Donald Trump's intense urge for payback has quickly evolved into a structured system. During the year since his election, the leader's rage and impulses have adopted the guise of government actions similar to reminiscent to historical dictatorial governments. Federal personnel who do not cooperate are summarily dismissed and replaced by loyalists. Opposing figures who question him risk prosecution, trial and punishment. Critics have been categorized under administration memoranda as “unpatriotic”, “opposed to religious values” and “opposing economic freedom”, and warned with prosecution as “extremists”.
Government Institutions Restructured
Each instance involving targeting of critics and immunity for loyalists demonstrates its own particular characteristics. But, despite their individual character, they represent manifestations of what has arisen as a systematic method. These episodes are not coincidental. Trump's purge of federal prosecutors and FBI personnel, coupled with his appointment of loyalists in key positions, began swiftly, quickly developed a regularity, and has now been molded into a system. The justice department and the FBI have been transformed into ideological bodies under the president's direct command to execute his demands. Unfairness has been made routine. It represents the apparatus of revenge.
Leadership is more concerned with punishing the President's alleged adversaries than they are with protecting our national security.
Inside the System
The origin of this system has been exposed in the lawsuit of several former senior Federal Bureau officials lodged in the ninth month in the judicial system in DC against agency head a senior appointee and top lawyer Pam Bondi for illegal termination in “a initiative of retribution against the officials for what Defendants considered to be a inability to show adequate allegiance”. The document states that Brian Driscoll, the former temporary head, details a conversation in which he “freely admitted the impropriety of his actions”.
He had sought to defend agency personnel from being dismissed, the lawsuit alleges. The director advised him that “they” – understood by the official to be the White House and federal prosecutors – had ordered him to dismiss everyone who they identified as having been involved in a legal probe against Trump. The filing adds: “The director explained that he had to fire the people his leaders told him to fire, because his chance to retain his own job relied on the dismissal of the agents who handled investigations involving the chief executive. The director explained that there was no option he or the official could do to prevent these or any other firings, because ‘the FBI tried to put the leader in detention and he remembers.’” When Driscoll advised Patel he was breaking the FBI's own policies, he supposedly said “he understood that and he realized the essence of the summary firings were likely unlawful”.
Widespread Consequences
Since Patel's reported admission to him, the justice department and the law enforcement agency have been weakened and redirected for Trump's system of punishment. Six of the bureau's senior executives were fired or forced out in the early weeks of the administration. Roughly 4,500 legal professionals at the justice department have accepted a “voluntary departure plan”. A minimum of seven DoJ lawyers, including those in the southern district of New York, quit in protest over what they regarded as ideological pressure in abandoning the criminal prosecution against the local official, the mayor, in return for his cooperation with his Immigration and Customs Enforcement roundups of migrants. The public integrity section of the justice department, which handles ethical violations, has been cut down to two attorneys. The civil rights division has been decimated: 70% of its staff has left. 33% of top officials at DoJ have left. The unit enforcing conservation statutes has lost a majority its leadership.
Rewards and Sanctions
In the mayor's situation, the temporary lawyer for the federal division, Danielle Sassoon, resigned in dissent against what she characterized as the “quid pro quo”. Tom Homan, his “border czar,” showed up as the implementer with Adams on Fox News to declare: “If he doesn't come through, I'll reappear in NYC.”. And, a former official, previously the justice department figure and a past legal representative, who negotiated the arrangement, was granted an judicial position, a potential pathway to the supreme court.
Trump's immunity for wrongdoings committed while in office, granted by the unprecedented decision of the conservative on the supreme court, thus thwarting his criminal case over the political violence and safeguarding his political viability for the presidential race, is the basis on which he depends to protect his supporters. With such immunity, he has been freed to enable corruption. The effect of the judicial ruling infuses his presidency and the political party down to its bones. The legal case has metastasized. In the words of Richard Nixon's administration lawyer John Dean said about the Watergate
