When the deputy attorney general personally announces an indictment from Justice Department headquarters, it signals a matter of national importance. So when Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter announced that he would hold his first news conference, observers rightly expected a major case.
Instead, Mr. McCotter announced an indictment of a rogue postal worker for improperly disposing of mail. The Utah mail carrier, Damon Matai Seei, was apparently covering a colleague’s delivery route at the time. By his own admission, he was feeling “overwhelmed,” and sought to “lighten his workload” by discarding a batch of undelivered mail in a church dumpster. In an interview with federal law enforcement, he admitted this was a “poor decision” made out of “frustration” and “laziness.”
Mr. Seei claimed that he believed the discarded mail was advertising material. But according to prosecutors, it also included 300 mail-in ballots for a primary election. He was charged with a single felony count of delay or destruction of mail, which is one of several commonly prosecuted postal crimes.
Mr. Seei had no apparent intent to interfere with an election. But that did not stop the Justice Department from offering him up to the public as an election saboteur. The deputy attorney general called Mr. Seei — a 34-year-old with no prior criminal history — “a danger to the public and to the integrity of the electoral system.” Mr. McCotter and his boss, Attorney General Todd Blanche, each appeared on Fox News to shore up the story.
Their chest-thumping highlights how desperate Justice Department leaders are to substantiate the president’s claims of election interference, and how miserably they are failing. At the news conference, Mr. McCotter admonished reporters: “Remember, folks. Voting fraud is real.” In other words: We may not have much proof, but trust us.
Recent polling shows that President Trump’s baseless claims about mail-in voting fraud are persuading few people outside his base. Still, the officials who surround him remain doggedly committed to proving otherwise — much like the ministers who refused to tell the emperor he was wearing no clothes. After Mr. McCotter’s news conference, a top Justice Department spokeswoman lashed out at a correspondent who characterized Mr. Seei’s prosecution as “a case about a tired mailman.” On its official X account, the department posted a highly produced video in which Mr. McCotter insists weakly, and without evidence, that the case is “just the tip of the iceberg.”
These actions are reminiscent of the aftermath of the 2020 election, when a rogue Justice Department official sent a letter to Georgia election officials falsely claiming that the department had evidence of “significant” irregularities in the state’s election. His plan was stymied only because the rest of the Justice Department’s senior leadership threatened to resign if it went forward. The acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, reportedly told Mr. Trump he could not “change the facts” of the election.
What’s different and scarier now is that the Justice Department’s leadership is working together to validate the president’s election lies from the top down. Turning fiction into fact is now part of the job description. A refusal to concede that Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election has become a litmus test for all his political appointees.
Initially, Mr. Trump’s justice system targeted specific individuals who had angered him — such as Senator Mark Kelly or the former F.B.I. director, James Comey. Now, it has adopted a dragnet approach, trawling to find perpetrators on whom to pin conspiracies cooked up by the president. Ordinary citizens are being ensnared.
David Hearn, a man from Maryland, was one of them. In June, U.S. Park Police officers and National Guardsmen were deployed to patrol the reflecting pool, under pressure to prove the president’s claim that “SICK, DERANGED PEOPLE” intentionally destroyed its lining. Mr. Hearn, passing through the National Mall on his bike, stopped to put his hand in the water. He was arrested on the spot and later charged with felony destruction of property.
The case against Mr. Hearn crumbled when prosecutors were forced to substantiate it with evidence. Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, had to dismiss the indictment — earning the ire of the president — but only after Mr. Hearn was thrust into the national spotlight and painted as an enemy of America. In a news release, Ms. Pirro had said Mr. Hearn’s “deliberate acts of destruction” were “an affront to our shared history and the dignity of our national heritage.”
Most Americans didn’t fear for our personal safety when the Justice Department came for James Comey, Mark Kelly and Letitia James, the New York attorney general. These were professional political actors who chose to be in the national spotlight. Of course, no one should be subjected to a frivolous or vindictive criminal investigation. But they were people the president viewed as enemies. Now, he’s getting desperate and targeting civilians.
So far, the courts have consistently rejected Mr. Trump’s politically motivated prosecutions. Most Americans can see these cases for what they are: flimsy and pathetic — a sign of Mr. Trump’s weakness. As Mr. Hearn and Mr. Seei experienced firsthand, the president’s control of the levers of justice has the potential to do great damage, even if the charges ultimately don’t stick.
The solution is for those in Mr. Trump’s orbit to stop enabling him. That’s unlikely to happen. Mr. Trump is now relying, to an unusual degree, on a revolving cast of opportunistic political appointees. The flagging career work force has been increasingly marginalized, as leadership is demanding total loyalty and is aggressively squashing dissent.
Mr. McCotter, the acting deputy attorney general, warned that “the actions of even one malicious actor” can undercut the security of our democratic elections. He’s not wrong — but what his news conference illustrated is that the malicious actors are the ones inside our government.
Liz Oyer writes about the rule of law in her newsletter, Lawyer Oyer.
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