King Henry II is reported to have mused, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” It wasn’t an order, so to speak, but the King’s subjects knew a royal command when they heard one. A short while later, four knights traveled from Normandy to Canterbury, where they killed Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury and the subject of King Henry’s ire.
Attorney General Pam Bondi won’t have to do any traveling. But like Henry’s loyal knights, she has received a royal command. And like them, she will do her best to implement her ruler’s direction.
In a Truth Social post on Saturday, Donald Trump demanded that Bondi find a way to bring criminal indictments against some of his enemies, naming Letitia James (the New York attorney general), James Comey (the former FBI director), and Adam Schiff (a California senator), and declaring them “all guilty as hell.” Urging quick action, Trump declared “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” and later made clear to reporters that his direction was tantamount to an order: “They have to act. They have to act fast.”
Trump’s imperious demand for criminal action came less than a day after he had forced the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, to resign. Siebert’s error? Not acting fast enough, and apparently having doubts about the validity of the cases against Comey and James. Let’s be clear: Siebert was no anti-Trump “Republican in name only.” Since taking office on an interim basis, he had transformed the U.S. attorney’s office into a “cooperative partner on immigration and crime enforcement in Washington’s southern suburbs,” at least according to Attorney General Bondi and her deputy, Todd Blanche, The New York Times reported.
But if Siebert was unwilling to bring a case against Trump’s enemies, he had to go. And by all accounts, the U.S. attorney for Maryland, Kelly Hayes, who is leading the inquiries into Schiff and the former national security adviser John Bolton, is next in the line of fire if she, too, doesn’t come up with charges for … something.
It is difficult—indeed, almost impossible—to express how utterly transgressive Trump’s demands for personal justice are, how important the norms are that he is now violating, and how much destruction he is inflicting on the rule of law. But let’s try.
To begin with, and to state the obvious, the likelihood that any of these three people has actually committed a federal crime is scant. Without knowing all the evidence, it is, of course, impossible to prove the negative. But if the mortgage-fraud evidence against Schiff and James is of the same quality as the “evidence” against Lisa Cook (the Federal Reserve Board member who has, likewise, been subject to a Trump attack), one can be forgiven for doubting the integrity of any forthcoming charges. Likewise, the investigation of allegations that Comey shared classified information about the Russia-collusion probe with a friend of his seems to have foundered on the lack of any proof that the memos he shared contained secret details. Certainly, Siebert’s and Hayes’s reluctance to bring charges strongly suggests the weakness of these various allegations.
This is not the first time Trump has used the government’s investigative power to punish his enemies. Recall that Trump has ordered the investigation of other disloyal opponents, including the cybersecurity expert Chris Krebs and the former Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor. The difference now (and it is a categorical one that matters deeply) is that beyond ordering an investigation, Trump appears to be ordering unjustified indictments and prosecutions.
To be sure, those prosecutions will almost certainly fail—that is likely one of the many reasons prosecutors have thus far declined to bring the charges. But the costs of defending oneself even against a doomed legal proceeding are substantial, both in terms of the financial resources required and the mental strain imposed. In the long run, even if the prosecutions collapse, Trump will have caused substantial, lasting harm to his enemies.
Second, and of equal concern, Trump’s politicization of the Department of Justice runs counter to a norm of independence that goes back to the 1970s Watergate scandal. Under Nixon, the country learned that having the president’s personal attorney, John Mitchell, as the attorney general was a formula for partisan politics. An unfettered, partisan DOJ is a danger to democracy; investigations and prosecutions should be based on the facts and the law, not political will. Trump’s influence at the DOJ has eliminated its independence, a hallmark of its probity for the past 60 years. That DOJ is now extinct, and doubtfully can be restored anytime soon.
Finally, Trump’s order is, indirectly, evidence of the destruction of an even greater norm—bipartisan opposition to politicized justice. Nixon had his enemies list, and his White House counsel, John Dean, wrote that the administration would “use the available federal machinery to screw” the people on that list. Mitchell was part of that machinery, tasked with bringing abusive litigation and even prosecution. But a bipartisan group in Congress saw Nixon’s effort for what it was: an assault on the fundamental neutrality of the rule of law and the nature of American governance. Acting together, with real difficulty and at no small risk to their own personal careers, that group’s members restrained Nixon and, eventually, ousted him from office.
Today, that sort of commitment to the rule of law is a thing of the past. The gravest sin here is not so much that Trump has an enemies list and that he is issuing kingly orders of retribution. It is that not a single elected Republican seems likely to stand up and condemn this total perversion of the American legal system. Government action should not be arbitrarily coercive and subject to the personal whims of our leaders. Sadly, it now is.
Everyone in America ought to be scared when the justice system is being used to target the president’s political opponents. If Republicans do not step up and criticize Trump’s actions, then he truly will have become a king.
The post A Most Profound Transgression appeared first on The Atlantic.
