Trump promises to prosecute his enemies. He’s tried it before. – Mother Jones

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As Donald Trump campaigns to be a dictator for one day, he is asking: “Are you better off now than when I was president?” Great question! To help answer it, our Trump Files The series delves into the momentous events of the 45th president’s term that Americans I could have forgotten—Or I wish they had.

donald trump has saying that if he is elected president again, he will use the Department of Justice to prosecute political enemies. We should believe him, because he tried to do just that in his first term, with some success. And he will be better prepared to execute his plans if he returns to the White House.

NPR recently counted More than 100 times Trump called for the prosecution or imprisonment of his perceived enemies. Your stated goals include Kamala Harris, joe biden and his family, barack obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff, James Comey, Bill Barr, John Kelly, Mark Zuckerberg, federal prosecutors, election officials, journalistsand pro palestinian protesters. He reportedly He wanted the retired military officers who criticized him, Admiral William McRaven and General Stanley McChrystal, back to active duty so they could be court-martialed. He suggested that Mark Milley, who previously served as chairman of Trump’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, deserved to be executed.

The frequency of these threats makes them look foolish. Trump probably isn’t going to attack prosecutors with all those prominent people. But his record suggests he is serious about using the power of his office against many critics. Contrary to what advocates like JD Vance—who saying Recently, Trump “did not go after his political opponents” while in office: Trump made sustained public and private efforts while in the White House to order investigations into critics and political opponents. Triumph was successful In many cases, when investigating enemies, the media information and accounts of former assistants show.

lock her up

After calling for the prosecution of Hillary Clinton during the election campaign, Trump, despite briefly disavowing the idea, promoted throughout his presidency for the prosecution of Clinton. This campaign came in public tweets and private pressure on his aides, and was mounted alongside his anger over investigations into his campaign’s contacts with Russian agents in 2016. Trump pressured his three attorneys general to open or advance investigations against Clinton. They resisted in part, but substantially complied.

Many people remember Trump’s fury at Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from matters related to the 2016 election, which led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. But although That promise, Sessions partly appeased Trump by instructing to Utah U.S. Attorney John Huber to reexamine Clinton’s use of a private email server and allegations about the Clinton Foundation. Sessions’ order came amid repeated public calls that he investigate Clinton’s “crimes.” After firing Sessions in 2020, Trump privately urged acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker to pressure Huber to be more aggressive, the Washington Post reported. When the Huber investigation ended in 2020 without finding wrongdoing by Clinton, Trump publicly attacked the prosecutor as a “garbage disposal.”

But by then, Trump’s third attorney general, Bill Barr, had appointed John Durham, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, to launch an investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation. Barr appointed Durham immediately after misrepresenting The Mueller report, which found that the Trump campaign “hoped to benefit” from secret Russian aid in 2016. Durham’s appointment also came after reports that Trump and his advisers were searching revenge against his investigators.

Durham’s effort failed legally, with the absolution of two of the three men charged with crimes related to the investigation. But the investigation, which lasted four years, it went better as an exercise to provide Trump with talking points. Durham appeared consider that part of his job, although he has publicly questioned it. When the inspector general of the Department of Justice issued a report which found no evidence that the FBI’s investigation of Trump was politically motivated, Durham, in consultation with Barr, issued a strange statement of disagreement, without offering any evidence as to why.

Durham decided to charge Michael Sussmann, a lawyer who worked for Democrats in 2016, with lying to the FBI, even though the evidence was so thin that two prosecutors resigned in connection with the charge. Sussmann was paid in 2022, but through filings in the case, Durham publicly broadcast allegations about the Clinton campaign’s efforts to promote the Russia story, details that did not seem necessary to his case. Right-wing media in February 2022 leap one of those-Durham motion to falsely report that the Clinton campaign had spied on Trump White House servers. In its 2023 final report, Durham widely cited material he acknowledged was dubious possible Russian disinformation in an effort to suggest that Clinton had helped fuel the FBI investigation into Trump.

FBI

After firing James Comey as FBI director in 2017, resulting in Mueller’s appointment, Trump pushed for the Justice Department prosecute Comey for mishandling sensitive government information by allegedly orchestrating leaks that harmed Trump. According to the New York Timesthis pressure taken to “Two leak investigations potentially involving” Comey. The Department of Justice refused to impeach Comey.

Other former FBI officials who drew Trump’s ire — former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok, originally the FBI’s lead agent in the Russia investigation — faced Justice Department investigations after Trump lashed out at them. Sessions fired McCabe the day before his retirement in 2018, in which appeared Denying him a pension and benefits was a deliberate act. Prosecutors in 2019 tried indict McCabe for allegedly lying to FBI officials about media contacts, but in an unusual move that suggests a weak case, a grand jury refused to return an accusation.

John Kerry

In March 2019 press conference, Trump said that former Secretary of State John Kerry, who negotiated the 2015 deal deal freeze Iran’s nuclear weapons development, he could be prosecuted for violating the Logan Act, a 1799 law that prohibits American citizens from negotiating with foreign governments in disputes with the United States. Trump was angered by Kerry’s current contacts with Iranian officials and by Mueller’s team’s past threats to charge former national security adviser Michael Flynn with violating the law. Trump told reporters that Kerry should be impeached, but “my people don’t want to do anything,” adding: “Only Democrats do that kind of thing.

FAKE. Trump’s public and private efforts had by then secured scrutiny of Kerry by the Justice Department. Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton said he Times had witnessed Trump demand Kerry’s prosecution “on at least half a dozen occasions” in 2018 and 2019. Trump also made the case in tweets and public statements. Days after one of Trump’s tweetsIn May 2018, a senior Justice Department official had asked Manhattan prosecutors to investigate Kerry’s contacts with Iranians. according toward Times. Geoffrey Berman, then a U.S. attorney in Manhattan, wrote in a 2022 book that the Kerry investigation appeared to be a result of Trump’s edict. “No one needed to talk to Trump to know what he wanted,” Berman wrote. “You could read his tweets.”

Trump managed to provoke investigations into his critics and political enemies by continually pressuring his subordinates to initiate real prosecutions, as former aides such as Kelly, Bolton and White House counsel Don McGahn have revealed. In some cases, the resulting investigations appear to have been solutions adopted by officials trying to manage pressure from Trump with piecemeal measures.

But in a new term, Trump will surely be more aggressive and even less restrained, as his public threats make clear. The July of the Supreme Court statement The fact that the president has absolute immunity from prosecution for many types of official conduct will leave him with few concerns about facing legal consequences for his own actions. And the assistants who previously partially restricted you will disappear and be replaced by more sycophantic facilitators.

As Trump promises to pervert presidential power to prosecute his critics, Americans have to take him at his word. If he wins, who will stop him?