When Donald J. Trump responded to his latest accusation by promising to appoint a special prosecutor if re-elected to “go after” President Biden and his family, he signaled that a second term Trump will completely eliminate the post-Watergate rule of the Justice Department.
“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to prosecute the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” said Mr. Trump at his golf club in Bedminster, NJ, on Tuesday night after his arraignment earlier that day in Miami. “I will wipe out the Deep State completely.”
The message of Mr. Trump so he was charged by the Justice Department just because he is the political opponent of Mr. Biden, so he will reverse the supposed politicization. In fact, under Attorney General Merrick Garland, two Trump-appointed prosecutors are already investigating Mr. Biden’s handling of classified documents and financial dealings with his son, Hunter.
But by suggesting that the prosecutors currently investigating the Bidens were not “genuine,” Mr. Trump appeared to promise his supporters that he would appoint an ally to bring charges against his political enemies even what are the facts.
Mr. Trump’s headline-grabbing, bare-bones politics underscores something important. In his first term, Mr. Trump has gradually increased pressure on the Justice Department, stripping it of its traditional independence from White House political control. He now shamelessly says that he will throw that effort into overdrive if he returns to power.
The promise of Mr. Trump fits into a larger movement of the right to gut the FBI, overhauling a Justice Department conservative claim “armed” against them and abandoning the norm – which many Republicans look forward to – that the department should act independently from the president.
Two of the most important people in this effort work for the same Washington-based organization, the Center for Renewing America: Jeffrey B. Clark and Russell T. Vought. During the Trump presidency, Mr. Vought serves as director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Clark, who oversees the Justice Department’s civil and environmental divisions, is the only senior official in the department who has tried to help Mr. Trump overturn the 2020 election.
Mr. Trump to make Mr. Attorney General. Clark in his last days in office but stopped after the senior leadership of the Justice Department threatened to resign in large numbers. Mr. Clark is now one of the Justice Department’s investigations into the trials of Mr. Trump to stay in power.
Mr. Clark and Mr. Vought advocated legal reasoning that could change the way presidents interact with the Justice Department. They argue that US presidents should not keep federal law enforcement at arm’s length but should treat the Justice Department no differently than any other cabinet agency. They condemned Mr. Biden and the Democrats for what they claimed was the politicization of the justice system, but at the same time pushed for an intellectual framework that a future Republican president could use to justify the administration of individual law enforcement investigations.
Mr. Clark, who is a favorite of Mr. Trump and is likely to contend for a top position in the Justice Department if Mr. Trump will win re-election in 2024, writing a constitutional analysis, titled “The US Justice Department is not independent. ,” which will likely serve as a blueprint for Trump’s second administration.
Like other conservatives, Mr. Clark followed the so-called unitary executive theory, which holds that the president of the United States has the power to directly control the entire federal bureaucracy and Congress cannot break that control by giving some officials independent decision-making. authority.
There is debate among conservatives about how far to push that doctrine — and whether certain agencies should be allowed to operate independently — but Mr. Clark takes a maximalist view. Mr. Trump did too, though he has never been caught reading the Federalist Papers.
In the statements of The New York Times, Mr. Clark and Mr. Vought trusted their fight against the Justice Department, with Mr. Clark framing it as a fight for the survival of America itself.
“Biden and DOJ are asking for Trump’s blood so they can put fear into America,” Mr. Clark in his statement. “The Constitution and our Article IV ‘Republican Form of Government’ cannot survive like this.”
Mr. Vought wrote in his statement that the Justice Department is “ground zero for arming the government against the American people.” He added, “Conservatives are waking up to the fact that federal law enforcement is being weaponized against them and as a result are adopting paradigm-shifting policies to reverse that trend.”
Mr. Trump has often exploited the gaps between what the technical rules allow and the self-restraint norms that have guided past presidents of both parties. In 2021, House Democrats passed the Protecting Our Democracy Act, a legislative package intended to codify many previous rules into law, including requiring the Justice Department to provide Congressional logs of contacts. of the White House officials. But Republicans characterized the bill as an attack on Mr. Trump and it died in the Senate.
The modern era of the Justice Department traces back to the Watergate scandal and the era of government reforms that followed the abuses of President Richard M. Nixon. The practice is rooted in the fact that the president can set broad policies for the Justice Department — ordering it to put more resources and emphasis on particular types of crimes or adopt specific positions before the Supreme Court – but does not necessarily involve specific decisions in criminal cases that are not unique. circumstances, such as when a case has foreign policy implications.
Since then, it has been customary at confirmation hearings for attorney general nominees to have senators make promises that they will oppose any effort by the president to politicize law enforcement by interfering in matters of prosecutorial judgment. and discretion.
While the Republican Party is changing in response to the influence of Mr. Trump, his attacks on federal law enforcement — which trace back to the early Russia investigation in 2017, the backlash over his firing of former FBI director James B. Comey Jr. appointment of Robert S. Mueller III as special counsel – linked to the ideology of his supporters.
Mr. Trump’s primary opponent for the Republican nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, also rejected the rule that the Justice Department should be independent.
“Republican presidents have accepted the position that the DOJ and FBI are – quote – ‘independent,'” Mr. DeSantis SAYS in May on Fox News. “They are not independent agencies. They are part of the executive branch. They answer to the president-elect of the United States.”
Several other Republican candidates have acknowledged that Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents — as outlined in the indictment prepared by the special counsel, Jack Smith, and his team — is a serious problem. But even these candidates — including Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, and former Vice President Mike Pence — have also accused the Justice Department of being overly politicized and imposing unfair justice.
The most powerful conservative think tanks are working on plans to go beyond “reforming” the FBI, even though the directors confirmed by the Senate in the modern era have all been Republicans. They want to tear it down and start over.
“The FBI has become a political weapon for the ruling elite instead of an impartial, law enforcement agency,” said Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, a mainstay of the conservative movement since the Reagan years. He added, “Small-ball reforms that increased accountability within the FBI have failed to meet the occasion. The FBI must be rebuilt from the ground up – changing it in its current state is impossible.
Conservative media channels and social media influencers have been hammering the FBI and the Justice Department for months since the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, following a playbook they boasted while defending Mr. Trump during the investigation into whether his campaign colluded with the Russians. government to influence the 2016 elections.
In the most-watched programs of the night, Fox News launched an all-out attack against the Justice Department, including the accusation, presented without evidence, that Mr. Biden ordered the prosecution of Mr. Trump. As the former president addressed his supporters Tuesday night at his Bedminster club, Fox News showed a split screen – Mr. Trump on the right and Mr. Biden on the left. The chyron at the bottom of the screen read: “Wannabe dictator speaks at White House after political rival arrested.”
As president, Mr. Trump sees his attorney general as just one of his personal lawyers. He was angered when his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, recused himself from the Russia investigation — and then refused to reverse the decision to close the case.
After being fired Mr. Sessions, Mr. Trump believes he has found someone who will do his bidding in William P. Barr, who was in the role during the presidency of George HW Bush. Mr. Barr has a broad view of a president’s constitutional powers, and shares the critical views of Mr. Trump at the beginning of the Russia investigation.
Under Mr. Barr, the Justice Department rejected career prosecutors’ recommendations on the length of the sentence for Mr. Trump’s longest-serving political adviser, Roger J. Stone Jr., and sought to shut down one case against the first national security of Mr. Trump adviser, Michael Flynn, who has pleaded guilty. Both cases stem from the Russia investigation.
But when Mr. Trump wanted to use the Justice Department to stay in power after he lost the election, he was upset when Mr. Trump refused. Barr to comply. Mr. Barr eventually resigned in late 2020.