Donald Trump's insatiable appetite for revenge has quickly evolved into a organized apparatus. Over the year since his election, the leader's rage and impulses have adopted the shape of official policies in ways reminiscent to earlier authoritarian systems. Justice department officials who do not cooperate are immediately removed and substituted by supporters. Critical leaders who question him risk indictment, trial and punishment. Opponents have been labeled under presidential memoranda as “unpatriotic”, “opposed to religious values” and “anti-capitalist”, and menaced with legal action as “security threats”.
Federal Agencies Transformed
Every case involving legal action of critics and protection for supporters exhibits its own distinct characteristics. But, regardless of their specific nature, they represent examples of what has arisen as a calculated approach. These episodes are not coincidental. The administration's removal of Department of Justice lawyers and FBI personnel, coupled with his placement of devotees in key posts, began rapidly, quickly took on a consistency, and has now been formed into a structure. DoJ and the Federal Bureau have been restructured into political organizations under his direct orders to carry out his directives. Wrongdoing has been made standard. It represents the retribution system.
Leadership is focused with targeting the President's perceived adversaries than they are with defending our national security.
Inside the Structure
The beginnings of this framework has been exposed in the legal complaint of three ex- senior law enforcement executives submitted in September in the federal court in Washington against FBI director an administration figure and attorney general a key figure for illegal termination in “a campaign of revenge against them for what administration figures judged to be a failure to show sufficient allegiance”. The document states that a former acting director, the ex- acting FBI director, describes a exchange in which the director “publicly confessed the unlawfulness of his behavior”.
He had sought to defend law enforcement officers from being dismissed, the filing alleges. The director informed him that “White House figures” – interpreted by him to be the White House and justice department – had instructed him to fire everyone who they determined as having participated in a law enforcement case against him. The filing adds: “He clarified that he had to fire the individuals his superiors told him to remove, because his capacity to hold his own role was contingent on the dismissal of the personnel who were involved in cases involving the leader. The director noted that there was no option he or Driscoll could do to stop these or any other dismissals, because ‘the FBI attempted to incarcerate the President in jail and he recalls it clearly.’” Once Driscoll informed him he was violating the bureau's own policies, the director reportedly said “he understood that and he knew the essence of the immediate dismissals were probably improper”.
Broad Consequences
Since his alleged acknowledgment to him, the DoJ and the law enforcement agency have been weakened and redirected for his revenge apparatus. Six of the agency's senior executives were dismissed or compelled to leave in the early weeks of the administration. Approximately 4,500 legal professionals at the department have agreed to a “early exit scheme”. A minimum of several federal prosecutors, such as those in the southern district of New York, resigned in dissent over what they regarded as partisan influence in withdrawing the criminal prosecution against the New York City mayor, a political figure, in exchange for his collaboration with Trump's federal agency detentions of foreign nationals. The ethics division of the department, which oversees ethical violations, has been cut down to a handful of lawyers. The civil rights division has been decimated: the majority of its staff has left. 33% of senior leaders at the department have quit. The section implementing environmental law has lost a majority its supervisors.
Favors and Punishments
In the mayor's situation, the temporary lawyer for the federal division, Danielle Sassoon, resigned in dissent against what she described as the “exchange”. Tom Homan, the president's “border czar,” showed up as the agent with the mayor on Fox News to announce: “If he doesn't come through, I'll reappear in New York City.”. Meanwhile, another figure, earlier the senior DoJ official and a ex-lawyer, who arranged the arrangement, was given an court role, a possible springboard to the judicial branch.
The president's exemption for wrongdoings committed while in government, granted by the unprecedented judgment of the Republican majority on the supreme court, thus thwarting his prosecution over the January 6 insurrection and preserving his electoral prospects for the national vote, is the foundation stone on which he depends to protect his stalwarts. Given this protection, he has been liberated to enable corruption. The consequence of the supreme court decision saturates his government and the Republican Party completely. Trump v United States has spread. In the words of the former president's administration lawyer the figure said about the Watergate
