been criminally charged four times — twice at the federal level and twice at the state level — and convicted once. He also faced civil lawsuits.
Democrats and many legal experts confirm that the Department of Justice under the Obama and Biden administrations worked independently of the White House, unlike what is the case now. (In fact, the Justice Department under Biden investigated and prosecuted the president’s son.) They say investigations like the Trump-Russia investigation represent due diligence necessary in the name of protecting national security or even democracy itself — and if the government had not pursued them, it would have amounted to a miscarriage of justice.
The crucial difference between the prosecutions of Mr. Trump under Mr. Biden and the current prosecutions of Trump’s perceived “enemies” is that the legal cases against Mr. Trump all included evidence, to varying degrees, of possible crimes. Mr. Trump’s phone call with the Georgia Secretary of State aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 election is a clear example of this. The current administration’s cases against Mr. Trump’s declared enemies have been framed mostly by the president himself as consequences of what he calls politically motivated prosecutions.
However, whether intentionally or not, by aggressively investigating Mr. Trump — whether it was the 2022 Mar-a-Lago raid for classified documents, alleged ties between Trump and Russia during the 2016 campaign or the Trump-inspired riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 — some analysts say Democrats have incentivized Mr. Trump and his team to pursue retaliation.
“Democrats have opened a door so wide you can’t close it when you leave office,” says Ron Chapman, a federal criminal defense attorney.
The federal indictment against Attorney General James, a Democrat, for alleged mortgage fraud is a clear example of this. In 2022, Ms. James filed a civil suit against Mr. Trump and his business partners, alleging fraud in overstating the value of Trump’s properties. They were convicted and ordered to pay a fine of more than $360 million. The Court of Appeal later overturned the penalty; Mr. Trump and Co. are appealing the conviction.
Ms. James’s long-stated goal was to impeach Mr. Trump. During her 2018 campaign for New York Attorney General, she pledged just that Investigation into his real estate dealings And “holding those in power accountable.” Now, under the same indictment, Ms. James will not back down. In her election campaign with New York’s Democratic mayoral candidate, Zahran Mamdani, on Monday, she attacked Trump, but not by name.
“Powerful voices” Mrs. James saidThey are trying to “use justice as a weapon for political gain.”
Trump makes public calls for prosecutions
The legal battle has been intense in recent weeks. Last month, Mr. Trump expressed his frustration with US Attorney General Pam Bondi in a social media post – Addressed to “Pam” and It was reportedly made public by mistake – Concerning the delayed actions against Mr. Comey, Ms. James, and California Democratic Senator Adam Schiff.
Other former and current senior officials under investigation, if not possible charges, include former CIA Director John Brennan; former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper; former Special Counsel Jack Smith; and Lisa Cook, member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
US Senate Committee on the Judiciary/Reuters/Archive
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump outlined additional legal targets during a media briefing in the Oval Office — saying that Andrew Weissman (former FBI general counsel) and Lisa Monaco (former deputy attorney general) should be investigated along with Mr. Smith, whom he described as “unhinged” and a “criminal.” The President was flanked by Ms. Bundy and FBI Director Kash Patel.
“I was the one who had to suffer [investigations] “And winning in the end,” Mr. Trump said. “But what they did was criminal.”
Mr. Bolton was indicted on Thursday on charges that he shared confidential information via a private email server. That information was reportedly compromised by an unidentified foreign entity, according to an unsealed search warrant.
The relationship between Mr. Trump and Mr. Bolton was tense during the latter’s 17 months as national security adviser during Mr. Trump’s first term. Mr. Bolton’s memoir, “The Room Where It Happened,” and his public criticism of the president did not help. FBI agents raided Mr. Bolton’s home and office in August, searching for classified documents.
The raid on Mr. Bolton’s property is similar to the one on Mr. Trump’s Florida property, Mar-a-Lago. It also contradicts the fact that former President Joe Biden was never accused of keeping secret documents at his residence near Wilmington, Delaware, dating back to when he was vice president and, before that, a senator. The main difference is that Mr. Biden allowed federal agents to search his properties, while Mr. Trump resisted such efforts before the pre-dawn raid.
Mr. Comey was indicted on September 25 on two counts — making a false statement and obstructing congressional proceedings. The charges stem from a 2020 Senate hearing into FBI investigations into two matters: Russian interference in the 2016 election and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
During Mr. Comey’s arraignment on October 8, his lawyer called the prosecution “vindictive” and “selective” and said he would move to dismiss the case.
When former US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Eric Seibert – a Trump appointee – refused to seek the indictment of Comey, Trump pressured him to resign. Interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan, a former personal lawyer for Mr. Trump with no prior experience as a prosecutor, was forced to bring the case over the objections of other prosecutors.
Experts in the federal judiciary see a major violation of the rules by which the government is supposed to operate.
“We’ve just crossed a difficult road here,” says Mary McCord, executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Defense and Protection at Georgetown University.
Since the Nixon Watergate scandal in the early 1970s, “it has been a priority for the Justice Department and the White House to maintain independence” between the two, says Ms. McCord, the former chief of the criminal division in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
It says the purpose of this separation is to prevent the American people from perceiving the Department of Justice as “merely an instrument for the President’s personal political use.”
Now it seems that this separation is over.
David Sklansky, a law professor at Stanford University, says describing what the Justice Department is doing as “arms control” is “Orwellian in its abuse of language.”
“You can’t say, ‘All I care about is gun control,’ and then at the same time say, ‘I insist on retaliation, and I insist that the Department of Justice go after my enemies,’ which is what Trump did.
Ministry of Justice/AP/File
‘Standards are no longer good enough’
Republicans have been preparing for this fight long before Mr. Trump regained the White House. In the previous Congress, the House Select Subcommittee on Arming the Federal Government spent two years investigating the “armed federal government of the Biden-Harris administration” and in December, issued a resolution A 17,019-page report on my findings. The focus was on alleged government efforts to censor the speech of “Big Tech companies.”
On Inauguration Day, in addition to signing the “arms control” order, Mr. Trump also issued a blanket pardon to nearly 1,600 people who were convicted or awaiting trial or sentencing for their participation in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in support of Mr. Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
The revelations of the January 6 investigations continue to anger the GOP. Last week, Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, shared a document showing the cell phone data (but not the content) of nine Republicans in Congress around the time of the riot. Senator Grassley says the analysis violated lawmakers’ privacy rights.
The phone data was collected in 2023 as part of the FBI’s “Arctic Frost” investigation, which informed the criminal case against Mr. Trump over his role on January 6, which was handled by Mr. Smith — a former special counsel who now faces possible indictment himself. (Mr. Smith also handled the case regarding Mr. Trump’s possession of classified documents after leaving office.) The Justice Department is investigating Mr. Smith for possible violations of a law prohibiting federal employees from engaging in political activities.
In a recent interview at a forum in London, Smith denied allegations of politicization in the two cases.
“The idea that politics should play a role in big cases like this is completely ridiculous and completely inconsistent with my experience as a prosecutor,” Mr. Smith said in a discussion with the website. Mr. Wisemana former FBI lawyer whom Mr. Trump also invited to stand trial. Mr. Weissman was a lead investigator in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election and allegations of collusion between Trump and Russia. The Mueller report, which Weissman helped write, found no evidence of collusion.
Historian Barbara Perry notes that after the Watergate-era “Saturday Night Massacre”—the resignation of top government officials after Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox—Congress passed legislation intended to insulate the Justice Department from politics: the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Ethics in Government Act, and the Inspector General Act.
Professor Perry, co-director of the Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, quotes Mr. Cox’s own words: “The attorney general is likely to be a political ally of the president, but not a servant,” Mr. Cox said in 1973. “What distinguishes the two is the moral obligation to apply the law in a fair, just and disinterested manner.”
Today, Ms. Perry says, “All of that has gone away. The standards are no longer good enough.”