Americans can’t say they weren’t warned
Trump using his top cop for revenge, as predicted during impeachment trial
WASHINGTON— Just a f ew months ago, U.S. President Donald Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for trying to coerce a foreign government into digging up dirt on his political opponents and discrediting the evidence of Russian interference into the 2016 election. He was acquitted in the Senate, even though one high-profile Senate Republican who voted not to remove him from office publicly concluded he was clearly guilty of the conduct charged.
Now, as his country’s attention is glued to the coronavirus crisis, Trump appears to be actively using the U.S. Department of Justice to accomplish the same things he was accused of in his impeachment. Many legal experts fear his apparent assimilation of the investigative arm of the government into his political campaign threatens the rule of law in the United States.
The decision announced last week by Attorney General Bill Barr to withdraw charges against Michael Flynn, the former Trump national security adviser who has pleaded guilty to lying to both the FBI and Vice-President Mike Pence about his interactions with Russian officials during the Trump transition, has drawn widespread criticism from legal experts and former Department of Justice staff.
“Make no mistake: The department’s action is extraordinarily rare, if not unprecedented,” reads an open letter signed by more than 2,100 former Department of Justice staff members, who call on Barr to resign. The letter says this is the latest in a series of “assaults on the rule of law” by Barr and Trump “in doing the president’s personal bidding rather than acting in the public interest.”
Calling on the courts and Congress to intervene, the letter frames the action and what the signatories consider the stakes: “Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are not constitutional republics; they are autocracies.”
While protecting an ally is the obvious direct consequence here, it also appears to set the stage for punishing enemies.
In addition to exonerating Flynn, the move would also undermine conclusions — endorsed by the entire U.S. intelligence community and both houses of Congress — that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in an attempt to help Trump win. The day that Barr announced the decision, Trump bragged that he’d told Russian President Vladimir Putin that the pieces were coming into place to discredit the “Russia hoax” and accused the FBI agents and Department of Justice officials who investigated Russian interference in the election of “treason.” And now he appears to be openly preparing to use the Department of Justice to go after those officials, and possibly even former president Barack Obama himself.
“This is just one piece of a very dishonest puzzle,” Trump said of the Flynn case. “I hope a big price is going to be paid. A big price should be paid.”
He followed that up with days of tweeting and retweeting dozens of accusations of criminal conduct against many of his perceived enemies, including television hosts and members of the Obama administration, including Obama and Joe Biden. In one tweet, Trump claimed Obama’s launch of the investigation into Russian interference was “the biggest political crime in American history so far,” and one retweeted meme suggested it was time to get revenge: “HOPE YOU HAD FUN INVESTIGATING ME. NOW IT’S MY TURN.”
He struggled to explain to reporters at the White House this week exactly what crime he was accusing his predecessor of, other than the term “Obamagate,” responding to a request for specificity by saying, “You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody.”
Trump was also asked if he thought the Department of Justice should be investigating this alleged crime. “You’ll be seeing what’s going on in the coming weeks,” he replied.
Barr has denied his actions as head of the DOJ are politically motivated, but has not dismissed any concerns that his department will go after Trump’s political opponents. Over the past year, he has repeatedly suggested that investigators looking into Russian meddling in the 2016 election were actively working to sabotage Trump’s presidency. He told CBS News the Flynn decision was “not going to be the end of it,” and that an attorney he had appointed to investigate the Russia investigation itself would “get to the bottom of what happened.”
On Tuesday, the judge in the Flynn case announced he’d schedule hearings to consider outside motions on the Department of Justice’s decision before ruling on whether he’d sign off on dropping the charges. The judge has some discretion in whether to allow the case to be withdrawn, setting the stage for more of the high-profile legal arguments that have been a key backdrop of the Trump presidency.
That montage of courtroom scenes continued this week in an unrelated Supreme Court case about whether the president’s tax returns should be released to Congress. In that case, many observers think the direct principle at stake is whether the president is subject to the rule of law. In the Flynn case — and the revenge prosecutions Trump seems to be promising will follow it — the question is not just whether the president is subject to the law, but whether he can bend it to suit his own purposes.
Those would be the same purposes — discrediting reports of Russian interference, clearing himself and his allies and digging up dirt on his political opponents — that were at the very heart of his impeachment trial.
During that trial, the participants frequently referred to the judgment of history. This week, when Barr was asked by CBS how history would judge his Flynn decision, he said he thought a fair history would judge it the right decision. But he also noted, “History is written by the winners — so it largely depends on who’s writing the history.”